WIP

This has nothing to do with writing. I just couldn't resist commenting.

As seen here, there is a toymaker making Michelle Obama dolls.



Let's ignore the fact that they were so rude as to put the poor doll in the black widow dress, and focus on the overall looks of the doll. Ick.

No politics here. Michelle Obama has one of those pretty faces and I know my kid sister ran out to get the Michelle Obama hair cut during the elections. Doesn't look like that doll. Or vice versa.

It uhm... looks like a caricature doll to me. Or a bobblehead doll without the head-bobble.

Maybe little girls are different now, but um, I liked the GLAMOROUS collection dolls. That would be really cool if somebody came out with GLAMOROUS dolls of the first family. With sparkly REAL dresses and nonplastic hair. Unless they have and I haven't been paying attention. I only go down the doll aisle twice a year: niece's birthday and Christmas. :P

My week has been fast and uneventful. No writing to speak of, partly because of some kind of bug I've been battling. It's gone to my right eye - something I'm not too thrilled about, because I have to worry about warm compresses and going without mascara. Ugh.

And there's the prob -

Yesterday, I found time (despite eye infection) to sit through several episodes of Psyche (have been buying the seasons, am addicted). I didn't find time to write a single word in my WIPS.

One excuse I have is legit - watching TV is non-participitary. Means, I can just sit there and watch. Or if my eyes hurt too much, I close them and listen. I don't have to think or reason, or hammer away at the keyboard. I just sit there. And sometimes I let myself drift off and think of other things (sometimes writing) or gab with whoever I'm watching TV with.

For most people (like me) writing demands your entire attention, focus, interest, energy, and heart. When you are at the very end of tolerance (as in the ability to gather yourself and do something), you can barely function in the evenings.

Where I lose legitimacy is when I spend the forty-five minutes or so of free time between TV and bed playing with HTML codes - as I did last night. Never mind I couldn't keep my eyes open, or how much they hurt to stay open. I was DETERMINED to figure something out and get my one blog page to LOOK RIGHT. That determination kept me going until I had accomplished what I wanted.

A good portion of the ability to write (even when YOU DON'T WANT TO!) is determination.

That's something I had to acknowledge twice yesterday. The second time was when I closed my computer down last night without clicking into a Word doc and felt guilty.

The first time was when I stopped over at MSFV to see the good news Authoress had re/one of her readers and contest participants. Read about it here. Going by her interview with Authoress, and then her blog, Steph sounds like a plucky and smart teen, who's going after what she wants and kudos to her.

The first thing I saw of the interview and the thing that struck me the hardest as a writer was the following bit:

STEPH: I think my writing is at the stage it's at right now due to one thing: writing. I write a lot and often. I don't talk about writing or think about writing or read books about writing. I just write. I don't particularly enjoy thinking of myself as a writer, I just love the act of writing.

When I was a teen, I had the same mentality, but sort of lost it a little as I grew up and got the day job. Writing took second place to a lot of things - including my own needs. Not saying I'm going to sacrifice my own needs for the sake of writing, but I've often wished I could get that "I love this" feeling back.

Just like any other kind of love affair, it isn't something that dependably is always alive and vivid and warm. You start slipping up and taking it for granted, and it begins to grow cold and tiresome. A responsibility. The ball and chain. A WALL.

That's where the determination is necessary. You have to SIT DOWN and write, even when it's hard and near impossible. For the sake of 'mentality' - set lower goals and surround yourself with good influences. If you spend 90% of your free time hanging out with a writing club that's all about procrastinating... it can become even tougher trying to stay on track.

When you start to feel and see the rewards, that's when it gets a bit easier. The burnt out days and middle-of-the-night worries go away, replaced by the "just ten more minutes, I have one more paragraph to write' bargains with your long-suffering roommate.

Imagine me standing in front of a mirror, because all of this advice is such that I NEED to start taking myself. :)

...And it was one of those embarrassing dreams that exposed the deepest darkest desires of my inner self, made me ridiculously happy from mid-dream onward, and left me pathetically unhappy when I woke up and realized it was just a dream.

In other words, I dreamt I got a contract for my Swapped Fate book. From an agent whom I've never queried (because I know she's looking for other stuff right now). I was so happy that she came all the way from New York in person to offer me a contract, that I hugged her (I who never hugs strangers if I can help it), and then invited her to go swimming with me and my family. And we all went swimming together at the nearby lake.

I began to suspect it was a dream when we got to the lake and it was like... summery warm... out there. I knew it was 28 degrees F (always spells it wrong, never tries anymore) outside before I went to bed.

When the agent left without actually telling me the vagueries of the contract, or even talking about what comes next (something, I haven't quite gotten around to mulling over in real life), I KNEW it was a dream.

Well, and I woke up at that point too.

So depressing.

That means I'm back to sorting out all my current editing projects and trying to ignore dear beloved Swapped Fate sitting sadly on the shelf waiting for her (because my projects are all female) time to get back in the limelight.

I wrote a little bit in my UF project (both versions). At some point, I'm going to have to figure out which I'm going to run with. The adult (Geisha) version or the teen (Wesley) version. And yes, in the long run, I'm hoping I can do something with both. Future readers will never notice they are basically reading the same story twice, right?

CHECK THIS BLOG -

Tabitha wrote an excellent post on queries, breaking them down to the basics and (more importantly) making them less scary.

Right here: Tabwriter.blogspot.com on writing extraordinary queries

A quick short of mine has just been accepted by the online magazine 'Everyday Weirdness'. You can see the story here: The Cure.

Yay. I'm proud to appear in the mag. It's a fun quick daily stop - definitely weird sometimes.

... because my hands are tied.

I thought I'd mention this, more as a reminder to myself to BAH-HAVE. This also has a lot to do with a mix of blogs and websites that have recently focused on what people don't want to see in an author website. And while the focus was on aspiring/published author websites, I think this applies to all mediums of communication (like Twitter, Facebook, Writer Forums), not just blogs.

As a reader, it really is disheartening and annoying to discover that this author that I felt this psychic connection with...

[Backpedals, because that sounded ooky and stalkerish]

...It's disheartening to click into a blog expecting to be entertained and instead discover that the author (who I really love) is ripping into people who have moral and political views like me. Literally poking fun of them. Deliberately picking out items from the news or even just pictures so they can twist around to make them look or sound like freaks.

In a symbolic sense, it's like discovering your best friends have been slandering you to the entire school on facebook.

These authors assume that the people they are attacking aren't members of their audience, so they feel like they are free to say what they want. They don't stop to think that a portion of the people they are ripping into are actually people who are buying their books.

It doesn't matter which side they dance their little happy dance on. Right or left, there are still good honest people who are forced into a position where they want to defend themselves and their way of life without speaking out and getting into a fight about it with somebody they used to respect.

The same is true when you are an aspiring writer writing stuff on your personal blog. Whether it's agents/publishers or prospective readers looking you up, you do not want to be too controversial. Unless somebody asks you a controversial question, and then maybe figure out how to phrase your words so they are tactful and considerate, and do not generalize.

Unless, of course, those political issues are your platform. Then the odds are the people looking you up won't be too surprised by your opinions, and are in fact following you BECAUSE of those opinions. Two examples would be Michael Moore and Ann Coulter.

On that note, you wouldn't believe how I've had to keep my fingers in check when it comes to issues. When it comes to publishing though... just like in the job world, your online-reputation can make or break your resume.

So the main things that I don't really want to put on my blog, and I wish other people would follow suit:

*Politics
*Religion

And views and stances thereof.

I do promise I won't be going in that territory if I can help it.

Just a quickie -

I CANNOT believe it's Friday! Where did my week go? Does this bode badly for next month? As in, will I be sitting there on a Friday morning, dwelling on my lack of wordiness or wip-workfulness of the week?

*I did work on my blog designs - influenced by Liana over at LianaBrooks.blogspot.com. I got over my fear of HTML codes. I still am not completely literate, but at least I'm not afraid of playing around with them now.

*I set up my NANO blog (see link/tab above) and will be lightly updating that over the next couple months. I just posted a disorderly and babbling brag there about the rough synopsis that I figured out for my planned WIP (Four Bottles).

*I also figured out how to create file folders for all of my files at the online storage place. This means I also got up the courage to delete old work files off my computer, because I can now easily find what I want online.

*I'm also planning to stop by the library and pick up a few books to start filling out the empty cells of my 500 book challenge sheet. I was going to be specific and only borrow YA Fantasy books, but I'm going to widen my turf and also read ALL YA books. Why? Because I realized that I really want my NANO wip to have a Joan Lowery Nixon feel to it. There are some JLN books I haven't read yet, so I can read and also study her plot pacing.

*Plans for the weekend - I'm going to see if I can write up a chapter plan going off the rough synopsis. This will not be put on my NANO website (for obvious reasons), but I'd like to have one. It also gives me an excuse to sorta work on my NANO without breaking the rules.

*Research - I did a little bit this morning, but need to find out more about police, amber alerts, runaways - and how this is all handled here in Michigan, which is where my WIP is going to take place. The missing character is going to be 17, which I understand is the odd borderline age where police may be waffly about getting involved (unless there's evidence of a crime) with a runaway case. Originally planned on having the character be 15, but want a plausible reason for the police to be dragging their feet.

*Currently the only waffling issue I have right now is the age of the main character. I have two options:

-1- make her be 16 - despite me twitching about her being so close in age to her missing sister. I wanted there to be a little distance between the girls - a reason for them to not be too close and involved with the same stuff and friends. And then I know I don't want her to be younger than 16.

-2- just to have it be a blended marriage. That actually might work. Hmm... could base on the Clancy family (somebody I know from church). It's a good reason why the girls might be close as sisters, and close in age - if not the same age - but not best friends forever.

Something I read on a news site (AP, Fox News) this morning:

LONDON — Researchers say a new find near the famous Stonehenge monument shows the religious significance of the site.

The smaller prehistoric site is being called "Bluehenge" because of the color of the stones that were placed there thousands of years ago but have since disappeared. All that is left are the holes made when the stones were put in place.

An artist's impression of the stone circle as it would have looked in prehistoric times was released Tuesday.

Researchers believe the newly discovered stone circle and the larger Stonehenge circle may mark a "domain of the dead" that was linked to the "domain of the living" by the River Avon.

Experts say the stones were incorporated into the circle in about 2,500 B.C.

My first impression: How did they know what color the stones were, if they are long gone?!

What I love here is the last bit about the stones marking a domain of the dead linked to the domain of the living. It is just the sort of information I really want to use in a story somewhere. Only I would play around with the definition of 'dead'.

In my sci-fi (ish) stories, I play around with time folds. This comes from a conversation I had with my dad a while back on time travel.

My mom is a sci-fi/fantasy fan like me. We confab over Stargate and shows like that. Shows that take you elsewhere but still maintain a connection through human stories. It's the ET thing - we love aliens and visitations, but we are more interested in the aliens than the spaceships. Which is why a lot of my sci-fi (ish) novels treat spaceships like cars. Functional and assumed - so we don't need to talk about them anymore than describing every inch of the car a character in a contemporary novel is driving. :)

My dad is more of a hard science fan. One of his top favorite movies was 'The Day the Earth Stood Still'. A movie that I don't.... appreciate. He is fun to talk about re/dislocation and time travel. Talk to him about the Philadelphia Experiment, and his eyes get all wide and he elbow props. He also believes that Time Travel and in fact "Hyperspeed" space travel is possible through the time/place fold theory. Too complicated to explain here, but he took a napkin and drew two dots on opposing corners of the napkin. Showed the distance with the napkin flat on the table. Then showed me the distance after folding the napkin in such a way that the points were right next to each other.

Back to my initial point and related to the Stargate shows - "dead" could be more than the end of life definition. If the person has stepped across a fold in place and time, and is 'known no more', then you would say that person is dead. Same thing when you consider the ghosts who haunt your house or aliens who live in dimension other than ours.

In the novels I'm playing around with, it is possible for folds or holes to exist all over earth. And the only way you can find them is by the level of activity or 'strange visions' witnessed thereabouts. Sometimes these are marked by monuments - such as Stonehenge or "Ways" (those spots around the world where the natives speak of fairies and Others who will work mischief and evil on anyone who treads or builds on their turf). Other times, they were brushed aside as ordinary haunts, especially when natives 'see the dead' walking about old houses and repeating activities over and over.

*wants to be home writing*