Happy Holidays

Yes, I know I threatened promised to share Christmas videos earlier, but I got caught up in the holiday rush and haven’t been on my computer much.

My all time favourite Christmas music is the Trans-Siberian Orchestra (just ask my daughter, she got married and moved out of the house just to avoid having to listen to it over and over and over again) so today I’m taking a minute to share some with you.

Hope you enjoy.

Taking a Break

Whelp, the anthology came back from the printer and it was not what I asked for and it was a LOT more money than I thought it would be. If I do this next year, and I probably will (depending on how well it goes over this year) I will leave myself enough time to do up a chapbook of my own needing only the folding and trimming service offered by the print shop.

I hope my anthology debacle has not discouraged anyone else out there who might be thinking of doing the same. A lot of my problems stemmed from lack of planning and shortness of time, and from wanting to do everything myself.

Now that that’s over I should be able to get back to my regular writing life right? Wrong. Christmas is just 10 days away. I think we’ve pretty much finished the shopping, and I’ve got one of my out of town parcels in the mail. The tree is in place acclimatizing to the indoor temperature but there are no decorations on it as yet. And I haven’t even started the baking.

So. . . normally I take the week between Christmas and New Year’s off from blogging, this year I’m giving myself a break and starting early. Which means I’m not going to do a proper post here again until next year.

But if you like Christmas music, check back once in a while because I won’t be able to resist posting a few of my favourite Christmas songs.

Merry Christmas everyone! Have a happy holiday and a great beginning to a brand new year!

Lessons Learned

The book flood anthology is, for all intents and purposes, done! Woohoo!

It’s not pretty, but it is what it is in the time I had. And in the process I learned several valuable lessons:

1. Pick a theme before picking your stories.
My theme was apparently “early stories that are out-dated and I didn’t know what else to do with them.” My stories run the gamut from comedy to morbid, and span a variety of genres. And when I came up short on stories I filled in the space with a few poems.
Also, I kept switching between all dark flash and all non-dark flash and all new stories to all old stories. Figure out what kind of stories you’re going to collect before you waste a lot of time editing the wrong story.

2. Give yourself lots of time – then add some.
I’ve been toying with the idea of an anthology for a while, but it wasn’t until I decided to use it for my book flood book that I started to get serious about it. I’m not sure exactly when this was, but I know I didn’t take into account the time suck NaNo would be.

3. Decide an approximate number of pages early.
It will help you figure out the size of your anthology and how many stories you’re going to need to work with.

4. Decide the binding ahead of time.
This kind of goes with number three because the number of pages will help determine the kind of binding you can go for. Just a few pages, you can have a chapbook, more and you’ll have to look for some other kind of binding.

5. Take it seriously.
I got caught up in the whole idea of an anthology and started working on it before I really thought it through. Then I kept changing my mind and waffling on the stories. If I’d been a little more serious about it I would have thought it through better and saved myself a lot of time and angst.

The anthology is a little stark looking, to my eye. It could have used a few flourishes like a more decorative font for the titles, maybe a graphic or two. Again, this is something I just didn’t have time for. And something to keep in mind for next time.

Ironically, I have an idea for next year’s NaNo and it’s a themed anthology. But trust me when I say I’ll be taking my time when it comes to publishing it.

Busy as a Bee

This is going to be another one of those good news/bad news posts. The good news is that it’s been a week since NaNo ended and I’m still spending a lot of my daytime hours in my office, the bad news is that I don’t feel like I’m getting a whole lot accomplished.

I’ve been struggling a lot with the anthology and I have to say it’s been kicking my butt. A couple of the stories had to be re-typed (because they pre-dated me owning a computer), and many of the others have formatting issues. Specifically, they have straight quotation marks instead of curly marks.

Now, I had to deal with this once before and it was a fairly easy fix. But I don’t know if it’s because my version Word is so out of date or if it’s a Windows 10 thing, but I cannot get them change in bulk. I Googled a couple of different ways – neither of them worked. I even tried to use find/replace using the character map for my curly quotes. It didn’t work either.

This means I have to replace them one by one – including the apostrophes. Do you know how time consuming that is? With some of the shorter stories it’s almost quicker if I just retype the darn things.

Meanwhile, the clock is ticking down. I need to get this anthology done like yesterday for the ones that need to be mailed. I have 10 stories finalized, but four of the stories are long, older ones which got me to thinking I should only use old stories and make it a chap book, maybe throw in a few poems just to make it interesting.

It doesn’t help that I keep waffling on the format as well. Chapbook, spiral bound, perfect binding – I guess it will all depend on how long it is.

Goal For the Week

GET THE ANTHOLOGY DONE ALREADY!

This will be me this week:

Back to Truckin' Along

NaNoWriMo hasn’t even been over a week yet and I’m back to my same old habits – namely, almost being late with my blog post.

But as excuses go, the why for this one is a pretty good one. I got caught up editing a short story for the anthology last night and forgot all about the blog post. So now the race is on to see if I can get the post finished before I have to leave for my MRI this morning (to figure out the reason for the headaches I’m no longer getting).

The good news is, I’ve kept the habit of working in my office during the day. And I haven’t even tried to use the excuse that my office could use a good cleaning, I’ve been getting actual work done.

Mostly what I’ve been working on is the book flood anthology (the one I want to make for friends and family for this year’s book flood). One of the stories I wanted to include was the very first story I ever wrote, and I had to re-type it because I did not have an electronic version. The story I got bogged down editing last night was (I think) the second one I ever wrote.

Because they were written so long ago they’re a little dated and while it’s tempting to give them a quick nudge into more modern times, I think that would take away from their charm so I’m leaving them alone. It’s interesting that they both have small town settings, but they’re totally different tales.

I didn’t set any goals for myself on Sunday, so I can’t really report on that. Usually the month right after NaNo is a dry spell for writing and I use it to figure out my game plan for the following year. This year I'm still doing that, but I'm also continuing to work.

I’m focusing on the anthology rather than Wandering Wizards for now, so I don’t have an excerpt from that today, but I do have one last one from Spirit. This is from near the beginning when Nakeisha (an Elemental Wind) is starting to have questions.

Taja looked at her sister. “What is it?”

“This prophecy business bothers me, it always has.” Nakeisha set her cup down. Rising, she went over to look out the view port at the stars streaming by before turning back to her sister. Her hands slid automatically into the opposite cuffs at the end of the sleeves in her robe in the position Chaney dubbed “the wise ambassador” pose.

“Before I learned to control my winds, when I was with Chaney and the Burning Star down on Anchyre, the Illezie tested me for my elemental power.”

“You never told me that before!”

“You never wished to develop your own gift so it never seemed relevant,” she said with a slight shrug. “It was something they did only to the elementals who showed a measure of strength in their gifts.”

Taja had set her cup aside and was listening intently. “Why would they do this?”

“At the time I was told they were seeking “the one,” although the one what I had no idea. All I knew was that I was found somewhat lacking, and I had the sense they were somewhat bewildered by this.”

“Fancy that, the great, all-knowing Illezie perplexed by something.” Taja digested what her sister had told her for a moment.

“When we were on Sikka, both Rayne and Pyre were tested, and it was discovered for the first time that different elementals could combine their gifts into something more.”

“Yes,” Taja said dryly. “And look what it got us. That half-sentient beam of elemental energy loose in the galaxy.”

The energy came from the attempt to stop a volcano from wrecking havoc on Sikka. While Nakeisha used her wind and Rayne used her control of the storms to try and contain the flow of lava, Pyre pulled the heat and energy from the volcano into himself. Unable to control it or release the energy back to its source, he sent it into space.

“And were it not for that beam of energy we might never have found Chloe, or Gra’anna,” Nakeisha pointed out. “Gra’anna, who believes they were wrong for all those centuries. It was not “one” the Illezie were looking for, but “five who are one.” But it still begs the question, why? And what role do these five play in the prophecy?”

“Five who are one,” Taja repeated thoughtfully. She straightened up in her seat suddenly. “Five who are one! There is something else that beam is responsible for, it also brought us Pyre, and Ravi, and Chloe – three of the most powerful elementals ever known – and when you add yourself into the mix, it’s four.”

“You are correct,” Nakeisha said without a trace of modesty.

“But it still doesn’t answer the question, who is the fifth?”

“I have asked Chaney that very same question, but it is a question without an answer.” But she felt a measure of reassurance that she was not the only one who was questioning the Illezie and their prophecy.

I’m A Wiener – I Mean Winner!

I tend to celebrate crossing over with a meditative ceremony where I print the book out and neatly stack its pages on the floor. When everything has been properly laid out, I take a few steps back from the work, close my eyes, and offer up my thanks to the writing powers for another bountiful harvest. At which point, I get a running start and dive headlong into my word-pile, rolling around and snorting like a pig. And then I fall asleep for three days. How you celebrate is up to you.
― Chris Baty, No Plot? No Problem!

Yeah, I don’t think I’d go that far, but it’s a good feeling, crossing that finish line. I have admit that it wasn’t quite as much fun this year because there was no validation, so technically I could have just entered in an arbitrary word count over 50,000 and would have still received my winner’s certificate, but where would the fun in that be?

This year I had something happen that has never happened before. I have a complete draft on my hands. It’s a pretty messy draft, but it’s complete – no plot holes that I need to go back and fill with spackle and I’ve reached the logical conclusion. You’d almost think I knew what I was doing.

It’s also a kind of bitter-sweet victory for me this year because this is the last in a five book series. I’ve enjoyed this universe a lot and I really like the characters. I’m going to miss them.

This was also the most even-keeled NaNo I’ve ever experienced. Usually I’m up and down, falling behind and leaping forward, but this year I didn’t seem to hit the extremes. Slow and steady won the race. I didn’t hit a single day of 4,000 words, but I didn’t miss a day either.

The one thing I didn’t enjoy about NaNo this year was the new website. There was nothing wrong with the old site, but of course people in charge like nothing better than change. And trust me, it was a change for the worse. It’s no where near as easy to navigate and a lot of the options I used to enjoy are gone. We all lost our buddies and I only got a handful of them back, but that’s okay because I never logged into the site longer than it took for me to update my word count. I’d like to think they’ll keep working on it so it’ll be better next year, but I doubt it.

My take away from this year’s experience is remembering how much faster and easier the writing is on my Neo, and the importance of regular office hours. With any luck I’ll be able to keep up both these things.

You know, after I shovel the NaNo detritus from my office.

The Home Stretch

After a herculean effort on my part (ie. less farting around, more writing) I managed to finally catch up on my NaNo and I’m even a little ahead of the game. But even if I wasn’t, I still have the rest of today, most of tomorrow, and all day Saturday to cross that finish line.

It’s been a fun ride, but I’ll be glad when the pressure’s off. Hopefully I’ll be able to keep up the good habits I’ve developed – writing every day and spending more time in my office. Working on the Neo helped a lot too.

And now, the final excerpt from An Elemental Spirit. This one is actually in two parts, but they’re both giving a little more insight into the Illezie. And while you read them, remember that they’re unedited. :-)

Many important records had been lost when the dissenters set off the explosion in the records hall in their attempt to contravene the prophecy. The most important loss was that of the clan birth records, which is why the age of any Illezie born before that time could not be confirmed.

The Illezie hierarchy was age based, the older the Illezie the more weight their words carried. A syllable was added to their name with each century that passed, but many, after the explosion, had eschewed this tradition, citing that after even half a millennia the names became too unwieldy, and that more time was spent reciting lineages at a Gathering than discussion on the topic at hand.

E.Z. had stopped adding to his name at ten centuries, but even so he preferred to go by the initials the young wind elemental with so much potential had given him. Watching her grow had been a bittersweet experience for him. He knew the boosting of her mother’s gene sequence at just the right stage, infusing the embryo she carried with his own DNA, would result in the most powerful wind elemental born, just as he had known what fate she was to be groomed for. What he had not known was how much he would come to care for the girl.

It was too late to put a stop to events now, far too late. What had been put in motion had taken on a life of its own. If he had not been instrumental in bringing Nakeisha and Chaney together they would not have been in the right place to help Rayne and Pyre, which in turn set off the events leading to the creation of the elemental comet which spelled his world’s doom. But who was to say the volcano would not have erupted in any case, sending the elemental energy released by the death of all those elementals and potential elementals into space instead?

He sighed, a most uncharacteristic thing for an Illezie to do.

“It is a heavy burden we carry, the Illezie who learn to care,” Gra’anna’s voice came softly to him.

“Did you ever attach yourself to one of the Ardraci?” he asked, curious.

“Oh, yes.” She came to stand next to him where he was gazing out at the stars streaming past. “It was many centuries ago. Her name was Anna, she was an Earth Elemental.”

“They are so short-lived,” E.Z. said quietly. “Their lives burn out so quickly.”

“That they do,” she agreed. “But oh, how bright the flame while it lasts.”

* ~ * ~ * ~ *

There had been no new offspring of the Illezie for centuries. Da’nat was, to the best of anyone’s knowledge, the last Illezie hatched in the incubation chamber. Housed in a large cavern deep in the bowels of Zarathul, it held row upon row of pods waiting to be filled.

It was a place Da’nat visited when he wanted to be alone with his thoughts, as he did now. He had never made use of the sequencing pods and so never contributed to the gene pool from which new life was drawn. Now he would never have the chance.

As far as he knew, no one but him ever visited this place – there was no need. Or perhaps they found it too depressing, that it would never be needed again. It was a sad and lonely place, but somehow he felt at peace here.

Da’nat had never given any thought to offspring, until he had become acquainted with the young elemental Zephryn. Of course he was only young by Illezie standards, by human standards he was a grown man. But he was a man full of life and exuberance. He lived life fully while the Illezie had become nothing more than observers of life.

Though young by Illezie standards, Da’nat was old enough to realize that the Illezie race was stagnant. Save for the few who still made their presence known on Ardraci, the Illezie had not left their world in centuries. While he had no more wish to die than any other creature, he was ready for whatever lay beyond this plane of existence. He would play his part in the ascension with a willing heart.

So wrapped up in his thoughts was he that he did not sense the presence sneaking up behind him. By the time he sensed the danger it was too late. The blade of obsidian cut like butter through his back and into his double-chambered heart. Da’nat would never know the joy of ascension.

I Think I Can, I Think I Can

Like a little engine that could, I keep chugging along.

After almost catching up on Wednesday last week (just over 1,000 words behind) I had a couple of really busy days that totally derailed me again.

Thursday I managed to squeeze in 1,000 words (the daily goal is 1667) but Friday I only managed a measly 350 words. Yikes! But… yesterday I kept plugging away and despite not liking the last scene I was working on AT ALL, I wrote an amazing 3,800 words, just shy of my goal of 4,000 words.

Right now I'm only about 350 words behind. I’m really hoping I can write at least 3,000 words today to put me ahead of the game, just to have a few extra in case of an emergency. Thursdays and Fridays tend to be my lowest word count days, but NaNo doesn’t officially end until midnight on Saturday, so I’ll be able to barricade myself in my office and write until I drop if I fall behind again.

Surprisingly enough, I’m still enjoying my story. Usually by this time I’m ready to just jettison the whole thing into space, but I’m kind of curious to see how this is going end. Right now is a bit of a struggle because my characters are pretty much just sitting around on a luxury space ship waiting for the Big Event so I’m having a hard time coming up with things to fill in their time.

My Elementals have been pretty isolated for most of their lives, so I figure learning self defense might be a good idea – they could use the exercise and I could use the words. After my third attempt (and yes, I kept all three versions because they were all fresh words) I gave it up. What do I know about fighting or self-defense? It needs some research, but I just don’t have time for that right now.

While there’s going to be a lot cut out of this when I’m done, there’s also a lot that’s going to stay that I didn’t expect. As I think I mentioned before, the Illezie are a bigger presence, and I’m starting to see a little subplot involving some disputes within the Illezie conclave.

I’ve ditched the historical record/journal entries that I was starting each chapter with, but I do intend to get back to them when I start working on the final version. They’re a good way to convey important information without having one of the characters do an info dump.

Goals For the Week

Duh! Rock the NaNo!



Don't forget to come back Thursday for another excerpt!

It’s All Up Hill From Here

Here we are, once again it’s Thursday. And I’m only a little over 1,000 words behind.

As messy as this book is turning out to be, I think once it’s cleaned up and buffed and polished, it’s going to be the best Elemental book yet.

I’m learning so much about the Illezie – stuff I wish I’d known for the first four books. But then again, if I’d known all this I probably would have wanted to include more of it, and they wouldn’t have been as mysterious as they are.

This week’s excerpt sort of follows the first excerpt I posted, the one where Kaine is dreaming. The Adraci/Elementals he’s been staying with are worried about him – he drinks too much and keeps too much to himself, and they want to change that.

One of Rayne’s ideas for making Kaine feel more included was to host a dinner for which he would be the unofficial guest of honour. Though dubious as to whether it would have the outcome they wanted, Taja was all for the idea and enlisted Nakeisha to help with the planning. Having hosted many a diplomatic dinner by this time, Nakeisha was right in her element (so to speak). The only problem to arise was convincing Kaine to attend.

“But I am not an elemental,” he pointed out. “Nor even an Ardraci. I would not wish to sully the ambience of your gathering.”

“Chaney is not Ardraci either,” Taja told him. “You would be doing him a favour – he must be getting weary of being the only non-Ardraci in the group.”

“Very well,” he said with a sigh, knowing there was no point in arguing when Taja set her mind to something. She seemed to feel that just because he’d saved her life they had some kind of bond – not like she had with Ravi of course, more like that of siblings. “But in return I wish to set up a sparring date with you. I find this life of leisure I’ve been leading has made me somewhat soft.”

Her eyes lit up. “I know exactly what you mean. It would be my pleasure.”

Since the dinner was to be held the following evening, they scheduled the sparring match for one hour hence. In the short time it took for them to get ready a small crowd had gathered in the gallery overlooking the practice room. Taja seemed a little surprised by it, but Kaine barely acknowledged their audience.

“Hand to hand or weapons?” Taja asked.

Kaine thought about it for a moment. Though he was larger and heavy, he knew better than to think it would be to his advantage during hand to hand combat.

“I think our audience would appreciate seeing our skills with weapons,” he told her. “And seeing as I was the one who issued the challenge, I leave it to you to choose the weapons.”

“I was hoping you’d say that,” Taja responded with a grin. She’d already had a weapon in mind – the Bohran fighting sticks.

The last time she and Kaine had sparred, she had discovered his love for archaic weapons. That time it had been wooden staves, and she had grossly underestimated his skill with them. The Bohran fighting sticks were rarely seen off world, and even on Bohran they were used only for ceremonial purposes now. Her teacher had been Bohranian and been reluctant to teach a woman at first…until he’d seen how quickly she became skilled at them.

The attendant brought out a long, flat box. Nestled inside on a bed of silk were the two fighting sticks. They almost looked like wooden swords, save they were broader through the middle with a straight edge with a razor sharp band of metal imbedded in it and a deep, curved edge studded with teeth of volcanic rock.

She watched surreptitiously as Kaine took a hold of one of the sticks, hefting it in his hand before running through a series of warm up exercises while holding it.

Up in the gallery, bets were taking place.

Chaney ran into Ravi as he was placing a bet for Nakeisha. “Aren’t you getting in on the action?” he asked. “Nakeisha assures me that Taja is a sure winner. One of her instructors was from Bohran.”

“I well know Taja’s skill, they are evenly matched in all but weapons prowess,” Ravi said, “However I also know that Kaine spent considerable time on Bohran. It bodes to be a most entertaining match.”

“Interesting, and does Taja know this?”

“No, she does not,” Ravi said with a grin.

Chaney looked at him askance.

“As I said, it will be quite an interesting match.”

Persistence Is Key

Well there’s one good thing about doing NaNoWriMo, at least you know I’ve been writing, right?

Perhaps it hasn’t been good writing, but at least I’m starting to catch up. I’m still about 4,000 words behind as I type this, but then I haven’t started working on today’s words yet. So we’ll just have to see how distracted I am today.

One of the reasons Chris Baty chose the month of November for NaNoWriMo was because it’s such a dreary month. The problem with this for people like me is that the dreary weather can often create dreary mind sets.

We’ve been getting some sun, but it’s usually a very thin filling in between two slices of greyness – not really enough to charge my solar batteries. Add to that I’ve been having mystery headaches that come in clusters and you’ll understand when I say I’ve fought for every word I’ve written.

And I’ll confess right here, they haven’t been pretty words. But there have been a few surprises. I wrote a rather long back story to one of my characters, thinking it would probably end up cut during the editing process, but although it might get tightened up some, I think I’ll keep it. It concerns one of the main characters, and this character has pretty much only been mentioned by name in a previous book.

I’m getting a better handle on the Illezie prophecy – I keep adding refinements as I think of them. There’s a lot more of the Illezie in this book than I expected, and they’re turning out to be a lot more manipulative than I thought they were.

I’ve also given them a home world, a planet disguised as a gas giant. AND I figured out why they needed the Elementals, and why there’s five, instead of just four. But what I haven’t figured out why the as yet un-introduced sixth one is needed.

So, yeah. There’s a lot of crap that needs to be cut from the story, but it is moving along.

Goals For the Week

If I can finish catching up on NaNo then I can feel free to use part of my writing time for editing some more of the anthology. If I haven’t, then the goal is to finish catching up on NaNo.

Don’t forget to check back Thursday for a new excerpt.

Picking Up Steam

These Thursdays really like to sneak up on me!

At the typing of this, I’m about 2500 words behind, which all things considered isn’t too bad. I’ve been working in my office more, and usually get 1,000 words done in the morning, 1,000 in the afternoon, and if I’m lucky a few hundred in the evening.

Yesterday, however, I got my 1,000 words done in the morning no problem but really struggled in the afternoon. Finally I gave up and made a couple of quiches, which must have been just what I needed to get the brain going again because I got around 2,000 words done after that.

Today, of course, is going to be a whole different story. I’ve been going to Tai Chi for two hours on Monday and Thursday mornings, which pretty much takes care of the whole morning. And Thursdays I also have my photography class, which is three hours, and that’s pretty much it for the evening. So basically, I’ll have the afternoon to write in.

But you didn’t come here to hear about that, did you? You’re here for the excerpt. This week I’m sharing a conversation between Nakeisha and her husband Chaney, who were featured in the first elemental book, An Elemental Wind. Despite being hand picked by the Illezie to be an ambassador, Nakeisha is beginning to have doubts about them.

“I am troubled,” she said after a moment.

“That much I could gather,” he said with a smile. “Now tell me what’s troubling you.”

“How well do you know the Illezie?” she asked.

If the question surprised him, he didn’t let on. “Before I met you, I knew them only by reputation, which is to say I didn’t know much about them at all. They are one of the oldest races in the galaxy, are incredibly powerful, and totally mysterious. Even their home world is couched in secrecy.”

Nakeisha nodded. “Even growing up with them we did not know much more than that. They were our care-takers, our protectors, and some even said our creators.”

“Creators? That hardly seems likely.”

If anything, Nakeisha looked even more troubled. “I do not wish to think it of them, but it makes a terrible kind of sense. It would certainly explain why they seem almost…proprietary of us.”

“Have you talked to E.Z. about this?”

“No, I have not. To be truthful, I do not know how to broach the subject. But there is something else.”

She shifted so that she was leaning more on him and Chaney obligingly put his arm around her.

“Working closely with the survivors from Dr. Arjun’s compound as I’ve been, I have had ample opportunity to speak with them.”

“And?” he prompted when she fell silent.

“Sorry,” she said, giving herself a little shake. “Do you know why Dr. Arjun was so fanatical about his breeding experiments?”

“Like most people, I figured he let his scientific mind get the better of him. That and his need for order, to keep the Ardraci race pure.”

“Yes,” she nodded. “That is what most believe.”

“I get the feeling that’s not why he did it.”

“That was only part of the reason. The other part was that he knew somewhat of the prophecy. He knew the Illezie were looking for specific traits in an elemental.”

“And he thought that by creating the perfect elemental he’d win recognition from the Illezie?” Chaney guessed.

“Not exactly,” she said. “He thought if he could create an elemental powerful enough, one that held all four elements in equal measure, Then the Illezie would be able to fulfill their prophecy and set the rest of us free.”

“Set you free? But you were never…” Chaney’s voice trailed off. He’d been about to say that the Ardraci had never been prisoners of the Illezie, but that wasn’t entirely true. Up until just a few years ago the Ardraci home world had been hidden, protected, and only a few selected Ardraci had been able to leave the planet. Many of them didn’t even know there were other planets, other beings. They’d been deliberately kept in the dark.

“If that’s the case,” he said slowly, “It’s a wonder the Illezie did not sanction Arjun’s experiments.”

“Who’s to say he did not?” she asked quietly.

All Aboard the Crazy Train

I sent this quote to my best bud Jamie this week:
You are doing this because you are fantastic and brave and curious. And, yes, you are probably a little crazy. And this is a good thing.
— Chris Baty

As soon as I saw that quote I started hearing Ozzy Osborne’s “Crazy Train” in my head. I’ve always thought of it as my theme song. In fact, I’ve been on that train so often I could probably drive it.

Anyway, I must be crazy because I’m still plugging away at NaNo. As I type this, I’m 6,000 words behind. When this is posted I’ll be behind by 7,667 (when you add on the daily 1667). Hopefully by the end of the day I’ll close the gap at least a little.

I’ve changed the beginning a few times, added a prologue, decided to add journal entries to the beginning of each chapter – which can be as time consuming as an actual chapter. And I’ve been struggling with the words themselves. AND I’ve done a crap ton of research on rogue planets and gas giants before deciding the Illezie have only disguised their planet to look like a gas giant. All that time wasted. *sigh*

Then yesterday I actually parked myself in my office, and after hemming and hawing over the words I’d written during the past week I finally convinced myself that I needed to stop worrying and start writing. No one’s ever going to see this but me, so it really doesn’t matter whether it makes sense or not. All that matters is it gets written. Which is kind of the point of NaNo, isn’t it?

So then I pulled out my trusty Neo and made some actually progress – I always seem to write faster on my Neo, maybe it’s because it’s free of distractions. Of course some of that progress was an info dump that I was going to use in the journal entries, but whatever. Words is words.

Goals for the Week:
Forget the anthology (for now) this week is going to be all about catching up on my NaNo word count. This means I have to write 815 words a day in addition to the required 1667. No mean feat considering I haven’t hit the daily goal yet.

I was going to leave you with Ozzy’s version of Crazy Train, but this one was impossible to resist. LOL

Crap! It’s Thursday!

How did Thursday sneak up on me so quickly?

As you can see, I’m still woefully behind words-wise on my NaNo novel. It’s still early yet, lots of time to catch up. Possibly. Maybe. Hopefully.

As well as adding a prologue that I re-wrote about three times (a NaNo no-no but it was important to the rest of the book) I also kept changing my mind about where exactly it was going to start. Hopefully now that I’m pretty sure I’ve got that right it’ll go a little quicker, if not easier.

And yeah, I am starting each chapter with a journal entry. Or an excerpt from historic records, to be more precise. It’s actually kind of fun – I don’t even have to come up with an actual prophecy, I can just hint at it.

I was going to use the prologue as my excerpt, but it’s over 1,000 words, which is kind of long for an excerpt. So instead I’ll share a piece from the opening of chapter two (which was going to be chapter one before I decided I needed to start further back).

For those of you familiar with the series, this excerpt is about Kaine, whom we met near the end of An Elemental Water. He was a guard who was in love with Nereida, sister of Kairavini (the water elemental).

For those of you unfamiliar with the series, this excerpt is about Kaine. :-D

It was dark, he was surrounded by it. He couldn’t see, couldn’t move, but he could feel. Loss, despair, anguish – the same feelings that had drawn him to her in the beginning. So much pain, but underlying that an astonishing strength of spirit. The strength of her spirit was such that it had been a shock the first time he’d laid eyes on her, so painfully thin she was more skin over bones than flesh and blood. But he’d known in that moment she was his beloved and that he’d do anything, risk everything, to save her. But in the end she’d left him behind. Alone.

“Not alone,” her voice whispered in his mind. “Never alone.”

He felt the fear, almost overwhelming, hers and the others as he worked at the master lock to the doors, felt the heat as he lead the way through the tunnels of the active volcano. He felt her growing weaker in his arms as they finally reached the shore on the other side. And then he felt only despair as her spirit became closed to him.

“I am with you always, my love.”

A speck of light in the darkness, moving closer, resolving itself into the form of a woman. She was tall and thin, but with a healthy glow to her skin unlike the sickly grey tone he was used to. Her hair was long and flowing, and the eyes . . . the eyes were her eyes.

“It is almost time, my love. Soon we will be together once more.”

“You are not real,” he said, but without conviction.

“Soon, my love,” her voice whispered to him, and she turned away.

He could not help himself. “Nereida!” he called . . . and woke up.

Kaine was sitting up in bed, one hand outstretched as though reaching for her. As he recognized his surroundings his hand dropped and he took a couple of deep breaths. This was the fourth time in the last week he’d had the dream, and it was getting more intense each time.

Throwing back the covers he got out of bed.

“Lights, thirty percent,” he said.

He knew by now there was no point in trying to get any more sleep, what he could use was a drink. Pulling on his clothes from the day before, he ran a hand through his hair by way of combing it, and left his room for the lounge.

It’s NaNoing Time! (God Help Us All)

I freely admit I was not as prepared as I would have liked to be on November 1, but then I’m not usually. At least this year I had my idea ahead of time. Not that it’s doing me any good. There’s a lot of research to be done and I’ve already had to adjust the events I want to have happen because they’re just not scientifically possible. However, as research quite often does, it closed one avenue while opening another.

See, the whole elemental series is rooted in a prophecy that was predicted way back in the mists of time. And to make it even more complicated, it connects back to my very first, unedited, badly written, first novel, the idea for which I came up with in high school. And I really need to start writing some of the pertinent information down so I don’t forget any of it because this was not the only prophecy to set things in motion.

Anyway. I was kind of hoping there’d be a center to the universe, but there isn’t. However, I learned that just as planets orbit a sun, galaxies orbit the universe and that might work even better because I need there to be an extreme amount of time passing between the prophecy and the fulfillment of the prophecy.

I still only have a vague notion of said prophecy, and it’s really something I need to share for the reader to understand what’s going on. Unfortunately, it’s going to take me a while to figure out exactly how to word it properly and I don’t have that kind of time. Plus, starting with a prophecy would be kind of boring, I really need to start with some action. There’s only one solution.

*heaves a big sigh*

I’m going to have to start each chapter with a journal entry, like I did in Elemental Fire and Elemental Water. Something I swore I’d never do again.

Goals For The Week:

At least 2 more stories edited for the new anthology
Catch up and stay on track for NaNo.

Don’t forget to check back Thursday for an excerpt!

Happy All Hallow’s Eve

As you can see, I did not get my monk story written for today. While the picture intrigues me, I can’t decide whether the monks were good or bad. So I will write the story . . . some day, just not today.

Meanwhile, I couldn’t just leave you hanging so I thought a little poetry might be in order. I wrote this poem a few years ago because I wanted to write something about the Wild Hunt, but I couldn’t come up with an idea for a story.

For those of you who care about these things, this poem is written in the Zejel form.

THE WILD HUNT

The Wild Hunt makes its ride tonight
underneath the pale moonlight
a rare and yet a chilling sight.

First the horn sounds loud and fey
Then the hounds begin to bay
And soon the riders are away
To seek a soul, as is their right.

I hear them as they thunder past
They take their freedom while it lasts
These hunters that are unsurpassed
The huntsmen on their quest this night.

Damned are these souls that come from hell
who, in dishonest battle, fell
and now condemned to ride the dell
in search of one more fallen knight.

Merciless, they seek their prey
or any soul that’s lead astray
They’re focused on the need to slay
to set the ancient wrongs aright.

Beware the Hunter’s moon, my friends
Take heed to what the sight portends
The Wild Hunt rides when it ascends
A rare and yet a chilling sight.

Back On A Whole New Track

Despite the lateness of this post today, I feel like I’m getting back on track, albeit a brand new track. Last week got really busy towards the end and it kind of got away from me. But I’m here now, right?

Alrighty then.

As you know, I was trying to put together an anthology of my darker flash stories in time for Christmas. It’s not that I didn’t have enough stories for at least a slim volume, but they all needed work (and my head’s just not in edit mode these days), and who wants to read horror at Christmas? Okay, well some people do, but not the majority of people the anthology is intended for.

So the dark anthology has been scrapped until the new year, and the new plan is to have it ready for next Halloween. This lets me take my time and perhaps it won’t be just flash stories, I have a few longer ones that would fit the bill too.

But I haven’t given up the idea of a book flood anthology. I have a number of lighter stories that will work, and they’re in much better shape than the darker ones. So cross your fingers for me.

Meanwhile, I promised to talk about NaNo for those of you who haven’t yet discovered the joys of writing in a pressure cooker.

National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo or NaNo for short) takes place during the month of November. The goal is to write 50,000 words in 30 days – that’s 1667 words per day. Now they’ve redesigned the website and I don’t find it as easy to navigate as it used to be, so if you’re looking for the full history of it, you might want to do a Google search.

In a nutshell, it started in July of 1999 with Chris Baty and consisted of 21 writers. They had such fun that in 2000 it was moved to the month of November (because it’s such a grey and dismal month and there’s nothing better to do) and they created an official website as well as a few ground rules: you had to use new words only, you couldn’t have a co-author, and your word count had to be verified by the end of the month. They had 140 people sign up – about 30 of them finished.

The next year, to Baty’s astonishment, 5,000 people signed up with 700 finishing, and it’s been growing steadily larger ever since. Last year there were 287,327 participants with 35,387 finishing.

I first attempted NaNo in 2006. I say attempted because I had no clue what I was doing and my story ended at 35,000 words. I missed the next year but in 2008 I completed the challenge, as I did for the next 6 years in a row. I did not participate in 2015, figuring I had enough un-finished books on my hard drive, but I got back in the saddle in 2016 and have been participating ever since. You might find it ironic that my 2017 novel is a sequel to my failed 2006 one.

NaNo is fun, NaNo is frustrating, NaNo is addictive. I totally regret the year I skipped it – I felt itchy the whole month and didn’t really get anything else accomplished. And I don’t know about anyone else, but it’s something that can’t be duplicated at any other time of the year. Under a deadline? Why not try a January NaNo? Nope. Doesn’t work. You have to do it at the same time as the other crazy people around the world.

If you’d like to learn more or sign up, visit their WEBSITE. As I mentioned, they redesigned the site so I’m finding it a little difficult to navigate these days, but I’m sure they’ll iron out all the wrinkles soon. And if you do sign up, look me up to be your buddy – I’m Carol R. Ward over there – and I’ll buddy you back.

Goals For The Week:

At least 3 more stories edited for the new anthology
Come up with a cover design for NaNo novel
Get my research done for NaNo novel
Come up with a game plan for NaNo novel

And since I won’t have an excerpt ready for Thursday, I’m hoping to have a monk story ready for you.

Got Cheese?

You know, to go with all that whining I’ve been doing lately. ;-)

Here’s the part where I confess that I’ve been working on this blog post for the last two three hours. I keep deleting what I’ve written because it also seems rather whiny.

“This year’s been a struggle” – whine, whine, whine.

“I suffer from depression” – whine, whine, whine.

“I also have seasonal affective disorder and it’s raining” – whine, whine, whine.

So then I tell myself I need to be more positive, and myself sits back with her feet on my desk, sticking her tongue out and shooting rubber bands at me.

Take a deep breath.

The best writing I’ve done this year is when I don’t stop to think about it, I just do it. I don’t know if that’ll work so well with the editing, but I’m going to give it a try this week. I have come to the conclusion that I will probably not have my anthology edited before the end of next week, but that’s okay. I have an alternate plan for it which might work out even better.

In the meantime, if you saw Saturday’s post then you also saw the picture I posted with the suggestion it be used for this week’s writing prompt (which is why I’m not ending this post with a prompt).

I’ve been posting here on Saturdays and Tuesdays to make it easier on myself because I post on my other blog on Mondays and Fridays. I was going to switch the writing prompt to the Saturday post, like I did this week, and Tuesdays I was going set my goals for the week (with the results showing the following week) but that just seems weird to start the week on Tuesday.

Hmm. Maybe I’ll start setting my goals on Sunday and go to Thursdays for sharing and prompts. Well, for sharing anyway. I’ll probably just forget about the prompts for the month of November while I’m busy with NaNo. And maybe I won’t make the switch until the first of November.

Confused yet? Yeah, me too. LOL

In a nutshell. This week I’m posting today and Saturday – here’s the LINK to that post if you want to give the monk story a try. Next week I’ll post my weekly goals on Tuesday (this week’s goal is simply to get myself organized and moving forward), but then my next post will be Sunday, which will also be a goals post and my strategy for NaNoWriMo.

What’s NaNo, you ask?”

Come back Saturday and I’ll tell you. :-D

Monks

As you may have noticed, I’m not having much luck getting my days organized lately, which also means I’m not getting a whole lot of writing/editing done either. I have all these ideas and good intentions and plans in my head, but something goes seriously awry between the thinking stage and the execution stage.

It’s kind of like learning tai chi. It looks so easy when I watch others do it, one movement flows into another in a graceful ballet, but when I try it myself . . . my feet and my hands don’t like working independently of each other and if I focus on one I lose track of the other.

The stories I’ve been editing were written quickly, with little attention to detail, the focus being on the story itself. Most of them are 1,000 words which makes for good flash fiction but I’m not sure if it makes for a complete story.

So I’m facing a bit of a crisis of conscience with them. Should I add more detail to flesh them out, or would that just be padding them to make them longer? Should I just leave them alone?

No, seriously, I’m asking you – I don’t have the answers.

The more I practice tai chi the easier it gets, just like I’m sure the decisions I’m making on the stories for the anthology will get easier. The routine, however, keeps eluding me as I try and find the perfect spot to work. I’ve been moving from the living room, to my office, to the dining room to work. All of them have their benefits, but none of them are perfect. The living room is the most comfortable, the office is most professional, the dining room allows me to spread my stuff out.

The real problem is my lap top. It has a sucky battery life, which means I need to plug it in wherever I go. At night the lap top is plugged into the powerbar in the living room, which means I have to crawl over the cuddle chair to get to it. It’s a big enough pain in the butt that I tend to stay in the living room even when I know I’m not being as productive (because when I get too comfortable I tend to play a lot of games).

It seems pretty obvious to me that I need to pick a place to work and stick to it. And admit to myself that I get more editing done on a hard copy than an electronic copy of a story. And stop playing so many games. And if I can’t see a way to improve a story I should just leave it alone.

All things to work on this week.

And what has that to do with the monks in the picture? Well, nothing really I guess. I was looking some old writing files for something wondrous to post here and found the picture in a folder. I really wish I’d labelled it with some kind of detail because it’s made me curious. Where was this taken? Are the monks carved from the remnants of trees or from stone? Who were they? So many questions!

This week’s prompt is the picture above. See if you can find some of the answers for next Saturday. :-)

Stitching the Words

Writing is like sewing – but just as I’d rather sew something from scratch than alter it, I’d rather write something fresh than edit something old.

Once upon a time I sewed for a living. No, I wasn’t a tailor, although I had tailoring skills. And yes, I made a bit of money at it (a very little bit). The problem was, most of what people wanted were the fiddly little things they were too unskilled (or lazy) to do themselves, like repairs, hemming, or alterations. Things that weren’t particularly difficult, but they were time-consuming.

With sewing, you need to learn how to use a pattern – pin it to the material, cut along the lines, transfer the markings to the fabric – you need to learn how to thread a needle and do the basic stitches, then you’re ready to use a sewing machine. The machine is intimidating at first, threading it, pressing gently on the presser foot to start it stitching, feeding the material through, learning to reverse stitch and turn corners . . .

With writing you need to know how to use words to make a sentence, string sentences to make paragraphs and pages. You need to learn the rules of grammar and punctuation, and when it’s okay to break those rules. Maybe you’ll start with pen and paper before graduating to a computer where you’ll have to learn to use writing software, maybe you’ll even have to learn how to type.

Just as there are finishing touches to sewing – reinforcing the seams, trimming the threads, adding lace or buttons or other embellishments – there are finishing touches to writing – rewriting, editing, proof reading.

The stories I’ve been editing for the anthology were mostly written from prompts with restricted word counts or made to fit within narrow parameters. Getting them into shape is a lot like altering a garment – letting a seam out here, taking a tuck in there, adding some embellishments.

Quite frankly, I’d rather be writing something new.


Prompt of the Week

Between working on Wandering Wizards and working on the anthology - I really want to get one of them done before Christmas - I’m not sure if I’ll have time to work on a prompt story or not this week. However, if you’d like to give one a try, here’s the list of prompt generators:

The Story Shack
The Plot Generator
Writing Exercises and Prompts
Springhole
Seventh Sanctum
RanGen

Shipwrecked Romance

Surprise! I got the prompt story done this week.

Actually, no one is more surprised than me. LOL And I wrote it in longhand in my writing journal at that. Sometimes it’s just easier to write if I get away from the computer. Also, it’s about 150 words over the word count, but too bad. While I could have made it longer, I definitely didn’t want to make it shorter.

To remind you, here’s the prompt from The Story Shack that I used:

Word count: 350
Genre: Romance
Character: An expert gardener
Material: An onion
Sentence: "I'm sorry."
Bonus: Your character is shipwrecked.

“It was all so silly,” I said, leaning on the ship’s rail.

“Most lover’s quarrels are, dear,” replied the matronly woman beside me. “Don’t you agree sister?”

“Oh, indeed!” The matron’s much thinner shadow nodded vigorously. She would never think to disagree with her domineering sister. “How did it start, if you don’t mind my asking?” the sister added.

The matron shot her a disapproving glance, but I had no idea whether it was at her forwardness or because she didn’t care to know. Throwing caution to the wind, I continued my story.

“It started because of an onion.”

“An onion?” the matron repeated, startled.

I nodded. “That’s right, an onion. You see Geoffrey, that’s my fiancé, fancies himself a chef, although he’s never had any training. And I was making a ratatouille for him. He wanted to add an extra onion but I disagreed.”

“Too much onion can ruin a ratatouille,” the sister murmured.

“We had a big fight over it and Geoffrey stormed off.”

“Just like a man,” the matron said with a sniff.

“We had booked this cruise months ago,” I said. “I was sure he’d be waiting for me on board.”

“But he wasn’t?” the sister suggested timidly.

I shook my head.

“Never mind, dear.” The matron patted me on the hand. “There are plenty of other fish in the sea.”

“But that’s just it,” I told her. I smiled as I pulled back from the rail and waved the telegram I was holding in front of her. “I received it just this morning.”

“What does it say?” the matron couldn’t help asking.

“It says he’s sorry for being such a boor and he’ll meet me at our next port of call.”

“How romantic!” the sister gushed, clasping her hands to her chest.

Just as the matron opened her mouth for a rebuttal, the ship lurched, and there was a grinding, scraping noise. The telegram I’d been holding fluttered away.

A klaxon sounded as people began screaming and running about.

“What is it? What’s happened?” the sister gasped, clutching at the rail as the ship lurched again and began to list to one side.

“Abandon ship!” The order came over the loudspeaker. “Everyone to the lifeboats. Abandon ship!”

The matron grabbed the arm of a passing sailor. “What’s happening?” she demanded, fingers digging into his arm.

“We’ve gone aground ma’am,” he gasped. “Run up on some rocks.” He pulled free. “You ladies best get to the lifeboats,” he called back over his shoulder as he hurried away.

* * * * *

“This is most inconvenient,” the matron stated, once we were settled in our boat.

“I think it’s rather exciting,” the sister replied. “Just look at that island we’re headed for. So verdant! I’ll finally be able to put my expert gardening skills to good use. But you, my dear.” She took my hand. “Just when you were to be reunited with your young man.”

I smiled wanly. “I just wish I'd had the chance to tell him I’m sorry.”

Routine? Fate Laughs at Your Puny Routine

Well . . . I dodged a bullet, that’s for sure. Just when I thought it was safe to sort of have a routine, the education workers (CUPE) decided to strike. And this would mean Grammie would be back on babysitting duty – just when she was used to not babysitting – in the late morning/early afternoon.

I was already labouring under the lack of writing last week – the daughter was away for another conference. Babysitting last week wasn’t bad – for one thing it was later in the day, and we kind of missed the little rug rat. But the CUPE strike would be back to same old/same old, only with a bit of an overlap with things I have going on during the week now.

But as I said, I dodged that bullet. CUPE and the government came to an agreement and school continues as usual. Which also means, my friends, that I’m going to have to come up with some other excuse for my lack of writing.

I’d like to put it down to my regular pre-NaNo October dry spell, but this dry spell hit long before October. I’ve been suffering from a serious lack of motivation (as you’ve probably noticed).

But . . . it’s still only the beginning of the second week of October and I only have about 20,000 words left to go on Wandering Wizards. If I can write 50,000 words during the month of November while babysitting every week day, then surely I can write 20,000 in just under 4 weeks. Right? Right.

And I haven’t forgotten about the anthology. It’s inchworming along, giving me something to do when I get tired of my wizards. There’s still a chance I’ll have it done before Christmas – a slim chance, but a chance nonetheless.

To paraphrase Nike, I just have to do it.

Prompt of the Week

Surprise! I have a prompt for you this week. I moseyed on over to The Story Shack and generated this:

Word count: 350
Genre: Romance
Character: An expert gardener
Material: An onion
Sentence: "I'm sorry."
Bonus: Your character is shipwrecked

The betting is now open as to whether I’ll actually get a story done for Saturday. :-)

To Be Here

To Be Here: The Writing Place, run by poet Tanis MacDonald, was probably my favourite master class from last weekend. I even bought a couple of her books – one non-fiction and her latest volume of poetry.

She’s also a writing instructor and has her own class up in Waterloo, Ontario. I guess whatever she said sunk in because I don’t have a lot of notes from her class. However, I do have this poem:

The exercise was: “Here” is subject to your own definition: it can be either the ground upon which you stand right now, or your homeplace as you define it, but it should be a definite geographical place. “History” is your lived experience of a place with an emphasis on your (and possibly your family’s) place in it.


“Here” is only a memory
of home/not home
another city, another time
the house that Al built
for his beloved Florence
two thirds of the way down the hill
or one third up
depending on your point of view.
Black walnut trees
manned by squirrels
guarded the road and driveway
flagstone sunken patio above the rock garden
green, green, green: memories . . .
in front of me the steep green hillside
below me old growth maple, beech, and aspen.
Follow the green pathways
down to the sleepy river
or up to heaven’s cascade of colour.
Change catfoots in on the trail of loss
home/not home
the sentinels have fallen to
the axe and saw
stone has been restructured
like pieces of my heart
green is fading, dozed over
the river is somnolent and thirsty
there are houses in heaven now
childhood’s end, ploughed over.
“History” lives only in my memory.

Writersfest 2019

Home again, home again, hot diggity dog, as my daughter used to say.

If you’re a writer, or have writing aspirations, and you live within travel distance of Kingston, Ontario, I strongly urge you to start saving now to attend the Kingston Writersfest in 2020.

There were two parts to the festival: onstage events such as literary talks, workshops, readings, literary dinners, and lectures; and a writing retreat filled with master classes. I took part in a two-day package which included an awesome room in the Residence Inn by Marriott, and six master classes.

The classes were two and a half hours each (with a break part way through). The first one was “Choosing Your Words,” run by poet Lorna Crozier. She talked about word origins and the difference between Latin based words and Anglo Saxon based words, and the appropriate uses of each. We heard about verbals versus verbs and how they applied to both poetry and prose.

The next class was “The Decisive Moment” by Voaden prize winner Damian Tarnopolsky. Using Shakespeare’s Richard III as an example, we discussed pivotal changes in character and why they’re important. We dissected Act I, Scene ii to discuss event, structure, pulse, and outcome. Then we applied what we learned to an exercise in improv.

The final class of the day was “Writing Character and Voice,” offered by Erika Behrisch Elce. We learned what exactly voice is and the little things that bring a character to life, how dialogue is not a character’s voice, but reveals a character’s voice.

Whew! What a long day!

The next day started with “To Be Here: The Writing Place” offered by poet and creative writing teacher Tanis MacDonald. I have to admit, of all of the classes it was the one that least interested me when I read about it, but it turned out to be my favourite. I think we did more writing – creative, not just note-taking – in this class, and although I came away with a poem I’m pretty happy with, much of what we learned can be applied to prose as well.

After this came “Beyond the First Draft: Polishing Your Work,” which was mostly a lecture by Rabindranath Maharaj. A lot of what he talked about was information I already knew, but there was enough new information to keep me happy. I couldn’t help thinking how useful a writing friend of mine would find this class, and just before the class ended I looked across the room and there she was, sitting at another table.

She was in the area for family reasons, and escaped just long enough to take in this one class. Talk about a coincidence! She had to rush back to her family, but we made a coffee date for when we got back home so we could talk some more about the class.

I was pretty much done for the day at this point and I chose to skip the last class, which was “Yoga and the Art of Relaxed Writing.” Instead I wandered around the city, stumbled across an outdoor fleamarket where I snapped up a couple of amazing finds, got myself a coffee and the most wonderful almond croissant ever, and took them down to a little park near the water. I tell you, I found that far more relaxing than any yoga would have been.

So yeah, I’ll definitely be going back next year. But next time I’m going for the whole thing.

Prompt of the Week

Once again instead of picking a prompt to work on this week, I’m going to list the generators and let you pick your own. I’m not sure if I’ll get to a prompt this week myself, but hopefully I still post something on Saturday. Maybe the poem I wrote at the retreat. :-)

The Story Shack
The Plot Generator
Writing Exercises and Prompts
Springhole
Seventh Sanctum
RanGen

Cheating at Poetry

It’s been a busy week. And as you’re reading this I’m away at the Kingston Writersfest, immersing myself in writerly things.

It’s been a couple of weeks since I posted anything on a Saturday, and I didn’t want another week to go by without something new here, but I also didn’t have time to work on a prompt story. Then I thought, it's been a long while since I've posted any poetry...

I was going to post something old, but I was trying out prompt generators I listed in last week’s post, and started to have a lot of fun with the Poem Generator option from The Plot Generator.

In fact, it was so much fun I cheated on my “poemwork” for my poetry group, which was to write a Cinquain, and used the generator to produce two of them. Then I went on to generate a Tanka and a Sonnet.

The group enjoyed them when I read them aloud . . . until I fessed up about the poetry generator. At that point they seemed pretty divided: a couple thought it was fun (taking it in the spirit in which it was intended), a couple were pretty put out by the idea, most were more or less indifferent.

Que sera, sera.

In any case, I thought I’d share them here and you can decide for yourself – good fun, or an abomination?


Cinquain

Love by C. R. Ward

Love
Dark, delightful
Adoring, caring, conquering
It put hunger at rest
Romance


Summer by C. R. Ward

Summer
End, hot
Falling, being, sounding
I was surprised
Summertime

Tanka

Book by C. R. Ward

I so love my book
It is warm and powerful.
It has wild humors
Playful personalities
When it stings I feel happy

Sonnet

Ode to the Ghost by C. R. Ward

My evil ghost, you inspire me to write.
I love the way you cuddle, look and skip,
Invading my mind day and through the night,
Always dreaming about the scholarship.

Let me compare you to a nonmember?
You are more playful, shrieval and sunny.
Big fogs hide the oceans of November,
And autumntime has the easy money.

How do I love you? Let me count the ways.
I love your drastic elbows, feet and lip.
Thinking of your plastic feet fills my days.
My love for you is the benign blue chip.

Now I must away with a divine heart,
Remember my kind words whilst we're apart.

Routinely Yours

In my quest for a workable routine I came across a piece of advice that said when you’re setting a daily goal aim low. Start with one sentence a day, make it a good one, and go from there. It reminded me of a little notebook I have that I created for just such a purpose. I even found notebooks like it to give to a few other writer friends.

Inside the front cover of the notebook I printed out the following:
The purpose of this little journal is a challenge of sorts. The idea is to write a single sentence every day for five years. Just random sentences so that you get into the habit of writing every day.

To be honest, I also questioned the point of just one sentence a day, and that five years was a pretty long time to commit to something like that. I even suggested keeping it going for a single year or until I filled the notebook.

So . . . how did I do? I started on June 6, 2014 and it’s now over five years later. I am less than a quarter of the way through the notebook, probably closer to an eighth of the way through. I reached sentence 42 on November 9, 2014 and skipped to October of 2015 for sentences 50, 51, and 52 – I have no idea what happened to sentences 43 through 49. Sentence 53 has no date, sentence 54 was written in November, 2015.

There is only one sentence written for all of 2016, at which point I decided not to number them anymore. There are three sentences for 2017, and only one in 2018. In 2019 I stopped dating them as well, and I have 14 of them so far.

I fully admit to slacking off in the writing department on my quest for a workable routine, but I’m thinking the one sentence a day would be an easy habit to pick up. I read over the sentences I’ve written and there are some interesting images – some could be developed into a story, some could be used in a poem. And if I added that one sentence to a WIP – well, even one sentence a day will start adding up.

So . . . until I get my wordage and timing worked out, I’ll aim for one sentence a day and hope for more.

Prompt of the Week

As you may have noticed, I haven’t exactly been doing much with the prompts lately. So instead of picking one to work on this week, I’m just going to list the generators and let you pick your own. And if I happen to be inspired by a prompt as well, I’ll post it on Saturday. But don’t hold your breath, I have a busy week ahead.

The Story Shack
The Plot Generator
Writing Exercises and Prompts
Springhole
Seventh Sanctum
RanGen

It’s a Hard Knock Life

As you may recall, I promised to do better writing-wise last week. Well, I kind of broke that promise.

I was full of optimism, thinking I’d jot a little something for both prompts, and I started with the prompt about the lonely wizard. Only I started getting bogged down in riddles (because he had to solve three of them) and then I realized this was not going to be a short story – there was too much going on. I may, or may not, write this story some time when I have more time, but I wouldn’t bet the farm on it.

So I turned to the second prompt – dinosaur versus the monster under the bed – and I just wasn’t feeling it.

Sometimes you’re the windshield, sometimes you’re the bug. I was definitely the bug last week. And, to be honest, I’ve been the bug on the windshield for a while now. I’m in a bona fide writing slump.

So I spent a bunch of time reading blogs of other authors, and was happy to see I’m not alone in my slump. Call it a sign of the times, but there are a lot of unmotivated writers out there. Some of them even big name authors. Kind of makes me feel a little better.

But I need to shake it off. I’ve got too much writing to do; I’ve no time to hunker down in the bottom of the abyss. Winter is coming, and if things are bad now they’re nothing compared to what they’ll be later on.

Time to set up a routine, and if that doesn’t work I need to find another one, and another, until I find something that does work. Writing needs to be distilled into a habit – and I’ve gotten out of the habit over the last couple of years.

So for the rest of the week I’m going to be trying out various times/places for writing and see which one feels right. I think the fact that I’m so determined is a point in my favour (although the fact that this post is so late takes that point right away again).

At any rate, I’ve been doing some research online to help me get started/motivated into my new routine, and I’ve found these articles particularly helpful:

Developing the Writing Habit
How to Create the Habit of Writing
Form a Daily Writing Habit
Writing Routine

You aren't the only ones curious to see how this will turn out.

Prompts of the Week

I think I need to find some new prompt generators because it took awhile to come up with something that was workable. This one came from good ole Springhole, and once again I chose Creepypasta & Horror Creep Generator.

It looks like a police officer with an emaciated body and a misshapen torso. It has been observed in the forest. It's said that it can pass through solid objects.

With Halloween just around the corner this should be a snap, right? Why don't you give it a try too?

Theoretically Speaking

Let’s recap last week for a minute. It was my last week of babysitting, plus it was a short week – holiday Monday, plus a free day on Thursday. Theoretically I should have been able to get all kinds of writing done, right?

I can see you know me well enough by now not to have such high expectations. LOL

Here’s the sad truth. Tuesday I had my yearly (because I’m diabetic) eye exam. Later (much later) that night I had a bad reaction to what I suspect were the combination of drops used in my eyes. So when I wasn’t babysitting I pretty much spent the rest of the week curled up on the couch watching TV.

I was starting to feel better on Sunday, but then I accidentally shattered the chimney from the floor lamp in my office over my head. Who knew those things were so fragile? Anyway, that’s my sad little story. I’m thinking things can only get better. Right? (knock on wood)

It’s been so long since I’ve worked on Wandering Wizards I’ve kind of lost track of where they are. And, if I’m perfectly honest, I’ve kind of lost interest in the whole thing too. I need to re-read and maybe edit a little to catch up/regenerate my mojo.

What’s that, you say? Why didn’t I catch up/regenerate yesterday, which was my first full day of non-babysitting? Well, uh, I got busy taking pictures of butterflies, looking for a replacement chimney for my lamp, and catching up on my journal. Don’t judge.

I’ll do better today – promise!

Prompts of the Week

I went through a whole bunch of prompts (another time waster) and generators before settling on these two from Springhole. This site has a whole lot of options and if you don’t like the prompt it generates just click it again. Maybe I’ll just go straight here next week.

First I clicked on the Fairytale Plot Generator, which gave me this:

The story is about a lonely wizard who must outwit a faerie, defeat a giant, and find a magic mirror to solve three riddles. Assistance comes in the form of a magic ring.

Then as a bonus prompt I clicked on the Really Random Plot-o-tron, which gave me this one:

An ordinary dinosaur gains control of a monster from under the bed and discovers the princess.

Go ahead, play along with me. Or go to Springhole and generate a prompt of your own.

You know you want to…

Ghosts & Friends

Originally I’d planned to do a short bit for each of this week’s prompts – I thought they’d be quick and easy. But the first one ran so long (and I was already a day late) that I figured one was plenty.

To refresh your memory, the prompt was: One day in an abandoned factory haunted by a restless spirit, a lost girl summons a restless spirit.

“She’s one of the lost ones, Talla,” Jem said, placing a hand on her sister’s arm. “Everyone knows you can’t trust a lost one.”

Talla jerked her arm free. “Then don’t come with me.”

Jem watched her sister head towards the abandoned factory, biting her lip in indecision. The building had a reputation for being haunted, but of course that was why Talla was so interested in it. She had a soft spot for ghosts. Jem sighed and hurried to catch up.

Talla was waiting just inside the factory and gave her sister a small smile before leading the way to where the lost girl promised to meet them. The factory was dark and damp, smelling of mould and dust. It was sectioned off into empty rooms, all of them stripped of anything valuable by scavengers long ago.

The lost girl waited for them in the central most chamber, sitting on an empty crate. She was small and thin and dirty, dressed in raggedy black clothing. Her eyes seemed to glow in the dark.

“I am here, as promised,” she said to Talla. “What would you have of me?”

“There’s a ghost haunting this place,” Talla said without preamble.

“Yes, I can feel it.”

“I want to help it – I’m told you can do this.”

“Who says it wants or needs your help?”

“I…” For once Talla seemed to be at a loss for words. “I don’t know. I just get this overwhelming sense of sadness when I’m in here. This ghost has been here a long time, I think it needs help moving on.”

The girl cocked her head and studied her for a moment. “All right,” she said at last. “But I do this my way.”

“But what—” Jem started to ask before Talla elbowed her into silence.

The lost girl stood up from the crate and reseated herself on the floor, sitting cross-legged. After a second of hesitation, the others joined her.

“What do we do?” Jem asked.

“Be quiet,” the lost girl replied.

She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. Closing her eyes she rested her hands on knees and began to chant. The chanting rose and fell with musical cadence, although she never actually sang.

Jem gasped as the ghost began to manifest above them, but Talla just looked up in wonder. It was a smoke-like wisp, a ragged remnant floating gently in the air above them. It dipped and bobbed and turned as though dancing. Still the lost girl chanted.

A second wisp appeared in a corner and moved slowly forward. The first one stopped its dance and waited. The girls watched in wonder as the second wisp drifted towards the first. The two entities circled each other, seemed to acknowledge each other’s presence, and moved in tandem in a lazy circle. They continued the dance the first one had started before flowing upwards and out of sight.

“What do you sense now?” the lost girl asked. The others hadn’t even been aware the chanting had stopped.

Tally looked surprised. “Peace and happiness.”

The lost girl nodded and climbed to her feet.

“I don’t understand!” Jem said. “I thought—”

“You thought I would banish the spirit.”

Jem nodded.

“The spirit was unhappy, lonely. All it needed was a friend.”

“So you summoned it one.”

“I said I would do it my way.” The lost girl shrugged. “It seemed a better choice than banishment.”

“Everyone needs a friend,” Talla said with a smile at the lost girl.

The lost girl smiled back.