Best Laid Plans

I’ve been away longer than I anticipated, and I’m here to say it’s going to be a while yet before I’m back.

Back in March I was diagnosed with colon cancer. I was scheduled for surgery in April and went on a blogging hiatus to give myself time to recuperate. I had a vision of how things were going to go. I’d have my surgery, spend a few days in the hospital, then come home and have another couple of weeks to recuperate. I’d get some editing done, maybe some fresh writing – I even took a couple of books with me to read in the hospital.

Well, you know what they say about the best laid plans . . .

The surgery turned out to be a lot more complicated than expected and took a lot more out of me than I counted on. I got no reading done in the hospital, I didn’t even have the energy to crack open one of the colouring books I took with me. I slept a lot, and I stared mindlessly at the little T.V.

When I came home again the recuperation also did not go as planned. There was no editing, no writing … There’s been a lot of napping, T.V. watching, trying to get comfortable sitting in the living room. It was almost three weeks before I had the energy to crack open a book to read. It has not been a fun time.

And now, in two days, I’m going back to the hospital for a second surgery. I have no idea how long I’ll be in there, nor how long it’ll take me to get back on my feet again afterwards. A lot will depend on how the surgery goes.

Wish me luck, and I’ll see you in June (hopefully).

Oh, No, What Happened to My NaNo?

I’m gonna be honest here, it’s not looking good for me to finish NaNoWriMo on time. I have seven days to write 20,000 words. And given that all I’ve been able to manage during the week is 500 a day.... Well, I still have the weekend ahead, and I’ve been known to pull a few miracles off in the name of NaNo in the past, so I guess we’ll just have to see.

The thing is, I’m just not feeling it with this novel. I like the characters and it’s not a bad story, I just don’t feel like writing it. At some point, when I feel ready to move forward with this series, I’ll have to sit down and create a guide to the Myste, which plays a major part in the whole story line. But for now all I can do is make it up as I go along.

So for this week’s excerpt, I give you Nathan trying to explain to Sara about the Myste that’s surrounding them:

Excerpt

“Time doesn’t work the same when you pass through the Myste.”

Sara finally reached her limit. “All right, you’ve pussy-footed around the subject long enough. Tell my about this...Myste.”

He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “There’s been debate for centuries over whether the Myste is naturally occurring or it was somehow created. It spans both time and space. Some worlds it only touches temporarily, some worlds have permanent access points to it. As near as I can figure, you and your friend Hannah entered the Myste through a temporary access point and it was only through sheer luck that you entered at different times but ended up in the same place.”

As she tried to process this, he tried a different tact. “When Madalyn was explaining the Myste to Hannah she asked if there were any stories where you come from of people who have been lost in the fog and when they’re found only hours or days have passed for them but years have passed for those left behind?”

“Sure, Irish folklore is filled with stories of people who’ve stepped into the land of fairy.”

“Only it’s not a fairy tale, it’s real.”

She stared at him, eyes narrowed, and he continued. “Islands like this can be found in the Myste, but are not part of the Myste itself. They’re like sanctuaries. One of the reasons for the expedition was to try and map the islands - I have no idea why, unless it’s to make it easier to travel from world to world. Right now it takes special equipment to make this possible, and even then it’s chancy at best.”

“Why would it be chancy?” Sara asked, in spite of herself. “I mean, other than the generally poor visibility. If this Myste spans worlds, like you say, I’d think people would be lining up to go world hopping.”

“Just being in the Myste is dangerous - breathing it in can cause lung damage, and if it changes colour even a breather won’t help you. *this would be a really good place for the Myste poem that I will have to re-write*

“We were breathing the Myste in,” Sara pointed out. “But we seem to be okay.”

He sighed heavily. “Look, I know you have no reason to believe me but I have no reason to lie to you.”

They stared at each other for a few moments and then turned away to watch the Myste.

“I probably wouldn’t believe me either,” Nathan admitted.

“Are we safe here?” she asked with a shiver.

“I don’t know,” he said. “Probably.”

“That’s not very reassuring.”

“No, but at least it’s honest.” He hesitated, then said, “We need to figure out what we’re going to do.”

“Do? Isn’t that obvious?” Sara asked, a little surprised. “We need to go back the way we came. Or better yet, we go to wherever the others went and then Hannah and I can go home together.”

Nathan drew back and looked at her askance. “You can’t seriously think it’s that simple! Haven’t you been listening to me?” He got up and began to pace. “Getting back to your world is impossible - the access point you passed through was temporary.”

Sara felt her first real chill of fear. “Then I guess we go back to where you came from. Surely there’s someone there who can–”

He was already shaking his head. “That’s really a long shot at best. We–”

“Then we just wait here to be rescued,” she said a little desperately. “Someone will have to come back for the equipment at least right?”

“Sara.” Nathan stopped pacing and came back over to the bench. Sitting down again he took her hands in his. “I’m not going to sugar coat this. The chances of anyone coming back here before we run out of food and water are pretty slim. We’re going to have to take our chances out there.” He waved a hand towards the Myste.

Paving the Road

New Words - 583
Poetry - 0
Total Words - 583
Editing Hours - 0
Paragraphs of Notes - 4

I added Notes to my list this week because sometimes even when I’m not actually editing I’ll come up with ideas for a WIP and if I’m lucky I’m smart enough to write them down.

Well . . . crappy doodles! Last week was a real bust as far as writing went, and I didn’t spend a whole lot of time in my office. No good writing habits were formed. And I only have myself to blame. I had such good intentions, but we all know they’re only good for paving the road to hell. Or maybe that should be roads, plural. I’m pretty sure I’ve had enough good intentions over the years to pave several roads.

I did get some work done on Wandering Wizards, but seeing as I didn’t think to keep track of the new words I have no idea how many it was. I know it wasn’t much. And I recycled some old poems for Wednesdays poetry feature, so they don’t really count as “new” words. My story took a painfully long time to write, I was up pretty late finishing it, considering how short it is. You can read it HERE  along with a story my friend Catherine sent me. I hope you’ll see more stories from her in the future.

Anyone who has trouble finding ideas, here’s a perfect example of how you don’t find ideas, ideas find you. Thursday morning I was writing my inspiration quotes email to best bud Jamie and I was whining moaning telling her about the trouble I was having coming up with an idea that would pan out for my picture prompt of the stone angel. I was going to be flippant and add something about how she looks like one of the Weeping Angels from Doctor Who and I should write about that when it clicked. Maybe I should write about a Weeping Angel.

There were so many ways this story could have gone, but after doing copious amounts of research on the Weeping Angels, I was really crunched for time. Seventeen pages of research, and very little of it was useful from a story point of view. I really should have just done a non-fiction piece, but it didn’t occur to me until just now. :-D

I thought you had to be a fan of Doctor Who to properly ‘get’ my story, but the same friend who sent me a story and her hubby read it and thought it was great - and they’ve never watched Dr. Who. I admit to taking a couple of liberties with the facts at the beginning of the story, but the rest of the information in it is pretty much true, at least according to my research.

At the beginning of last week I sent an email out to four of my old writing friends, begging for a story or poem, or whatever. One of them replied with a full story, and a second one replied with a partial story (that I really hope she finishes - I want to know what happens next!) but too late for me to post it. And two never replied at all.

I figure part of it is my own fault. When I post the prompt I give people a whole month to come up with something. These ladies barely had a week. This Friday is the first of September, which means a new picture prompt, and I’ll be sure to send it to them in a timely fashion.

You know, just as soon as I find a picture to post. ;-)

Pet Peeve

I spend a lot of time on Facebook, not posting so much, just reading. And I’ve noticed a disturbing trend of late. People using old, perhaps relatively unknown, stories or poems and creating smarmy Facebook posts from them and riding on the coattails of someone else. Let me explain.

I’m sure there are lots of examples out there, but the first one I noticed (a couple of years ago) was a poem that was attached to a picture of a really old man lying in a hospital bed and the caption read that the poem was found amongst his things after he died. I’m sure you’ve all heard the poem before:

“Look at me nurses, what do you see?
What are you thinking when you look at me...”

The thing is, that poem was one of my mother’s favourites some 30 40 many years ago. It was actually written by a woman named Phyllis McCormack, who lived in Scotland, in the 1960s. I was rather appalled that this was being used to generate “likes” on Facebook and just how many people were buying into the idea that this was a recent occurrence.

Just recently I watched a moving video account of a young man who was orphaned in the Philippines 30 years ago and was adopted by an Australian couple, and who was seized by the desire to find out what happened to his parents all those years ago. So he went to the city he was adopted from and found his birth mother. Sound familiar? If you’ve seen the movie Lion, or read the book, it should.

A few days ago I watched what was supposed to be a video to inspire you to think of others. It told of a young married couple - she had long hair and he had a broken pocket watch. He sold his watch to buy her new combs for her hair, and comes home to discover she’s sold her hair to pay for the watch to be fixed. C’mon people, do you live under a rock that you’ve never heard of O. Henry’s feel good Christmas story called The Gift of the Magi? One of my all time favorites, it’s both touching and humorous. And I really resent the fact someone ripped it off for another smarmy Facebook post. They ought to be ashamed of themselves!

There are lots more examples, but I think I’ve made my point. Between stuff like that and all the political stuff going on, I find myself going on Facebook less and less.

And does anyone else find the way the internet keeps track of where you live and what you’ve been looking at creepy? The hubby and I were looking at ceiling panels for the kitchen and suddenly I keep getting ads for Home Depot popping up in my Facebook feed.

/end rant. ;-)

Last week wasn’t exactly a stellar week writing wise, but it was certainly better than the week before. I got all of my blog posts done, some of them even posted on time, plus I did a story and a poem for the Brazen Snake Books weekly prompts, AND I managed to get a super short story done for my monthly picture prompt.

But that was pretty much it because it was a holiday weekend and a busy one at that. And considering the wet, depressing week during which I was suffering from a sinus cold and migraines, I think I did pretty good.

This week’s goal is to get my blog posts done, at least attempt the Brazen Snake prompts, and actually get some of those word things in on one or more of my current WIP.

So tell me .... what are some of your pet peeves?

Back in the Groove

It’s taken a lot of work, and way too long, but I’m finally starting to feel like I’m back in the writing groove.

I may not have written every day last week, but I wrote more days than not. And it wasn’t just blog posts and journal entries, it was real writing. To be honest, it had been so long since I’d written anything really new I was beginning to wonder if I even could.

The only problem is, with the summer weather and all it’s becoming more difficult to sit in my favourite chair to write. Don’t laugh! You try sitting in a recliner with a lap top on your lap. Even when I’ve got the lap desk between me and the lap top that sucker generates a lot of heat.

Enter the Alphasmart Neo.

The first year I did NaNoWriMo I lusted after an Alphasmart Neo, basically an electronic keyboard that lets you write distraction free. The Alphasmart has no games, no internet, no bells and whistles. You use it to write on, and that’s it. It’s distraction free and holds up to eight documents at a time. When you’re done you simply plug it into your computer and sit back and watch it type in a brand new document file. It runs off of AA batteries, which last about a year with heavy usage. And the best part of all? It doesn’t generate any heat.

Unfortunately, they stopped making them in 2013. I got mine off of Ebay for $50.00 and I’d say it’s the best present I ever bought myself. It’s lightweight and durable and makes me type faster. Seriously! My typing speed just about doubles on it.

Now earlier in the week I saw an internet advertisement for a Hemingwrite, which pretty much the same idea only it has a few more bells and whistles - like mechanical switches to navigate folders, a status display that will give you your word count or the amount of time you’ve been writing, and access to WiFi so you can upload your work to the Cloud or Dropbox or whatever. However, it’s battery only lasts three to four weeks and its cost is $500.00.

I’ll take my little Neo over the Hemingwrite any day!

Wordage Report

Blog Posts (not counting this one)
4,531 words total
Even before I added in the extra blog post I did I had last week’s score beaten. And no wonder, I was up late at least a couple of nights getting posts written so they could be scheduled. Of course spending more time on blog posts meant my other writing suffered, but you can’t have everything.

New Ideas
0 words total
Not a one. And the one that’s been running around in my head like a chicken with its head cut off has kind of fizzled out, so obviously it wasn’t meant to be written down.

Editing
16 pages total
Progress on An Elemental Earth has slowed a little because I’m getting into the part that needs some heavy editing. One of my characters is coo-coo-bananas and I don’t think that showed up very well in the original.

New Words
734 total
And these words were all on my new story Dreamer this time. I think it’s going to be more of a flash fiction than short story, but who knows, maybe I can add to it during the editing stage.

Now, as you might have noticed, the progress bar for Wandering Wizards gave an almighty jump. As I had to keep reminding myself, while it seemed more like editing than writing, it really wasn’t. All I was supposed to be doing was deleting the stuff that conflicted with what was going on in Lucky Dog I wasn’t really editing, and that made things go much faster. I wish I’d recorded somewhere the number of words it was when I started messing with it, so I’d know if I increased or decreased the total words, but alas, I didn’t

Once again, here’s an excerpt from Wandering Wizards:

“You kind of look like her you know.”
“Who?”
“Aracelia. Something in the facial features, especially around the eyes.”
“I really enjoyed the time I spent with her,” Jessica said wistfully. “I wish I’d known then that she was my grandmother.”
“If it’s any consolation, she came very close to spilling the beans many times. But she swore an oath to Paranithel before he arranged for her to meet you, and he in turn swore an oath to Thackery.”
Jessica was silent for so long that Ellen was forced to ask, “What are you thinking? Are you still planning on going south to meet Thackery and Paranithel? Aracelia has offered to send you back to our world herself, if that’s what you want.”
Smiling slightly, Jessica shook her head. “No, I’m going to see this through. No matter what. I may not agree with their methods, but it’s obvious those two down south care about me. I find I really want to meet them, to find out about where I come from.”
“And to learn about your mother,” Ellen added softly.
“That too. Plus there’s the whole magic thing . . .”
“How cool is that?” Ellen asked with a grin. “You and Howard both.”
“Sometimes it’s very, very cool,” Jessica admitted. “But sometimes it’s pretty damn scary. What about you? Any magical powers for you popping up?”
“No! And I’m quite happy to keep it that way. I’ll stick to being Aragorn and you and Howard can duke it out to see who’s Gandalf.”
They shared a laugh.
“Now all we need is a Gimli and a couple of hobbits,” Jessica said. At Ellen’s confused look she added, “Well, we’ve already got a Legolas . . .”
At Ellen’s blush she began to chortle.

NaNo - Day 17

Here we are on day 17. The goal for the end of the day is 28,339 words and as I type this I'm at 27,593. Which means I'm beginning to catch up. I'm less than a thousand words behind, at least until midnight when I get to tack on the additional 1667 words I need to write each day to break even. :-)

I'm really going to hate myself before I'm done. Why? Because I keep skipping over the parts with the super secret society because I don't want to get bogged down figuring them out while I'm still behind on my regular words. And eventually I'll have to go back and fill in the gaps.

At this point I think there's actually two different sets of bad guys - one set are just bad guys and one set are super bad guys. The super bad guys are willing to work with the regular bad guys as long as they have the same goal, but they're also working behind the scenes with their own agenda.

Anyway, the action's starting to pick up. There's been a couple attempts on my main character's life, but she's got her memory back now so she's ready to dive head first into a relationship with the male main character. After she gets rid of her fiancé of course. ;-)

I've had one friend who was forced to drop out of NaNo, due to circumstances beyond her control, and just heard from another who's decided to give it a shot after all. She figures she only needs to write 5,000 words a day for the next ten days.

No problem at all, right? :-D

NaNo - Day 4

So . . . let me tell you a little about my NaNo novel, tentatively titled Guardian of The Sea.

I actually feel like I'm cheating a little. I skipped over the first chapter where I had to come up with a super secret organization of bad guys who are about to kill my main character's grandfather, and went straight to the more ordinary stuff.

My main character is named Octavia Winston, Tavi to her friends. Ten years ago she was in a car accident that left her mother in a wheelchair without the ability to communicate, and Tavi herself with no memory.

Her mother has just died, and while cleaning out her mother's room, Octavia discovers an envelope, with her name on it, taped to the back of a dresser. This leads her (eventually) to a house on a sea cliff that she's been dreaming of for the last ten years. From here things get a little complicated. :-)

She discovers that her father isn't really her father, her grandfather was hiding a secret, and she meets a man she was in love with as a teenager. Oh, yeah, and someone's trying to kill her to gain control of the property she's inherited.

There's going to be some shape-shifting going on, but that's a little further on in the story. :-)

Right now Octavia and her friend Vanessa are exploring her new house, and her mystery man is lurking around in the background. I'm thinking her fiancé isn't about to let her get away that easily, especially since he's one of the ones who wants the property.

As I'm typing this post, I'm about 1500 words behind (on the meters) but once I update I should only be around 500 or so behind. Not bad considering I got a late start.