Writersfest Wrap-up

A creative writing workshop will contain students whose ambitions and abilities, whose conceptions of literature itself, are so diverse that what they have in common - the desire to write - could almost be considered meaningless.
— Rachel Cusk

I think that, in principle, a workshop is such a beautiful idea - an environment in which writers who are collectively apprenticed to the craft of writing can come together in order to collectively improve.
— Eleanor Catton

Being part of the Workshop is like being part of a really big family. Everyone is so close. Everyone feels the success of others who go on to do well. Whatever happens, I will still be part of the Workshop.
— Lucy Carless

This was my fourth foray in the world of Writersfest, and I have to say that each time it’s been a little bit different.

The first time was on a package that included the workshop tickets and the hotel room. I really enjoyed the workshops and learned a lot. Unfortunately, I went with a friend and came home without one (figuratively, not literally). To this day I have no idea what happened. She wasn’t talking, and I didn’t push her to. Que sera, sera.

Then we had COVID and the lockdowns, so I didn’t go back until 2022 (in 2021 I went to a different writing retreat). I still sprang for the festival pass, but this time I went for all four days. Technically it was five, but I opted out of staying the extra night just for the one workshop (which I wasn’t really interested in anyway). Instead I paid extra to hear Guy Gavriel Kay read from his newest work (and got a signed copy for the daughter).

Because I was late calling for my hotel reservation, I couldn’t get the discount rate at the Holiday Inn, and ended up staying at the Delta (which was only a block away). The workshops were interesting and I learned a lot. The weather was beautiful and I took a lot of early morning walks along the waterfront.

My third Writersfest was in March of this year. This time it was being held at the Delta, and I did call in time for the discount on my reservation. Wow! What a difference it made in the price! The weather was a little cold and crappy, which made staying at the same place where the workshops were taking place even better.

That being said, I enjoyed a couple of the workshops but was disappointed in a couple. The rest were kind of so-so, but I still learned a lot. There were a handful of us who paid for the four-day pass, and we kind of got to know each other a bit.

October’s Writersfest was held at the Holiday Inn, and even though there was no discount offered, I booked my room there. Can we say pricy? And the room wasn’t all that great. Although I did have a tiny balcony that overlooked the water. AND it’s right at the end of Princess Street, which is a mecca for shopping magpies like me.

Like many organizations, Writersfest is having a hard time getting volunteers. One noticeable difference was they no longer did the land acknowledgement at the beginning of the workshops, and sometimes there wasn’t even anyone to introduce the facilitators.

I found a couple of workshops were more seminars than actual workshops, but they were still okay. Three of them I really enjoyed and learned from them. I skipped the Travel Writing workshop to go to a reading called Folklore, Fable, and Fantastical Females. The most disappointing workshop of them all was something called Creative Collaborations – Combining Imagery and Words. It was nothing more than a sales pitch for an independent small press who sold very pricy boxed sets of stories.

Will I be going back in the spring? Maybe, maybe not. There’s a stitching retreat which I missed last year because it was the same date, but this year I’ve already got it paid for, so it’ll depend on when the spring writersfest is.

But I’ll probably go to the fall one again. And since they’re no longer offering a hotel discount as an incentive to buy the festival pass, I will probably take a better look at the workshops being offered and pick and choose what I think will be worth my while. And if that means I have more time to sit and write in my favorite coffee shop, so be it.

There are worse things I could do with my time.

* ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ *

WORDAGE REPORT

THE WEEK IN REVIEW
Honestly, I don’t have a word for last week. Yo-yo maybe, because it was weirdly up and down.

Monday we finally got our new fridge delivered. While it takes up the same amount of space as the loaner, it seems smaller inside. And I still don’t have room for my big stock pot in it, which means I’ll need to make my soups earlier in the day so they’ll be cool enough to bag up for the freezer later that same day. No more putting it off for a couple of days. 😊

Tuesday was a very uninspiring rainy day, with a stitch in at the library (which was the bright spot). When I got home I realized I had a poetry gathering the next night, so I spent the afternoon writing a poemwork poem.

Wednesday I started out making a big pot of chicken chowder for the father-in-law, and yes, it was cool enough to bag up for the freezer before bed. The poetry gathering ran a little long, but lots of good poetry was shared.

Thursday was a rather quiet day, perfect for indulging in some online shopping, and Friday involved a lot of in store shopping, followed by me making my Death By Chocolate cake to take with me to a small get-together to say goodbye to one of stitchers, who’s moving to Toronto.

Saturday the daughter, granddaughter, and I went on a shopping road trip, which was followed by the hubby and I doing some shopping, which was followed by another social event, this time at the father-in-law’s.

But in between all of that, I managed to catch up on my NaNo words.

NEW WORDS:
2636+466+210+1201=4513 words

Once again, a lot of time was saved by having part, if not all of my posts done ahead of time. And also once again, Monday’s post was rather heavily photo dependent. Thank goodness I had the presence of mind to take a lot of photos during the crafting process.

Goals For Next Week:
Keep up the good work, blog posting-wise.

NANOWRIMO:
Day 19 – 2617
Day 20 – 1930
Day 21 – 2977
Day 22 – 1788
Day 23 – 2087
Day 24 – 1936
Day 25 – 2559
Total for week 4 – 15,894
Total for month – 41,729

Slowly but surely I managed to catch up my words and as of yesterday I was back on track to the 50,000 word goal.

While I’m still a little apathetic about the whole thing, I’m liking the story better. However, it has become glaringly apparent to me that if I’m going to try and do anything with this novel in the future, I’m going to have to do a great deal of world building.

It would have been super helpful to have done all that before NaNo started, but I didn’t. So now I’m stumbling around trying to figure out the flora and fauna as I go along, what the customs and traditions of the people are, and what exactly they do with themselves all day.

Also, a better idea of what the layout of the land is would come in handy. So far I’ve got lots of jungle, some cliffs, and a river that is no where near where the people are, which makes no sense because wouldn’t they need a source of water close by?

Yeah. So there’s a lot of work ahead of me if I’m going to whip this up into any kind of shape to be readable. And honestly? I’m not even at the halfway point of the story itself, so it’ll be continued well beyond the end of NaNo.

You know, eventually.

Goal For Next Week:
Finish NaNo.

POETRY:
There was a poetry gathering last Wednesday night, and seeing as I skipped it the month before, I figured I pretty much had to show up. Plus I needed to pay my yearly dues 😉

So Tuesday afternoon had me trying to come up with a metaphysical poem (the poemwork for the month). In the end I did a black out poem. Actually, I did two of them. I looked up articles on metaphysics on Google copy/pasted a page of text from two different articles, and picked out the words and phrases to craft my poems.

I have to admit, I’m getting a little tired of all these forms. It doesn’t really leave me much time to write a poem just because I have something poetical to say. And while it’s all well and good to be able to learn a new form, the forms themselves don’t always lend themselves to creating an anthology.

Goal For Next Week:
Think about my future in poetry.

CRAFTING:
Tuesday was our library stitching, where I worked a bit on my kit. I really wanted to work more on my crafting this past week, but I didn’t have time because I was busy catching up on NaNo. I was a little jealous of one of my writing buddies, who was able to get some quality crafting done for Christmas last week.

But while I didn’t have time for crafting last week, I did find time to shop for crafting supplies. I got about $50 worth of beads and charms from Wish, and then I went to another site to buy an engraving tool and a bunch of engraving bits.

Oh! And there was a request for Christmas prints for a project with the stitchery group, so I donated all the Christmas prints (mostly fat quarters) in my stash, that I’ve had for years and didn’t know what to do with. Well, as any hoarder knows, as soon as you get rid of something, you’ll find a use for it.

It was just after I gave away my prints that I did the class in the folded stars. I could have used that Christmas fabric to do more stars. *sigh* As I recall, I got a lot of those fat quarters at Walmart, who was completely out of the ones with Christmas prints. So, instead I had to go all the way to Fabricland where I bought some off the bolt.

Also last week, I finally got around to stiffening my crocheted snowflakes. I used watered down mod podge and staked them all out on waxed paper covered cardboard. Worked really well too. Now all they need are strings.

Goal For Next Week:
Make some fabric stars; work on kit; work on zentangle.

WHAT I’M READING:
I finished The Invisible Hour by Alice Hoffman, and I really hope she’s going to write a sequel to it because I really want to know what happens next. Now I’ve started The Hike, by Lucy Clarke.

On the Kindle I finished The Psychic Cat Mysteries by S.M Reine, which was a series of five mystery stories from a cat’s point of view.

Goal For Next Week:
Keep up the moderate reading habits.

THE WEEK AHEAD:

I swear, that new leaf of mine is off in space somewhere.

The weather has been as variable as my mood. I’m still a little tired and lethargic, so this grey, dismal November is not helping things any.

I don’t know what I’m going to be writing about for Monday, maybe something about Christmas crafts. ‘Tis the season, don’t you know.

Tuesday is a regular meeting with the stitchery group. There aren’t any classes, it’s just a regular stitch in, which means a lot of talking and a little stitching.

Unless inspiration strikes me like a bolt of lightning, I’ll be using the last of pre-written poetry posts on Wednesday. And because December’s poetry gathering is early, I really should try to start working on the poemwork.

I did do a little of my indoor gardening last week. I dumped the dead plants (five of them!) and rearranged several others. So this week I’d like get my coleus clippings planted, and repot my money tree into a bigger pot.

I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about my blogging schedule, and my writing in general. Brace yourself – I’m taking the month of December off from writing, and that includes blog posts. I’ll be putting up an official notice next weekend, and then I’ll use my month to make some decisions . . . and some changes.

Starting in January, things are going to be very different around here.

On Metafiction – Writersfest Part V

Metafiction says something. It has to do with taking a large fiction itself and writing within it; that kind of self-reflecting writing that emerges from it can be thought of as metafictional.
— Robert Coover

If Realism called it like it saw it, Metafiction simply called it as it saw itself seeing itself see it.
― David Foster Wallace

Why do I covet metafiction so much? Why do I nurture a style that David Foster Wallace purportedly exploded in the late 1980s, that is derided by most literary theorists as passé, that people tend to agree serves no worldly, moral purpose other than to draw attention to the writer’s own navel? Because, dammit, metafiction is relevant to today.
― M.J. Nicholls

Day two, workshop three was On Metafiction, facilitated by Kevin Chong, who is an associate professor at the University of British Columbia. I don’t mind admitting I had no clue what was meant by “metafiction”. But I soon found out

Get ready to subvert convention! While most stories hope to suspend the reader’s disbelief, metafiction actively reminds the reader that they are reading a work of fiction. In this workshop, you will explore examples and discuss techniques such as talking to the reader, alluding to the process of writing the story, writing characters who are aware that they are fictional and more.

This workshop was another one with a slow start due to technical difficulties. But obviously it didn’t hold things up for long because I have lots of notes. A little spotty and often incomprehensible notes, but there were lots of them.

Mr. Chong began by telling us about his fourth novel, The Double Life of Benson Yu, which is shortlisted for the Scotia Bank Giller Prize. The book has Yu telling twelve-year-old Benny’s story, a version of himself growing up in 1980s Chinatown. Then Benny enters the story as a real person.

Jacob Queen defines metafiction as any kind of storytelling where the creator is actively trying to make the audience think about the fact that what they are experiencing is a fictional account. The term was first coined by William H. Gass in 1970.

Why do writers use metafiction? To comment on how stories shape experience. To call attention to the artifice of storytelling. To dramatize the tension of the writer’s life. We exist in two worlds at all times; we live in two realities. Sometimes you’re in both at once, and sometimes you’re in neither place.

Writing Exercise: Write a one page story about two people planning to steal a painting.

“So, what do you think?” Biff had laid the plan out carefully, going over every detail.

“I don’t know, Biff,” Joey said, shaking his head slowly. Of course everything about Joey was a little slow.

“I tell you, it’s easy pickings,” Biff said, taking a swig of the beer he’d brought with him out to the front stoop. “We can be in and out of there before old lady Krantz even knows what’s what.”

“Yeah, but stealing from an old lady?” Joey shook his head again and took a drink from his own beer. “It just ain’t right, man.”

Biff held onto his patience by a slim thread. The job wasn’t possible without Joey. “Wasn’t old lady Krantz the one who ratted you out to your wife about you stepping out with that stripper named Polly?”

“Well, yeah.”

“And your wife done left you.”

“Yeah, she did.”

“And didn’t old lady Krantz tip off Levi Goldman that you were taking extra breaks out on the loading dock?”

“Yeah, that’s right,” Joey said, sitting up a little straighter.

“You lost your job over that one.”

“I sure did,” Joey said indignantly. “What’s an old lady like her doing owning a painting worth so much?”

“I don’t know, Joey.”

“I say we should take it from her and sell it. We can split the profit. What do you say, Biff?”

Biff just smiled.

Famous examples of metafiction include the French Lieutenant’s Woman, by John Fowles. The narrator becomes part of the story and offers several different ways to end the story. The Eyre Affair, by Jasper Fforde creates an alternate 1985, where detective Thursday Next chases a master criminal through the 1847 world of Charlotte Brontë's novel Jane Eyre. The movie, Stranger Than Fiction tells the tale of Harold Crick, who suddenly begins to hear an author inside his head, narrating his life. When he discovers that the author always ends her books by killing off the main character, he begins a journey to find her and change her mind.

Other books can be considered metafiction, even if they’re not described as such. Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes is one. The hero reads too many stories and goes mad on his quest to become a knight. Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale has a famous epilogue that takes place in the future. Atonement, by Ian McEwan is set in three time periods, and at the end the character reveals she is the author and has changed the ending so it’s happy.

Techniques of metafiction:
One, the author directly comments on the story, addressing the reader.
Two, the author comments on the writing process.
Three, the author interacts with the characters.

Metafiction versus Autofiction

Autofiction is a term used to describe a group of writers who blended fiction with autobiography. Some of these writers include Sheila Heti, Ben Lerner, Rachel Kusk, and Karl Ove Knausgård. Like metafiction, autofiction often uses characters who have the same name as the authors. Autofiction trades more on the distinction between truth and reality. Metafiction is more concerned about the artifice of storytelling. It features more parody and pastiche. Finally, autofiction is rarely ever plotted. It’s almost like an essay.

Writing Exercise (part two): Take your first scene and add a metafiction element to it. You could address the reader, talk about how the story differs from a “real life” account, or discuss the painting.

“So, what do you think?” After laying out all the details, there weren’t anything to think about, as far as I was concerned.

“I don’t know, Biff,” Joey said slowly. God, everything Joey did was slow, even shaking his head at me.

“I tell you Joey, it’s easy pickings.” I took a swig of my beer to keep from smacking him upside the head. We was alone out here on the stoop.

“Yeah, but stealing from an old lady?” Joey took a drink from his own beer. “It just ain’t right.”

Man, if I didn’t need him to disarm the alarm system, I wouldn’t be wasting my time with him, you know what I mean?

“Wasn’t it old lady Krantz who ratted you out to your wife when you was stepping out with that stripper?”

“Well, yeah, but—”

You can’t let guys like Joey think too much, and I’m on a roll. “And wasn’t it old lady Krantz who tipped off Levi Goldman that you was taking extra smoke breaks out on the loading dock?”

“Well, yeah, but—”

“So she ruined your marriage and got you fired. So what do you owe her?”

“Yeah, what do I owe that old bat.”

Finally, I got a fire lit under him. You see the smoke?

“I’ll do it!” Joey said.

I just smiled. I knew he’d cave. What about you?

Is metafiction right for you? It works for you if you want to comment on story telling or you want an immersive story. It won’t work if you want a straight forward story. But give it a try – you never know . . .

* ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ *

WORDAGE REPORT

THE WEEK IN REVIEW
The word for last week is . . . struggle. I was having sinus problems, which I figured was allergies, but it morphed into a sinus cold. A really, really bad sinus cold. So I spent most of my week popping sinus medication, which tends to cloud my already befuddled brain.

The weather is still pretty crappy, which I guess is really just typical for November. We’ve had a couple of hints of sun, but mostly it was grey and murky, sometimes windy. Wednesday night we had freezing rain but there was no sign of it by Thursday morning.

The cats have been weirdly affectionate lately, and it makes me wonder what’s up. I mean, they were cuddly as kittens, then kind of grew out of it, and now they’re starting to be more cuddly again. Dinsdale never gave up curling up with people (when he was in the mood) but now Khaos has been snuggling up with me when I’m in my recliner, and one night after I went to bed she curled up on my chest! None of the cats I’ve ever had has ever done that before.

NaNo has also been a bit of a struggle, but I started falling off the wagon when I came to the Nottawasaga stitchery retreat. Unlike the writing retreats, this one starts early, runs later in the day, and although we’re not chained to our stitching by any means, there’s not a lot of alone time for writing.

NEW WORDS:
2605+689+347+1057=4698 DOWN: 482 – words

Like the weather and my mood, the words have been pretty up and down lately. One week I seem to be up, the next I’ll be down. A little consistency might be nice.

Goals For Next Week:
Keep up the good work with the blogs

NANOWRIMO:
Day 5 – 1699
Day 6 – 1572
Day 7 – 1276
Day 8 – 2272
Day 9 – 628
Day 10 – 1488
Day 11 – 876
Total for week 2 – 9,811
Total for month – 16,567

I hate to admit it, but I’m still not all that keen on the story I’m working on. And I also hate to admit that it would be a lot easier to work on if I had some kind of outline. And as you can see, going on a stitching retreat in the middle of NaNo did not help my word count.

I’m also beginning to have my doubts if this story will go the distance. The beginning is more detailed than the original idea, and it’s set up nicely for the ending I envisioned. However, I’m beginning to see a few problems with the ending, such as there’s really no motivation for anyone to come back to this planet to “discover” the missing (and presumed dead) main character.

And how am I supposed to fit in the murder he’s supposed to have committed? AND the female main character is the key witness to what really happened, but she was shot and unconscious at the time. *sigh* I see many plot holes to be filled in my future.

Goal For Next Week:
Keep making the daily quota; catch up ASAP.

POETRY:
It was really helpful, having new poetry forms ready to go. All I had to do was schedule one of them to appear at the designated time on Wednesday. Easy peasy, lemon squeezy. :-)

I think even after NaNo I’ll try to have a form or two ready for emergencies, like if I get called away for something and run out of time, or (like this week) I’m feeling like crap.

Goal For Next Week:
Think about doing the remaining three example poems.

CRAFTING:
Having nothing better to blog about, I really wanted to do a blog post on my woven fabric basket. But that meant I had to finish it first. So that’s how I spent my Sunday, taking pictures as I worked on it. The final picture on the post showed it woven together, but with pins still in it at the top.

Tuesday morning I finished the hand stitching around the top of my basket before going to the library for some more stitching. Everyone was suitably impressed.

Despite knowing I wouldn’t have my zentangle finished in time to make a tote bag out of it, I did do a bit more work on it as well. If I keep plugging away at it, I’ll have it ready in time for the next retreat.

Friday morning I loaded up the car, drove across town to pick up one of my guild sisters, and we hit the road for the Nottawasaga Resort for a stitchery retreat. You can read the full story on my Monday post (on my other blog).

Goal For Next Week:
Sew the brown bag; work on zentangle.

WHAT I’M READING:
I kind of stalled reading The Invisible Hour by Alice Hoffman, and the reason for this is because I was enjoying it so much that I didn’t want to take the chance of binge reading it. LOL

On the Kindle I finished Dead Even, by Patti Larson, and started The Guest is a Goner by Carly Winter.

Goal For Next Week:
Keep up the moderate reading habits.

THE WEEK AHEAD:

Honestly, that new leaf of mine is probably struggling as much as I am. This cold is kicking my butt big time. But, like that new leaf, I’m hanging in there.

The fact that I didn’t spend as much time in the office as I might have liked had more to do with my recliner being more comfortable than anything else. Plus the recliner was handy if I felt a nap coming on because of the cold medication I was taking.

As much as it’s fun to get away, it’s always nice to get back home again and get back into my routines. You know, as soon as I’m able to kick this darn cold to the curb and establish my routines again.

Seeing as it’s NaNo season, I’ll probably go with one of the new poetry forms I have in my “to be used” folder. That’s what I did them for, after all. Although I’d still like to work on the example poems to go with the other forms as well.

There’s a regular meeting of the stitchery guild on Tuesday, and this time we’re being offered the choice of a class making small Christmas trees out of fabric yo-yos, or folded fabric stars. I opted for the stars.

One of the things I absolutely have to do this week is tear my office apart to look for my idea notebook. This is a large, top wire bound notebook (think oversized steno pad) that I wrote down long ideas and notes on several of my unfinished books. And I cannot find it. It’s got to be in the office somewhere, I just have to find it.

Something non-writing that needs to go on the list this week is indoor gardening. I need to get rid of three dead plants – or is it four? And rearrange the plants on top of the tall bookcase in my office. I also need to pot the coleus clippings I took from my garden. I’m impressed with how quickly they rooted. And there are a couple of plants that need to be repotted.

And, of course, I need to catch up on my NaNo. At the writing of this (late Saturday night) I’m behind by almost 2000 words. *sigh*

So, lots to do this week. Let’s just hope I find the ambition to do it all.

It’s A-Comin’!

As Isaac Newton observed, objects in motion tend to stay in motion. When writing your first draft, being busy is key. It may feel frustrating at first, but having daily writing periods curtailed by chores, family, and other distractions actually helps you get the thing done. This is partly because the hectic pace forces you to type with a fleet-fingered desperation. But it’s mostly because noveling in the midst of a chaotic life makes “book time” a treat rather than an obligation. It’s a small psychological shift, but it makes all the difference in the world.
― Chris Baty

There's an old folk saying that goes: whenever you delete a sentence from your NaNoWriMo novel, a NaNoWriMo angel loses its wings and plummets, screaming, to the ground. Where it will likely require medical attention.
― Chris Baty

Deadlines bring focus, forcing us to make time for the achievements we would otherwise postpone, encouraging us to reach beyond our conservative estimates of what we think possible, helping us to wrench victory from the jaws of sleep.
― Chris Baty

Yes, that’s right. It’s almost time for NaNoWriMo. Never heard of it? What, seriously? Have you been living under a rock or something? Well let me enlighten you.

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, for those of you who are mathematically challenged.

In a nutshell, it started in July of 1999 with Chris Baty and consisted of 21 writers. They had so much 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 413,295 participants with 51,670 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 was 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.

And what do you get if you finish? Three things: a 50,000(+) word novel, the satisfaction of completing a challenge, and a shiny winner’s certificate that you can download and print off. And maybe you’ll have made a few friends along the way by attending local write-ins.

If you’d like to learn more or sign up, visit their WEBSITE . They’ve redesigned it a few times over the years, and you no longer have to copy/paste your finished novel into their validation thingamajig because the number of participants became too large. Now it’s strictly on the honour system.

And while you’re there, check out all the NaNo stuff you can buy. I have probably 10 tee-shirts from the various years, two hoodies, the NaNo USB bracelet, a NaNo travel cup, and two different sizes of NaNo thermoses (which sadly are no longer available).

This will be my 16th time participating. Normally in late October I go through a whole should I/shouldn’t I phase, but I skipped it this year. I mean, who am I kidding? Doing NaNo is some of the best crazy fun a writer can have.

Do I have an idea yet? Nope. Am I worried? Maybe just a little. After all, NaNo is just a couple of days away. But hey, this won’t be the first time I’ve started with a totally blank slate (and kicked myself for it). And if I write 50,000 words of absolute gibberish, who’s going to know but me?

That’s the beauty of NaNoWriMo.

* ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ *

WORDAGE REPORT

THE WEEK IN REVIEW
The word for last week is . . . progress! It’s about time, isn’t it?

The weather was more crappy than not – grey and dismal. And the temperature rose enough to make it humid on top of that. Thursday we were shrouded in fog, which enticed me to go down to the waterfront to take pictures. And Friday was so warm that I opened the window in my office. And immediately wished I hadn’t. The groove the window slides up into was covered in lady bugs. I must have removed over a dozen of them (and yes, I took them outside to release them) and I think a couple still escaped into the house.

The first half of the week I was tired and lethargic, but I still managed to get stuff done, and from Thursday on I was smokin’.

There were no more mice spotted, although one night the cats and I heard noises on the outer wall of the living room. It might have been the wind, it might have been birds trying to get seeds/insects caught in the siding, it might have been mice climbing the outer wall and trying to get under the siding. No idea. And frankly it kind of creeps me out to think about it.

And for about three nights in a row the cats heard something high up in the dining room. They both crowded onto the topmost platform of the cat tree and stared holes at the very top of the outer wall, just above the deck door. I’m hoping it was a squirrel digging for nuts, or storing nuts, in the eavestrough. It only happens at night though.

Despite the higher temperatures, it’s really starting to look like fall outside. The leaves on the trees seemed to start changing all at once, and the wind and the rain helped dislodge them. I need to take a walk in the park before it’s too late.

There’s nothing like kicking through the crisp, fallen leaves to put a smile on my face.

NEW WORDS:
2821+381+336+1079=4,617
DOWN: 576 – words

No surprise here, seeing as my posts were back to normal length.

For the first time in a long time, I can honestly say I had no late nights getting blog posts done. In fact, most of them were done before dinner. If that’s not progress I don’t know what is. :-)

Aside from getting all of my blog posts done, with ease I might add, I also got the rest of my notes transcribed from Writersfest, such as they are. There weren’t as many as I thought there were, so I also wrote a wrap-up post for Writersfest.

I’d been doing so well, all week long, that Thursday night I just kind of relaxed, forgetting completely about Fiction Friday. I had already decided to post an excerpt from my very first NaNo.

Goals For Next Week:
Keep up the good work with the blogs; settle on an idea for NaNoWriMo

POETRY:
Finally! A form that was a little more challenging. It was kind of accidental, too. I just got so into the form that I automatically wrote the example for it.

There was a poetry gathering last week, but I had a migraine and didn’t go. The poemwork was to write a gothic poem, which is a kind of fun assignment for this time of year. We’re back in the church for our gatherings, so it’s kind of ironic that the weather was unseasonably warm.

I also finished one form, ready for posting, and I have three forms that just need an example. Also, I have the research done on three more. So I’m not as far ahead as I was hoping to be at this point, but I’m getting there.

Goal For Next Week:
Keep working on the new forms; get some examples written.

CRAFTING:
Tuesday was my regular guild meeting, where those of us who were doing the woven fabric baskets were supposed to finish them. Yes, I said supposed to. I had done my stitching homework, so my basket was as far along as the others. The actual weaving wasn’t too bad, but keeping it together was. We didn’t have nearly enough straight pins, so I’ll be finishing my basket at home.

I didn’t have much time for stitching outside of the guild meeting, but I did make some progress on my zentangle sampler. I’ve got another square almost finished, and I know what I want to do for the fourth one, but I seriously doubt I’ll have it finished in time to turn it into a tote bag for the retreat.

Speaking of the retreat, I’m going to need to start thinking about what I’m taking with me. Maybe the zentangle, maybe the kit, maybe something else altogether. Most of the participants are from the Toronto guild, and I don’t want to look like a dork in front of them.

Goal For Next Week:
Finish my basket, work on zentangle.

WHAT I’M READING:
I finished Spells For Lost Things, by Jenna Evans Welch, and really enjoyed it. Now I’m reading The Invisible Hour by Alice Hoffman.

On the Kindle I’ve started Pawsitively Poisonous, by Melissa Erin Jackson. To be honest, I didn’t do as much reading last week as I’ve been doing.

Goal For Next Week:
Keep up the moderate reading habits; update my Goodreads.

THE WEEK AHEAD:

Despite the crappy weather, that new leaf of mine might have gotten a little bigger. It may even have a new shoot or two trying to sprout. Hopefully I can keep nurturing it this week.

Well, despite this being fall now, that new leaf of mine is beginning to grow. I spent a lot of quality time in my office. A bit of goofing off time too, but mostly productive time. And the funny thing is, I kind of enjoyed it. I want to keep up the good work in the week ahead.

Tuesday is the supplement meeting of the stitchers at the library. I don’t know about anyone else, but I fully intend to show up in costume. It is Halloween you know. I’m even going to make myself a wig of green hair and I got some cheap red shoes to supplement my witch’s outfit.

There are three poetry forms that need their information distilled down, and three that need examples. Let’s see how far I can get with them.

I’ll be using another excerpt for Fiction Friday this week, I won’t be far enough into NaNo to post something fresh. That is, supposing I’m able to settle on an idea and actually start NaNo. It would be so much easier if I could come up with an idea in say, September, so I’d have time to research it. But at this point I’ll be happy just to have an idea by Wednesday.

Well, I didn’t get any extra sewing done, nor did I start any knitting or crocheting. No Christmas crafts either. When I wasn’t struggling, then last week was all about the writing. Which is a good thing, going into NaNo.

It’s unlikely I’ll be squeezing a lot of craft work in during NaNo season, but you never know. I guess it depends on how fast I can write.

I made a couple of lists last week, and they really helped, even if I didn’t get everything done on them. It was actually thanks to those lists that I got my Fiction Friday up on time. As I was sitting there, waiting for the grocery stores to open, I glanced at the list from the day before to see what I’d missed, and there it was – "find excerpt for blog post". I was late to start my grocery shopping, but I got the post up on time.

So, lists for sure this week. They help keep me focused and they give me some structure to my day. And lord knows, I can use some structure.

Publishing 101 – Writersfest Part III

A person who publishes a book willfully appears before the populace with his pants down. If it is a good book nothing can hurt him. If it is a bad book nothing can help him.
― Edna St. Vincent Millay

Publishing a book is like stuffing a note into a bottle and hurling it into the sea. Some bottles drown, some come safe to land, where the notes are read and then possibly cherished, or else misinterpreted, or else understood all too well by those who hate the message. You never know who your readers might be.
― Margaret Atwood

I often think publishing a book is like doing a poo. Once it's ready for the world, you have to relinquish that control and let nature take its course. A few will be impressed by your creation, others will be disgusted. Plus, no one will enjoy your success and achievement in producing it as much as you did.
― H.O. Charles

This was actually the third workshop I attended at Writersfest, the first one of day two. The late afternoon workshop on my first day there was cancelled, so I took the opportunity to do a little shopping. :-D

You’ve drafted, edited, spit, and polished. Now that the writing is done, how do you get it in people’s hands so they can read it? Hazel Millar and Jay Millar have been the dynamic force behind Book*hug Press, a radically optimistic Canadian independent publisher working at the forefront of contemporary book culture, for two decades. Come with your burning questions!

To be honest, this was more of a lecture than a workshop, there wasn’t much for us to do except sit there and listen, and take a few notes as they went through how they got started and then expanded.

They began as a small press imprint, growing from there until they became the fully independent publisher they are today. And they did it all without any corporate funding. They were able to build and curate their catalogue on their own terms. They look for voices that aren’t being published through other means, contributing to an expanding landscape, publishing about twenty books a year.

They started in 2004 by publishing translations of poetry, then novels. Before long they weren’t just publishing translations, they were publishing novels and anthologies as well. Their goal was to make the work as public as possible, and to that end they did all the marketing and publicizing themselves. The book market in Canada is the most saturated in the world.

They have an open submission policy, which means they are open to submissions all year round, and are most interested in writing that takes risks and challenges and pushes the boundaries of cultural expectations. A general guide for manuscript length is as follows:

Poetry – 72 to 100 pages
Anthologies – 8 to 10 stories (which seems like a low number to me)
Novels – 50 to 80 thousand words

Submissions are made with hard copies, no electronic submission. They create traditional trade paper copies first, then e-books and audiobooks as needed.

They went on at length about copyright violations and permissions. You are not to use song lyrics in your novel unless you’re paying for those rights. Everything needs to be credited and permissions granted. Passages in the public domain of less than a sentence do not need to be permissioned.

Only about 10% of the book’s list price goes to the author. If an advance is paid (which it usually is) you do not start receiving royalties until the advance is cleared. If the advance doesn’t clear, you don’t have to pay it back, you just don’t receive any royalties.

This workshop was definitely not what I was expecting, but it was still full of interesting information.

* ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ *

WORDAGE REPORT

THE WEEK IN REVIEW
Last week’s word is . . . heartening, which is a synonym for “encouraging,” which I believe I’ve already used. :-)

The weather was not in my favor last week, it was dull and dismal and occasionally rainy, which depleted my energy and generally made me want to just curl up in my recliner with a cat or two and a cup of tea and just read.

However, despite another encounter of the mousey kind, a whole day away, and a doctor’s appointment, the blog posts all got done. I was up super late Tuesday night finishing my poetry post, but that was more me not planning ahead than anything else.

The new fridge isn’t so bad, and I’m trying not to get too attached to it. I like that the freezer is bigger than the one in the old one, and that it has flat glass shelves. Also, I like the deli drawer in the fridge part and there seems to be more space for stuff in the fridge door.

They did not have a floor model of the fridge we have on order, so we can only go by the pictures on the internet. While I like the idea of a bottom drawer for the freezer, I’m pretty sure it’s a wire drawer, which I don’t like. And I don’t think the fridge part is laid out as nicely as the loaner. It’s too bad we couldn’t have taken our time picking it out.

The father-in-law became sick enough Tuesday evening, that the hubby and his brother took him up to the hospital to be looked at. Having spent the entire day at a stitchery retreat, I took advantage of the hubby being gone to get to work on my poetry form for Wednesday.

I had abandoned the form I was going to use in favor of a simpler one, when I hear the cats playing with something in the hallway. Then I heard squeaking. You guessed it, they caught another mouse and were having a grand old time playing with it.

This little sucker was really fast, and the cats were relentless, so I was not able to catch it to put it outside. Eventually it escaped down to the basement, the cats hot on its heels, and I thought that would be the end of it. It would either find a place to hide – plenty of them in the basement – or the cats would kill it.

After about half an hour, Dinsdale came proudly up the stairs, carrying the mouse in his jaws. He brought it to the middle of the living room . . . and let it go. The poor thing was still alive. The chase was on again, and again I tried (and failed) to catch it. I gave up when they all headed for my office, and tried to focus on my poetry post.

There was no sign of a corpse, and the next day they appeared to have lost interest. I wasn’t sure if it had escaped or they ate it, but at least it was gone. Then Thursday morning I was in my office working, and Dinsdale was in the hubby’s office playing. I realized he was playing with a mouse (dead this time). I didn’t know if it was the one from Tuesday and they’d just stashed the corpse in there to play with later, or a new one, but I closed the door to my office so he couldn’t bring it to me to throw for him and waited for the hubby to get up to dispose of it.

Then Friday morning the little monsters played a Halloween prank on me. They left their stuffed mice at the bottom of the stairs for me to step on when I got up. It was really dark, and I couldn’t see what I was stepping on. Not funny kitties!

NEW WORDS:
2522+1313+237+1121=5,193
UP: 386 – words

This is mostly due to my Monday post being extra long. I really should have made it into a couple of posts – I left out a lot of stuff I could have said – but it was getting late and I was in a rush.

The end of Winter’s Child is where the word “heartening” comes in. Not that I finished another serial, but that I got it done and scheduled on Thursday. I didn’t start working on it until late in the morning, but by lunch time I had the creature’s part done. I broke for lunch and then started on James’s part. So far so good.

Because of the weather, I had a bad headache brewing. So I made myself a cup of tea and took an Advil. When I went back into my office I had the music going, and I was texting with the daughter, and I was feeling frazzled because the scene wasn’t going well. And I don’t know what happened, but I accidentally exited the document without saving. My entire scene was wiped out. Gone. Vanished.

There may have been a bit of cursing. There definitely was a hissy fit involved. There might have even been a bit of name calling aimed towards the lap top, Word 2019, and Windows in general. But once I got it out of my system I took a deep breath, turned off the music, ignored the phone, and started writing.

And I still had the scene finished before supper. If that’s not heartening, I don’t know what it.

Goals For Next Week:
Keep up the good work with the blogs; find an idea for NaNoWriMo

POETRY:
Yeah, I know I said something about trying a form that was a little more challenging, but after spending the whole day at the stitching retreat, and then the whole mouse thing, it just wasn’t going to happen. I did have a more complicated form partially done, but not the example. Ironically, I may have been better off doing that one because I still had to do the research for the easier form. But if you read my Wednesday post, you’ll understand what inspired my examples.

The examples can sometimes be as time-consuming as the informational portion of the poetry posts, which is why I’m trying to get them done ahead of time for NaNo. This will cut my blogging time in half. And if I have time to do the examples ahead of time as well, so much the better. So far I have three forms waiting for an example, and four more waiting to be researched.

Goal For Next Week:
Keep working on the new forms; get some examples written.

CRAFTING:
Tuesday was the one-day retreat with the stitchery guild. The place we held it was out in the country, a restaurant turned wellness spa and inn. I’ll go into more detail about it on my Monday post, but we had a wonderful time, and I’m sure we’ll be back again.

We were given a large, sunny room with a view, and all the tea, coffee, and water we liked. At noon we broke for lunch, and a few of us went for a walk along the trail that took us deep into the surrounding woods. At four o’clock we packed up our stuff, and then went into the dining room for high tea. All in all, it was a lovely day.

I took both my zentangle and my kit with me to work on, and I’m happy to be able to say I worked on them both. Maybe not as much as I should have, but any progress is good progress, right?

I did pull out my kit to work on Thursday night while I was watching Loki, but the action was so good I really didn’t get much stitching done. LOL

Goal For Next Week:
Get my stitchery homework done.

WHAT I’M READING:
It took a couple of days before I started looking for a new tree book, but I finally settled on Spells For Lost Things, by Jenna Evans Welch. I didn’t realize when I picked it that it was Y/A, but I like reading them every once in awhile, and so far I’m enjoying it.

On the Kindle I finished Mystic Pieces, by Ada Bell, and then read Of Potions and Portents, by Nyx Halliwell.

Goal For Next Week:
Keep up the moderate reading habits; update my Goodreads.

THE WEEK AHEAD:

Despite the crappy weather, that new leaf of mine might have gotten a little bigger. It may even have a new shoot or two trying to sprout. Hopefully I can keep nurturing it this week.

This is the week for digging down and establishing regular office hours. NaNo is just a week and a half away and if I’m going to have a prayer, I need to get into a writing routine now. I have optimistically ordered my winner’s tee-shirt, so there’s no going back.

Tuesday is a regular meeting with the stitchery guild, and I have yet to complete my homework, so I’ll have to get that done on Monday. And if I’m going to have the sewing machine out anyway, I might as well make a skirt or two for the fall. I have the patterns and the material, I just need to cut them out and sew them.

I have three poetry posts that just need examples to finish them off, and I have four more I’d like to research. The research is usually pretty easy, it’s the distilling it down into a post that’s the time consuming part. But if I do it this week, then that’s more time for writing during NaNo.

You may have noticed that I took Editing out of the wordage report. Seriously, who am I kidding? I haven’t been doing much in the way of editing since I finished with the hard copy of Elemental Spirt, and it’s highly unlikely I’ll be doing any during NaNo. I may, or may not, add it back in for December, but most likely it’ll be gone until the New Year.

I’m really happy with the way Winter’s Child turned out. I think this is the story it was always meant to be, I just lacked the skill to do it when I first came up with the idea. For this week’s Fiction Friday post I’m probably going to use an excerpt from my first (failed) NaNo. I don’t want to get into anything new right before NaNo, and I’m not even sure I want to start another serial. Maybe in the new year.

AND I have to settle on an idea for NaNo. I have three or four possibilities, and a couple that have been discarded because they need more research than I have time for. I’m leaning towards one I have a one page synopsis for. It’s not much to go on, but I went with less than that a few years ago when I wrote Shattered for NaNo. The beauty of it is that it’s completely unrelated to anything else I’ve got going on, but I could actually tweak it so it becomes a sequel to Shattered.

I would like a sweater to go with one of those as yet unmade skirts I want to sew. And the easiest way to get one that fits right and I like is to knit it myself. Having my evenings free to do crafting in front of the TV is all well and good, but I need something a little more mindless than stitching if this is going to work. I have to pay too much attention to what I’m doing when I stitch, but once you get into a rhythm with the knitting/crocheting, it doesn’t take the same focus.

And there’s always the Christmas stuff I could be doing. I have some crocheted snowflakes done, all they need is to be stiffened. I’m nor sure if there’s anything else I could be doing in front of the TV, but it might be worth a look in my dresser of craft supplies.

I had a nice balance between tree reading and e-reading last week, and I’m hoping to keep this up this week.

I managed to make it through last week without the aid of my lists, but I still think it might be a good idea to start them up again, just to keep the track headed in the right direction. The forecast for next week is a mix of sun and rain, so a list might help combat the energy sink from that too.

I need all the help I can get.

Journaling Journey – Part II

I journal about anything and everything I can in my life – minutiae, dreams, important mailed papers, receipts, etc. There is literally nothing that I won’t put in my assorted journaling.
— Margot Olson

Write what disturbs you, what you fear, what you have not been willing to speak about. Be willing to be split open.
— Natalie Goldberg

Journal what you love, what you hate, what’s in your head, what’s important. Journaling organizes your thoughts; allows you to see things in a concrete way that otherwise you might not see.
— Kay Walkingstick

You’ve decided to start a journal. That’s awesome! There’s only one problem – you don’t know what to fill it with, what kind of journal you want to make. Lucky for you, I’m here to help with a description of some of the different kinds of journals you can have.

Stream of Consciousness.
If you do morning pages (as laid out in the book, The Artist’s Way, by Julia Cameron), then you’re already doing this. It’s where you write in a continuous stream of whatever pops into your head, without censoring yourself. You don’t need to make sense, just write about whatever’s on your mind. You can time yourself, limit yourself to a set number of pages, or simply write until you run out of words.

Dream Journal
Some people say they don’t dream, but more likely they just don’t remember their dreams. You forget half of what you dream about within 2 - 5 minutes of waking up, and within 10 minutes you’ll have forgotten 90%. The best way to keep your dreams fresh is to have a pen and notebook beside your bed and then record your dreams as soon as you wake up.

Women tend to recall their dreams more easily than men. If you’re having trouble recalling your dreams, try telling your subconscious you want to remember them before going to sleep. Create a bedtime routine, maybe try meditating, and wake up naturally instead of with an alarm. Recording your dreams is a fascinating way of keeping in touch with your subconscious.

Food Journal
This one is especially good if you’re struggling with health or weight issues. You can take note of what you’re eating each day to become more mindful about the foods you’re choosing. This can lead to making better choices on your weight-loss journey. You can also write down recipes you want to try, or old favorites you don’t want to lose track of.

Fitness Journal
Maybe you’d like to get into better shape, or just want to document your fitness journey. Here is where you can keep track of your work-outs so you can stay committed to an active lifestyle. Record what exercises work best for you, and what ones don’t. You can see your progress, and also see where you may need to streamline your routine.

Blessings Journal
Take a few minutes every day to reflect on the good things you have going on in your life. It might be a call from a friend, a gift of produce from a neighbor’s garden, or finally making friends with the cat next door. These are all things to be grateful for, and you can write them down in your journal. You have a permanent record that life isn’t always bad, and when things aren’t going so well, you can go back and see that there’s always hope for something better. The more you look for the good things in life, the more you’ll find.

Sketch Journal
Do you have an artistic side? You can express your feelings, thoughts, and ideas through illustrations, doodles, or sketches. Don’t be afraid to use colour, either paints or pencil crayons, or even wax crayons. You can write about ideas you have for larger projects, inspirational ideas, or methods you’d like to try. For that matter, you could use the pages of your journal to try out different techniques to see if they’d work for you.

Writing Journal
Here’s the place to jot down your thoughts and ideas and document your journey as a writer. You can develop ideas, plot a story, even outline a novel. You can include character sketches, maps, interesting names, whatever strikes your fancy. It’s a place for inspirational quotes and helpful tips on moving forward.

Daily Life Journal
Here you can keep track of your life’s journey. It can be a day-to-day record, or it can be full of conversations you’ve overheard, sad or happy occasions, or even new experiences that made an impact on you. You can make it as personal as you like, or maybe you’d like an account for future generations. It’s up to you.

Whatever journal you decide to keep, set aside a few minutes each day to make an entry. Write or draw whatever feels right to you, or paste in movie stubs or tickets from events you’ve gone to. Just remember that there’s no right or wrong way to keep a journal.

* ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ *

WORDAGE REPORT

THE WEEK IN REVIEW
The word for last week is . . . BUSY!

I don’t know what lit a fire in me last week, but I hope it continues going forward. I established my morning routine for most mornings – Tuesdays I have stitchery duties, and Fridays I have grocery shopping, but when I’m done with those things I’ve been landing back in my office.

I had a nice balance between mundane things (cleaning, laundry, etc.) and office-y things (writing, filing, etc.). I even got the dreaded shredding finished! I had a list of things I wanted to get done before I left for Kingston, and I managed to knock off the list.

And all this in spite of the fact that Monday I had an appointment in the morning and Costco in the afternoon. Tuesday I had a stitchery guild meeting followed by an appointment with a new dietician. And Wednesday I had a poetry group meeting in the park, which was pretty darn dark (we all had flashlights).

And then my productivity came to a halt when I left for Kingston for Writersfest Thursday morning. Which is where I am now, as I type this. I got a lot of writing done during my workshops, not so much outside of the workshops though. And I did not get an installment done for Winter’s Child – I don’t even have a beginning for it.

NEW WORDS:
2852+677+258+110=3,897
DOWN: 284– words

Believe it or not, despite missing the installment for Winter’s Child, I’m not down by as many words as I was the week before. And I probably would have been crazily up in words had I written that post.

Here’s the thing. All the other posts came really easily, if not quickly to me last week. But I didn’t get Winter’s Child done ahead of time. I’m not sure if it would have made a difference if I’d stayed home from the poetry group to get a start on it or not, but I guess it’s a moot point because I didn’t.

I was planning on doing it Thursday night, except . . . after dinner (after my last workshop) I went up to my room and started getting things organized for the next day – you know, procrastinating before writing – and I couldn’t find my medication for the morning. With a sinking heart, I called the hubby, and sure enough – my pill box was sitting on the counter.

It seemed the quickest and easiest solution was for us to meet at the halfway point, which was Belleville. Which happens to have a Walmart close to the highway. We could meet at the Walmart MacDonalds and have a coffee before we parted again.

By this time it was dark out, and I don’t see well in the dark, which is why I no longer care to drive in it. Now, there is a horrific story of a string of little bad lucks that lead to me getting hopelessly lost trying to leave Kingston, but I’ll spare you the nitty gritty details. Suffice it to say, I eventually found my way to the highway, and to Belleville.

As a bonus, and I suspect to make me feel better, the hubby included the new Lynsay Sands book that I’d received in the mail that day. I gassed up the car (another bad luck story) and made it back to Kingston. I had no trouble getting back to the hotel, but I was tired and did not have the energy to do the blog post.

I did NOT get a good night’s sleep, which meant I was really dragging my butt on Friday, and by the time I’d made it through all three workshops and dinner, I had absolutely nothing left for writing, so I made the executive decision of skipping this week’s installment.

Goals For Next Week:
Try to get the blog posts done a little earlier; find some other writing to work on.

EDITING:
0 Hours

Okay, I knew there was something I was forgetting in my oh-so-productive week. Oops! Although at one point, when I was cleaning up my office, I did look for the notes I’d printed off about the Illezie. But I had no idea where they disappeared to. Guess I’ll just have to print them again. *sigh*

But it occurs to me that the Illezie prophecy and records are almost a separate part to the story as a whole, so there’s no reason I can’t work on the “story” part at the same time. It might even make joining them together a little easier. Sounds good in theory, anyway.

Goal For Next Week:
Use my notes about the Illezie as a guide to digging down on the editing.

POETRY:
Last week’s form was a kind of simple one, but it was better than no form at all, right? And I did write two examples, so that should count for something.

AND after I had my poetry post scheduled on both blogs, I wrote my poemwork poem for the poetry gathering on Wednesday. I even had the copies all printed out. Go me! LOL

A few years ago I ran a blog that was dedicated to poetry forms. The blog has been defunct for a long time now, but I’m wondering if there were forms I did there that I haven’t offered here yet. I need to make a master list of the forms I’ve done to double check.

Goal For Next Week:
Find a new form to share; work on the extra forms. Print poems to update big book o’ poems.

CRAFTING:
The stitchery guild had a guest speaker on Tuesday, a lady who talked about her journey of learning beadwork. She had some seriously beautiful pieces to show off. And yes, it did give me the urge to do some beadwork of my own. I especially liked her three dimensional betta fish (although I’d much rather do a dragon).

There was still a little time after to do some actual stitching, so I worked on the kit some more. Wouldn’t you know, it was more satin stitching though.

At first I kind of wished I’d brought some stitchery to Kingston with me, but I haven’t had the time or energy to write, so it probably would have been just one more thing to make me feel guilty for not doing. On the other hand, stitching is relaxing. Maybe getting a few stitches in would have relaxed me enough to get some writing in. You never know.

Goal For Next Week:
Work on my zentangle; work on the kit I started.

WHAT I’M READING:
I’m just about finished Trashlands by Alison Stine. And even though I have the latest Lynsay Sands book waiting for me, I’m not going to read it until I’m done with Trashlands. How responsible of me? LOL

On the Kindle I finished A Midlife Shifter’s Dream, by Ruby Raine, and then loaded it up with a couple of books for Kingston, rather than bringing a bunch of tree books with me. One of these was a boxed set. I finished reading Lattes and Levitation, by Christine Pope, but I’m going to have another look at the blurb for the set to see if I want to continue. While the murder central to the plot was solved, the ending read like it should have just said “to be continued on the next book.” I’m usually pretty good about weeding these out before I start reading them because I find it very disappointing when I’m forced to buy several books to get the complete story.

Goal For Next Week:
Keep up the non-binging of books.

THE WEEK AHEAD:

I really hope that new leaf survives being neglected while I’ve been in Kingston. I’d really hate to see that little sprout whither and die again. I guess all it takes is a little determination, right?

For the most part, I’d have to say my time here in Kingston has been well spent. That being said, not one of the workshops I’ve attended has been what I thought it would be from the description. And I will admit to being a little disappointed in a couple of them. But that’ll be a post for next week. :-D

Tomorrow the proof will be in the pudding. It’ll be my first full day back and I’m really hoping I’ll be able to slide back into the routine I was starting to establish last week. The only thing I have in my day planner for the week is the stitch-in at the library, but will all that free time inspire me, or hinder me?

You know I work better under pressure, and there won’t be any pressure next week. My time is pretty much my own. I can’t help feeling that I got so much done last week because I had so little time to do it in.

I’ll have to come up with a really good installment for Winter’s Child to make up for skipping it last week. And that, to me, means I need to start working on it earlier. But it’s getting a little tricky, now that the creature’s getting a say in things. But honestly, I think we’re really close to the end. A couple more scenes with Joey, and then one with James.

I need to find my Illezie notes and get back to working on Elemental Spirit. Or maybe there’s a reason I can’t seem to find them. Maybe it’s a sign I should be starting over with them. I really think I need to start with the prophecy, because everything else revolves around that. Then maybe the rest will fall into place.

The poetry has actually been going fairly well lately, except for me dragging my heels about updating my poetry book. I think it’s even more important for me to do that now, because the workshop on poetry has got me all fired up about getting a poetry book out there.

Ideally, I’d like to get the writing stuff done during the day so I can go back to crafting at night. I want to finish the kit I’m working on so I can get back to my zentangle sampler. I will try not to think about beading, because that way leads to another project to work on. LOL

I was doing well with my exercise, then I came to Kingston. I’ve been getting some walking in, but I forgot my weights. So first thing on my list for next week is to get back on the exercise wagon. And the dietician said that walking every day after breakfast will help with my blood sugar, so I’m going to start doing that too. Lord knows that after Writersfest I’ll need to!

It’s been a long few days. I haven’t done any site seeing this time around, but I’ve done a LOT of shopping on Princess Street. And the writing I’ve done has pretty much been limited to the workshops. But the good news is, that starting next week I won’t have any problem figuring out what to write about on my Sunday blogs for a while.

I’m actually eager to get back home and see if I can nurse that new leaf into growing again. Who knows, maybe one day I’ll be here holding a workshop.

Stranger things have happened.

In the Dark

Electricity is the power that causes all natural phenomena not known to be caused by something else.
— Ambrose Bierce

With great power comes great electricity bills.
— unknown

So many power outages lately
No one wants to shed light on the matter
—upjoke

It’s Friday night and I’m sitting here writing this in the dark. It’s evening time and our power went out about 45 minutes ago. But one of the reasons I went with Lenovo the last time I bought a new laptop is the awesome battery life. Because I have no access to the internet (which sucks up energy), I have just over 7 hours of battery life. This is the perfect opportunity to get some writing done, don’t you think?

The thing is, I had already planned on working on my Sunday post tonight, because tomorrow (Saturday) we have a barbeque to go to that’s going to cut a big chunk out of my day, and I really wanted to get at least the first half of the post done instead of leaving it for the last minute like I usually do. So here I am, rambling away in the dark.

If I had any games on this computer, I’d probably play them instead of trying to get something constructive done (like this blog post), but this is supposed to be my working computer and the only games I have access to are through the internet. Which, of course, is down because of the power outage.

Okay, that’s a lie. I do have one game saved on my laptop. It’s called Nethack, and it’s old as dirt. It’s a single player game and the object is to work your way from room to room, fighting monsters and collecting loot, looking for the stairs that will take you down to the next level in search of the Amulet of Yendor which is somewhere around the 20th level. The graphics are really basic, but it’s still kind of fun.

The daughter’s been texting me as I type this. She doesn’t live too far away so her power is out too. She was complaining, whining, pointing out that they hadn’t had dinner yet – she’d been planning to do frozen pizza. So I told her to get it delivered, to which she replied that the data on her phone was glitchy and she was having trouble getting to the website to order.

My suggestion that she use her phone as a, you know, phone and call for delivery was met with derision. Apparently, that’s not what a phone is for these days. Anyway, she got through and got her pizza ordered. Looks like the outage is only at our end of town.

Wow, it’s really dark out there now. It was pretty overcast today, so the solar lights didn’t get to build up much of a charge. I’ve had to turn the brightness of my laptop way down – it’s the only light I’ve got right now and I can’t see anything beyond the screen. I should really go light some candles so it’s not pitch dark in here.

One of the cats is cuddled to my legs; I have no idea where the other cat is. She’s mostly dark in a dark room. If she’s smart, she’ll take advantage of the cover of darkness and she’ll be sleeping on the dining room table, where she’s not allowed to be. See? There are advantages to a power outage . . . if you’re a cat.

At least this isn’t the dead of winter, where it would be starting to get a mite chilly by now. And thanks to the storm front rolling through last night and the high winds we have now (which probably helped with the power outage) we’re not suffering from the heat. We haven’t needed the air conditioning on all day, and the wind coming in the deck door is nice and cool.

AND when I replaced my Kindle a year or two ago, I was smart enough to get a Paperwhite. Its lit up screen makes for easy reading, even in the dark.

Now, if the power would come on long enough for me to make a cup of tea, things would be perfect.

* ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ *

WORDAGE REPORT

THE WEEK IN REVIEW
The word for last week would have to be surprising.

It was surprising in that although it was another week of babysitting, I got my blog posts done super early. Even this one. Mostly. The installment for Winter’s Child wasn’t early, but I didn’t stay up as late finishing it as I did the week before.

The week actually went by fairly quickly and though I did spend a fair amount of time reading, I found that I spent way less time on games. This bodes well for the week ahead, don’t you think? And I spent a little time in my office, so hopefully that’ll carry through to next week too.

No company to distract me last week, but I did have a couple of social obligations – one was the stitchery luncheon, and the other was lunch out with a poetry friend. I was gone for most of the time the granddaughter was here the day of the stitchery thing, but apparently she and Grappy really enjoyed their one on one time.

It’s so hard to believe there’s only a couple of weeks left in August!

NEW WORDS:
2214+720+244+904=4,082
DOWN 108 – words from last week

I’ve been pretty consistent with my words the last couple of weeks. It seems like I’m staying within about a hundred words, either up or down. I think consistency is a good thing though, don’t you?

Yes, it really did help that I turned off the upstairs air conditioner when I went to bed last week. It wasn’t really cool enough (until Friday night) to sleep with the window open, but at least keeping it shut it took longer for the bedroom to warm up.

I forgot one night, and left it on, but that’s a mistake I won’t be making again. The quality of sleep I got that night was terrible. I was tired and had low energy (and motivation) for the rest of the day. Lesson learned.

I finally realized the secret to getting this Sunday post done a little earlier, so I’m not staying up super late Saturday night or scrambling to get it done Sunday morning, is to come up with a topic for the first part earlier in the week. Normally I do the wordage report first, and hope something comes to me. Some times it works, most times it doesn’t.

Maybe if I started working on some of those exercises I keep saying I’m going to work on, I’d have something legitimate to talk about.

Goals For Next Week:
Work on some exercises, get blog posts done early.

EDITING:
Two pages!

Okay, maybe two pages isn’t exactly exclamation mark worthy, but it’s better than I’ve been doing the last few months. Having the manuscript printed out and keeping it in the living room instead of in a pile of stuff on my typewriter really did seem to help. I managed to mark up those two pages pretty good while the granddaughter was focused on the exploits of Captain Underpants.

Goal For Next Week:
Keep marking up Elemental Spirit.

POETRY:
Another pretty easy form for the week. But trust me when I say it wasn’t a deliberate choice. I have a list, in no particular order, of forms with brief descriptions, and that one was the first one to catch my eye.

I almost went to the monthly poetry reading, but I wasn’t sure I could handle that many people. I’d already had one people-y event under my belt for the week, with two more coming up. I can only take so many of these things before they adversely affect me, and I’ve been doing pretty well lately so I didn’t want to take the chance.

In any case, I should have more time for writing this week, so maybe I can finally start updating that big book ‘o poems I have and start cherry picking them for the anthology I keep talking about. I’ve got to start somewhere, right?

Goal For Next Week:
Get a new form ready to share, update my big book ‘o poems.

CRAFTING:
I was all set to try the papier mâché on Monday, but it was kind of a slow day and the granddaughter wasn’t so keen.

Tuesday I had a potluck garden party with the stitchery group. I have to say, we’re a fun bunch of ladies. Of course there was a lot more socializing than actual stitching, but the rain that was forecast held off until much later. We had some guests from another couple of guilds and there were a pair of ladies who have a mobile stitchery supply trailer and did some brisk business during the afternoon.

I finished the floral kit I was working on, and started the next one (it’s a series of four). When I started the first one, I figured I’d offer the whole series up for sale at the Christmas craft sale. However, I learned at the luncheon that the group isn’t participating in the sale this year. So now what will I do with them?

Thursday I had everything ready for granddaughter and I to give the papier mâché a try. We squeezed as much water as we could out of the paper (that had been soaking in water for several days by now) and added the glue, and had fun squishing it around. However, the consistency wasn’t good and it was very clumpy. In other words, it was a bust.

But Gramie had a contingency plan. I’d bought some air clay, which was more like soft modeling foam, and we had a lot of fun making stuff out of it. She even convinced Grappy to give it a try. :-)

Goal For Next Week:
Organize my jewelry supplies, figure out what’s next with the zentangle sampler.

WHAT I’M READING:
I’m still reading Stories With Bite, a collection of vampire stories by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. It’s really slow going, because honestly I have to be in the mood for something like this and I haven’t been.

I finished Pushin’ Buttons, the first in the Boot Knocker Ranch series by Em Petrova, and followed up with Body Language, Reining Men, and Ropin’ Hearts, also by Em Petrova. Now I’m about halfway through the fifth in the Boot Knocker Ranch series, Rope Burn.

Goal For Next Week:
Work a little harder at reading Stories With Bite so I can move on to something else.

THE WEEK AHEAD:

This week I no longer have babysitting as an excuse for not writing more. The granddaughter has day camp, so I only have to worry about picking her up when it’s done. And considering I’ve been doing better than I expected while looking after her, I have high expectations of what I can achieve this week.

I do want to organize myself a little better for crafts for us to do together our last week of the summer. Since we had so much fun with the foamy clay, I might try finding some regular modeling clay for us to play with. I already have another tie dye kit – this one using regular dye – and I’ve ordered some items online for us to dye. Hopefully they arrive by then.

And I really do want to prioritize my crafting, keeping in mind that Christmas is coming. I’m kind of scattered when it comes to crafts, which is why none of them get done. I’ve learned it’st not enough to be organized, I need to pick a craft or two and stick with it.

Winter’s Child isn’t exactly turning into a whole different story than it started out to be, but the focus has changed. It’s surprising me, to be honest, but in a good way. But I’m coming to a part of the story where I have a decision to make, which will have an impact on the rest of the story.

My idea of keeping my mark-up copy of An Elemental Spirit in the living room was obviously a good one, even if I only marked up two pages of it. I think for the first run-through I’ll continue showing my progress in pages, and with the second run-through I’ll switch to hours. In any case, I want to see a minimum 10 pages marked up this week.

It’s pretty obvious that I’m enjoying the Boot Knocker Ranch series on the Kindle. But I’ve halfway through the fifth book and there are only six in the series. Pretty easy to guess that I’ll be looking for a new e-book early in the week. So maybe it might be a good idea if I keep the e-reading strictly to the exercise bike so I can make some progress on reading Tales With Bite.

I feel like I made better use of my time last week, so let’s see if I can do even better this week. With the granddaughter in day camp for the week, I’m once again faced with a lot of time on my hands. Let’s see how many days it takes before I’m back to my old habits.

Bets anyone?

Missed Opportunity

We’ve all got a black book of missed opportunities.
— Jim Broadbent

Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.
— Thomas Edison

It may be that you've just missed a great opportunity that should have been your turning point towards the direction of greatness. What next? Go into your closet and learn your lessons; opportunity missed may not be regained, but new opportunity can be recreated with the will that have to work harder!
― Israelmore Ayivor

Well, my blogging break is officially over and I have to say it was a bit of a bust. I had expected to use my time to get my writing back on track, but alas, it was not to be. In fact, I was pretty darn busy with other stuff, so much so that I was sorely tempted to take another week. But seriously, I don’t think it would have helped. Maybe later in the summer I’ll take another week.

So what did I do if I wasn’t writing? I went strawberry picking one morning, and had to keep taking breaks because the humidity made me so dizzy I almost passed out. The strawberries were amazing this year, and I picked more than I should have. Rather than freeze them all, I made jam. Specifically, strawberry rhubarb jam and strawberry pineapple jam.

I spent several days working on the granddaughter’s dress for the Father/Daughter Disco Ball. Yeah. It was a bit of a disaster, and I’ll be devoting my Monday blog post to the gruesome details, with pictures. Let’s just say it was pretty disappointing.

And school’s out for the summer, which means we get the pleasure of the granddaughter’s company a couple of days a week. Because of her parents’ schedules, we only get her Wednesdays and Thursdays. She’s eight now, and pretty easy to deal with – playtime/crafts before lunch, swimming after lunch. Of course she’s part mermaid and if she had it her way she’d be in the pool as soon as she gets here and wouldn’t get out again until it was time to leave. LOL

I had lunch with a friend I hadn’t seen in a while, but not as long as it usually runs because I also had the privilege of playing chauffeur, using the father-in-law’s caddie to take the son-in-law and granddaughter to the ball. She wanted to buy some strawberries so we went to a fruit stand (not the one I picked them at) but they were sold out. But they did have something called haskap berries, which we couldn't resist buying. I've never even heard of them before, but I'm still going to figure out how to make jam out of them.

The weather last week was hot and steamy, and sucked the energy right out of me. We were even running the air conditioning upstairs (it’s a separate unit) 24/7. The kittens didn’t like the fact I had the windows all shut, and in retaliation they jumped on the hose that vents the hot air outside on the upstairs unit and so it was blowing hot air instead of cold into the bedrooms, a fact I discovered just as I was going to bed one night.

Okay, of course they aren’t that devious. I’m sure it was an accident. Pretty sure, anyway. LOL

I also did a bunch of little things I’ve been putting off, but no writing. *sigh* Which was whole point of the blogging vacation.

So not only did I not get back on track, I wasn’t even at the right station.

* ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ *

WORDAGE REPORT

THE WEEK IN REVIEW
The word to describe last week would have to be – disappointing.

Well, seeing as I pretty much covered last week in the post above, I don’t have a lot to report here, do I?

I think the most disappointing part of last week was how much the weather got to me. Between the smoky haze from the fires still burning up north, the overall record breaking heat, and the humid, overcast skies that never made good on their threat of rain, my energy and motivation were pretty much tanked.

I did manage to keep up with my morning pages, although one day it was more like a mid-morning page, and another morning it was only half a page. The jury is still out on whether or not they’re doing any good. Most days I feel like it’s just a whinier, more extended part of my journal.

Seeing as I wrote no words last week, I’ll use the ones from the week before for my report.

NEW WORDS:
1895+543+385+896=3,719
DOWN 719 – words from last week

I think the numbers pretty much say it all. It looks like I was already on a downward slide as far as producing words went. With everything else I had going on last week, the chances are pretty good I would have missed a blog post or two. Or at least upped my stress over writing them.

Goals For Next Week:
Get my blog posts written and posted on time.

EDITING:
0 hours

Obviously, if I wasn’t writing last week I wasn’t editing, but I did think about it a bit. I’m thinking I should make a list of all the stuff that needs work, but then again, it would be a very long list and it would be both intimidating and depressing.

Goal For Next Week:
Get to work on Elemental Spirit or some other piece that’s collecting dust.

POETRY:
We finally had our poetry group’s business meeting, but one of the members (who arrived late) kept injecting personal anecdotes and pontificating on things that weren’t at issue, so the meeting ran rather long. I finally got fed up and left after two hours.

While I didn’t work on any poetry posts, I did do some research on three new forms, so I suppose that’s better than nothing.

Goal For Next Week:
Pick one of the new poetry forms to share.

CRAFTING:
Still don’t have my baker’s rack set up, but maybe this week.

The stitchery group is officially on hiatus for the summer, but we still meet unofficially at the library every other week. I’m struggling a bit with my sampler, a lot of it has to do with the thickness of the canvass I’m working on.

To make myself feel better about it, I ordered a couple of sampler kits from Amazon so I can try out the fancy stitches on a more appropriate fabric. And while I was at it, I also ordered a trio of butterflies to stitch that have one plain wing and one fancy stitch wing.

I spent considerable time planning and then working on the granddaughter’s dress for the Disco Ball, which as far as I’m concerned was a stupid theme for a fancy dance. Check out my regular blog on Monday for the details.

Goal For Next Week:
Continue on my sampler, check out the kits I got.

WHAT I’M READING:
My Kindle got a good workout while I was on vacation. I finished Justice for Corrie in the Badge of Honor: Texas Heroes series by Susan Stoker. Then I read Wild Side by Mari Carr, HOT Pursuit, HOT Angel, and HOT SEAL, by Lynn Raye Harris. I kinda think there was another Susan Stoker book in there too, but I didn’t write it down and I haven’t put any of them on my Goodreads page yet.

Goal For Next Week:
Keep up the good reading habits.

THE WEEK AHEAD:

To be honest, I don’t want to make too many plans for the week ahead because I think a lot of it will depend on the weather. Yesterday was less humid and more sunny, and we’re not supposed to get rain until about Wednesday, but you just never know. But I do know that if we get the overcast skies again I can’t count on my energy levels.

I’m determined to get some kind of writing done, other than blog posts this week. At one time I had a thought for a series of stories loosely based on the muses, and I had an idea for one that I barely started. So maybe I’ll see if I can interest myself in working on it.

I also want to get working on Elemental Spirit. This is starting to drag out as long as Magical Mayhem, which is ridiculous. I don’t know what my problem is.

Of everything, poetry seems to come easiest to me. It would be nice to get a couple of easier forms done up to have on hand so I can spend a little more time on a more difficult form. And I want to send my own invented form to a specific poetry site (which will remain nameless for now) that would get my form great exposure, if it’s accepted.

My stitchery group is going on a road trip this Tuesday. We’re meeting at a crafting store in another town to spend the day doing needlework. And probably pick up a bunch of supplies we don’t need. LOL

I used to only read on my Kindle when I was riding the stationary bike, but I’ve been reading on it A LOT lately. This week I’d like to try expanding my reading to include tree books again.

I feel like I’m further from the track than ever, but maybe this week I can at least find my way to the station.

Editing Your Own Poetry and Writersfest Wrap-up

I need about one hundred fifty drafts of a poem to get it right, and fifty more to make it sound spontaneous.
― James Dickey

Writing poetry is a passion, ignited by thoughts, fueled by ink. A way to travel through another mind, where souvenirs of tears are tucked away inside your soul. Or leave you with smiles for miles, depending on which route you go.
― Renee Dixon

...when a good poet is confronted with difficult facts that he knows to be true but also are inimical to poetry, he has no choice but to flee to the margins; it was...this very retreat that allowed him to hear the hidden music that is the source of all art.
― Orhan Pamuk, Snow

The final workshop I attended at Writersfest, was Editing Your Own Poetry, presented by Otoniya J. Okot Bitek. There was actually a workshop that came after it, but I kind of skipped that one.

Despite the name of this workshop, it never occurred to me to bring a poem with me to edit. My bad! But even if I had, because I work so heavily with forms and the form would have been ruined if I’d followed her suggestions. To be fair, the course description said to “bring your inspired ideas, your phrases, single words, manifestos, dreams and together we will sculpt out a space from which you can learn to edit your own poem.” It did not say to bring a finished poem.

Mostly what we were given was a series of questions about our poems:
Why this form?
In what other forms can this poem appear?
Try changing it to a haiku, limerick, lyric, sonnet – what happens?
What is your poem about?
What else could it be about?
One word – what is your poem about?

Why does this poem need/want to be in the world? What does it do? The space between these two questions is where you edit.

What surprises you about this poem?
Where might the surprise be hiding?
Where’s the volta (the turn of thought or dramatic shift)?
What do you like about this poem?
What does this teach you about your own style?
In what tradition do you write?
How do you mark yours in that tradition?

And unfortunately, that was pretty much it for the notes I took. I did, however, come away with a poem:

Observations From the Fifth Floor

White horses chase
small shard of ice –
the flag snaps to attention –
solid water separates in the harbour
the breath of the current
inhaling the sheets of ice together
and exhaling them apart.
I watch it all safely
from behind the glass.

And thus ends my reports on the Kingston Writersfest Retreat. I was only disappointed in two of the classes, which is not bad, percentage wise. I learned a lot, and more importantly I learned different things than I did at the last one. And I made a few friends along the way.

I took way too much stuff with me, but then you never really know what to take, do you? The weather was cold and rainy, so I stuck pretty much to the hotel and I learned the benefit of staying in the same hotel as where the event was being held. I believe the next one is being held at the Holiday Inn, and you can be sure I’ll be making my hotel reservation in time to stay there.

And yes, I will definitely be going to the next one, which I believe is being held at the end of September. It’s good to get together with other creative people. The workshops offer a wealth of information. And not having to cook or clean for several days isn’t bad either. ;-)

So now, all that’s left is waiting patiently for the tickets to go on sale for the next one.

* ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ *

WORDAGE REPORT

THE WEEK IN REVIEW
Last week was . . . interesting. I actually feel like I’m making progress. There was a nice blend of stitchery, reading, and writing, and my best day was Wednesday, my day off.

I was still feeling rather blah, and I was tired of struggling, so I decided to take Wednesday off. I did not go to the gym, and I did not do anything I felt I had to do or needed to do, I just did whatever I felt like doing. And because I gave myself permission to do so, I felt absolutely no guilt.

It was great – I highly recommend it. It’s not something you want to do too often, mind you, or it loses its impact, but every once in awhile I think it’s good for your mental health. You should try it some time!

So what did I do? I did my morning pages, because it’s becoming a habit. I read – not in one big block of time, but at several points between doing other things. I tried a meditation free-writing, like they had us doing to start each session in the retreat I went to a couple of years ago and came away with an interesting beginning to . . . something.

I had a couple of unintentional naps with the kitties and during one of them I was kind of pinned in place, unable to move enough to reach my lap top or even a book. I didn’t really feel like napping myself so I gave my imagination free reign. Next thing you know, I’m trying to ease myself over enough to grab a notebook (without disturbing the cat) so I could write down a two-page summation of a new story idea. So my do-nothing day was probably the best day of the week.

I had to invest in a new lap desk. Dinsdale likes to curl up under it when I’m reclined in my chair with it across my lap. I guess he was feeling a little feisty one day, so he rolled over onto his back and started attacking the padding. Next thing I know he’s pulled it away from the desk part and started ripping into the padding itself. *sigh*

My new lap desk is wider, and it has two folding legs (like one of those trays you can get for breakfast in bed). But it does not have padding, and I only have to use the legs if I want to, which raises the whole thing up higher. I’m sure I’ll get used to it in time.

NEW WORDS:
2779+599+334+737=4,449
UP 957 – words from last week

Up quite a bit from last week, aren’t I? And that doesn’t even include my morning pages, which I’ve been doing faithfully, the two-page idea summation, nor the results of my creative meditation.

I think I need to practice getting back into the rhythm of using the Neo for distraction-free writing. I did start my installment of the Pond on it, but I didn’t get very far and ended up uploading it to the lap top to finish.

The father-in-law came across something rather interesting that he passed on to me. It’s an ancient word processor. I haven’t checked to see if it works yet, but it has a slot for a floppy disk and it comes with its own printer – pretty sure it’s a dot matrix. Even if it works, I’m not sure how much use it’ll be, but I’m sure I’ll have fun checking it out.

Goals For Next Week:
Get all my blog posts done and maybe a few extra words besides.

EDITING:
0 hours
Here’s the thing.

Okay, There’s not really a thing, it’s just me not doing it..

I think Elemental Spirit is like exercising first thing in the morning. I need to stop thinking about it and just do it. The real stickler is the prophecy. If I can just get that worked out then the rest should fall into place. But every time I try, my imagination seems to come up against a brick wall.

And yes, I did put it on my list.

Goal For Next Week:
Figure out the prophecy; get editing Elemental Spirit.

POETRY:
Last week I tackled another Irish form, and lo and behold it didn’t kill me. LOL I guess I just have to be in the right mind set to work on the Irish forms, sometimes they seem harder than others.

I had ideas for a couple of other poems, but I haven’t really done anything with them yet. This is part of my problem – a line or two gets stuck in my head, so I write it down to un-stick it, and then I promptly forget about it until I’m leafing through my writing journal looking for something else and stumble across it again.

Goal For Next Week:
Find another new poetry form to share. Expand on the other poems I started.

CRAFTING:
The work is going steadily on my zentangle sampler. I’m just about finished the first square. Now, when we did zentangle with pens, we started out with a box inside a slightly larger box. I stitched the outline of the outer box with my first square, but then I just basted where I wanted the inner box to be.

Now I’m thinking I should have defined the outline better. As in, I should have drawn the second box in and then stitched it was well, perhaps with a different outline stitch. I can still stitch the inner box, of course, but it’s not going to look nearly as good.

And I have good news! I was over at the father-in-law’s yesterday, helping him clean out the room where my baker’s rack is, and the baker’s rack itself. It’s all ready to go, we just have to wait for the guy with the truck and several strong men to help him carry it. That sucker is heavy!

As well as the word processor and a car load of donations, I came away with my mother-in-law’s sewing box, one of those big wooden ones that unfolds into three levels. I’m not sure if I’m going to keep it, or just repair it and clean it up and then donate it.

I also ended up with a big box of art supplies – paints, brushes, books. There was a wooden paint box that just needs to be cleaned up a bit. I’ll have to go through it all to determine what can be saved and what should just be chucked.

Goal For Next Week:
Keep working on my sampler; sort through the art supplies I brought home.

WHAT I’M READING:
I finished The Book of Magic, by Alice Hoffman, the final book in the Practical Magic series. And I’ve started reading The Little Flower Shop, by Lori Foster.

I started riding the bike again, so I dug out my Kindle. To my surprise it still had a charge, so I also read A Little Harmless Sex by Melissa Schroeder last week. And . . . when I added it to my Goodreads list I discovered I already read it – 10 years ago.

This is the one thing I don’t like about my Paperwhite – my old Kindle let me organize my books or delete them right on the device. This new one, I can’t even figure out how to update my library, let alone organize it. And the books all stay in some kind of cloud, they’re not stored on my device.

Goal For Next Week:
Keep reading.

THE WEEK AHEAD:

My lists kind of petered out towards the end of the week, so I need to make a concentrated effort to keep them up. They really do work, which is why the first half of my week was more productive than the second half.

I still want to keep up my morning pages, even though they’re still reading like an extended, whinier journal. Maybe it has something to do with writing them first thing in the morning before my brain is awake. It’s too bad I couldn’t write them while I’m still in bed and maybe try and record my dreams, not that I’m remembering them much.

This week is going to be busier – three medical appointments, plus a poetry gathering – but I think with the help of my lists I can stay on top of things. I’m set to finish the Pond this week, the final installment should be a bit of a surprise. I can’t believe no one figured out what Izolda’s spell (after Dmitri died) was all about.

The track still getting closer, one of these days . . .