Delicious Chocolate Cookie

So I'm sitting in the office with the lights turned off and the fan on and the AC cranked up and I'm drinking iced tea and I just finished eating a delicious chocolate cookie. All completely necessary information, I know. But hey, it's hot out, and I gotta stay cool and hydrated, and who WOULDN'T want a delicious chocolate cookie? See, it all makes sense.

At any rate, on to the big writing news of the week!

***drumroll***

I started that huge novel rewrite!! It's for a novel I first wrote back in 2006 for NaNoWriMo, and I feel like it's a story that needs telling and I want to try again and see if I can get it right this time! There's an enormously long way to go, and a lot of big decisions I've gotta make along the way, but I have a good start so far and I'm pretty excited about it.

As for that short story, I've decided to leave it alone for a while. Writing is so weird. Sometimes things just need more time to gel, and I think that's where this story is. I do think I'll try again someday, but for now it needs to retreat into the subconscious and see if it can find a plot and some character development. Um, yeah…

I finished reading Dark Lord of Derkhelm earlier this week, and I just loved it. I'm always so impressed/amazed/inspired by Diana Wynne Jones. She wrote so many books during her lifetime and they're all so witty and strange and wonderful. She's a FANTASTIC storyteller. Dark Lord is just about up there with Fire and Hemlock and Howl's Moving Castle for me. I've read a ton of her books, but not all of them yet, which I need to remedy. I aspire to be as creative and productive as Diana!

And speaking of productive, I think I might go work on that novel revision for a while……

Cheers, and stay cool out there!!

P.S. Why is the tea all gone??

Bertie Does Some Reading

Where there's life, there's hope… Maybe?

The short story lives! Between yesterday and today I wrote over 3K on a massive wave of inspiration. I wrote the ending, and the very beginning, and I think it's pretty awesome. But I still have no middle. And it's super disjointed. And it currently sits at 12,651 words, which would be manageable to cut down to 10K—you know, if I had a middle already. :-/ I really don't know what to do next. This is probably why I usually outline. And write linearly. All that jazz. At least it's looking like a possibility that I'll have a fully formed story by the end of the month. Ish. My goal is to have the whole first draft done by next week, so I'll have time to put it aside for a few days before I dive into editing it and making it all shiny for submission on June 30th. I don't know, we'll see!!

Finished The Runaway King. Liked it all right, but it wasn't my favorite. It just felt kind of forced or something and I didn't really connect with the characters. :-(

I also read Nancy Werlin's Extraordinary over the weekend (it went so quick it didn't ever make it to my "Currently Reading" tab) and I LOVED IT SO MUCH. I could NOT put it down. The language and characters drew me in from the beginning and it was just a fabulous read. It's basically about evil faeries manipulating the MC Phoebe's life to try and get her to pay up on a promise made by her many-greats grandfather. It reminded me of Fire and Hemlock, which is always a good thing. Lovely, lovely book. In fact I'm pretty sure it's what spurred me on to do so much writing this week!