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!

The whole kit and caboodle, er, kitty and computer

So I got my laptop back today!! My awesome father was able to fix it for me by replacing a cable—now the screen doesn't go black at almost every angle and I can see what I'm doing again. Hooray!! :-)

Also, my husband and I got a KITTY!! And he's amazing and so adorable! His name is Bertram:

Writing hasn't been going too well… the short story got kind of frustrating and I'm not quite sure what to do with it at this point. I did make some notes on a massive novel rewrite I've been wanting to work on for a while, so I might switch gears to that. We'll see!

A little over halfway through The Runaway King—it's a pirate's life for Jaron right now. :-)

All righty. Now that I've added a few more cat pictures to the internet, I think that'll do it for today. Over and out!

Friday, Friday, Bloggin' on a Friday

Okay, it's update time!

I'm 7,264 words into my new story so far……… Most definitely going to surpass 10K at this point, but I think I'll be able to edit it back down again. I really didn't feel like doing any outlining or backstory brainstorming so I'm kinda figuring all that out as I go along, which leads to more verbiage than is strictly necessary (I think, haha). I go back and forth on whether I like this thing so far, but currently I do, and at any rate I think I can make something cool out of it. Today all that's happened is my MC has been following a wolf into his house and observing all the architecture. She finally made it to her room, though, so hopefully the story can progress now. :-)

In other news, I finished A Girl of Fire and Thorns yesterday and I really liked the ending. I always appreciate when an author is able to simultaneously bring proper resolution to the story AND whet my appetite for the sequel. Too many books end too soon and too abruptly for me, but this one hit the perfect balance. Fire and Thorns had a lot of twists and turns and ended up being a different sort of book than I thought it would be at the beginning—one particular twist completely SHOCKED me, but it was definitely a super brave thing to do, writing-wise. Definitely need the sequel now…

Also, the Once Upon a Time finale left me desperate for Season Three, and the spin off Once Upon a Time in Wonderland looks really, really cool. Also, also, I need to catch up on Doctor Who. I'm four episodes behind, I think.

Okay, that's about it.

Toodle-pip!

No.

Dear Fledgling Story,

No, you may not be a novel. You will be a short story, and stay under 10,000 words. I mean it.

Firmly,

Your Author

Something New

I'm writing a new story. ♥