Month: July 2016

OMG Moment

Striding along through sun and shadow, coping with and enjoying a summer breeze, my writing mind settles in. First comes a novel concept that opens up a grin. I’ll add it to the list but — well, it is interesting. But which ones aren’t? A lot to play with there. What POV should be used? Hmmm, the POV can really open it up. Oh, boy, that’s a dilemma because there’s so much more to already write — and edit, and publish.

But – to the novel at hand. Insert chapter 2 and write it, short one, then edit and revise chapter 3 and add this information/insights/events for her POV and then the same in chapter 4 for his POV and

OMG, now I see what’s going to happen. OMG, the whole direction deluged me, the hows and whys of what’s happening now, besides HIS ongoing issues about losing his sanity and trying to learn about his past, and HER ongoing issues as a killer on the run.

Excitement rolls a tide through me. I walk faster and faster, eager to get to the coffee shop, eager to write again. And here I am, quad shot mocha on the table, ready to write like crazy, one more time.

Isn’t it a beautiful day?

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Cat Songs

I often sing to my cats. They’re usually a chorus of a song I know, modified to include some variation of feline activity or with the word, ‘cat’ or ‘kitty’. Yeah, original, but I’m still going to inflict some sampes on the rest of the world.

The first is Rebel Meow, based on Rebel Yell, Billy Idol:

With a rebel meow, he purred, “More, more, more.” Meow.

In the midnight hour kitty, “More, more, more,” 

With a rebel meow, he purred, “More! More, more, more.”

Oo yeah, that chunky kitty

He wants more.

 

The second is Kitty of the morning, where I malign Angel of the Morning, Juice Newton:

Just call me kitty, in the morning, kitty

Just scratch my chin before you leave me,

Kitty

 

I won’t go into, “I used the litter box, baby,” based on Jeopardy, Greg Kihn.

Hey, you were warned.

 

 

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Brexit – The Hairline Fracture*

H. and I have just come back from a two-week holiday in Rome.  We left Great Britain, we left the United Kingdom, and have come back to Little England, with everything this implies.  For the first …

Source: Brexit – The Hairline Fracture*

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Full Blown Writing Season

I live on spectrums. My moods and energies slide through seasons – or seasons slide along my spectrums. I’m not certain of their true relationship or the degree to which these things are fixed. I don’t know how to predict them. Don’t know what tilting, spinning, revolving, and rotating affects them. I can define specific, larger personal seasons. Lethargy, laziness, apathy, anger, blackness, joy, happiness, excitement, restlessness, I know these seasons among others. Some would call these moods. Moods, a temporary feeling, happens within the seasons, much like you can have a cold summer day or a warm winter day. I can experience a shift through a mood from my season but the season dominates. Moods are more temporary.

I’m in full blown writing season this week. Writing becomes effortless, but more, writing and thinking about writing, rises up. It seems like every thought, observation and experience triggers a desire to write about it. Words, sentences, scenes flow like runoff from a huge rain storm.

Seasons like this have taken me in other realms, too, so they’re not specific to writing. People in other professions and endeavors know what it’s like to be ‘in the zone.’ That’s how this feels. I know about being in the zone from sports and analysis. My vision, thinking and focus are all sharpened, my concentration is heightened. Time becomes more personal and slower. I can feel and sense micro-shifts that position me to be ready.

It’s a beautiful experience, no matter where and when it comes, from sports to math to art, performing, and writing. When it’s a good season, like this, it’s best to enjoy the time. The seasons do turn.

 

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Editing in a Nutshell

Very few professional editors will teach you how to edit your manuscript for free. It’s a stupid business idea. Consequentially, you won’t find many quality guides, and if you do, you&#…

Source: Editing in a Nutshell

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Mysterious Writing

Writing sometimes seems like such a mysterious process. It used to deeply mystify me as I would apply the questions, the who/what/why/how/when melange that flavors fiction and struggle forward.

Not so today, this week. I sit down, open up, read a bit of what’s written and resume. I guess I’ve trained and ordered my mind to ‘think like a writer’ and create fiction. But this book is coming along so seamlessly, I worry that perhaps it’ll be thin and bland. I wonder, if it’s easy writing, is it poor story telling? If it’s easy, is it too predictable, too simplistic? Yet, I enjoy it.

It might be that I’ve been reading wonderful fiction, having just finished The Signature of All Things and now progressed two thirds through My Brilliant Friend. I’ll often end up editing books because they’re written in passive voice, or they tell and then show, or the reverse, at any rate, displaying a need for editing. Not so with Gilbert and Ferrante’s books. Ferrante especially creates such a sense of people and place that I’m inspired.

So maybe this is just a zone contrived from writing the third book in a series (which gives me intimacy with the characters) and reading writers I enjoy. After thinking about the matter, I’ll not worry myself about it. Take it for what it is, a blessing, a luxury. Perhaps it’ll end in a day, an hour, a minute. Just write like crazy and see where I end up when I’m done.

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A History of Writing

The Atlantic provides a perspective of writing software. It fascinates me because of my personal history. I began with WordStar on a CPM 86 machine with a small green screen, and two 5 1/4 inch floppy disk drives. WordStar worked well for me but bundled software forced me to a switch to WordPro. WordPro was set up on a Zenith 150 with a 20 meg hard drive and two 5 1/4 floppy drives and an EGA 16 color screen. The colors didn’t matter but the resolution still wasn’t great. Switching to a VGA screen with 256 colors enhanced the experience. I still wrote in tablets and notebooks with a pen and then typed it all up.

Having a natural bent toward being a geek, I used to be really proficient with those programs, learning formatting, editing and saving secrets on my own. Friends and co-workers would come by or call me, asking for help about setting margins, centering, pagination, headers and other matters. People then wrote these insights up and made money off them by publishing books about these secrets, which never entered my mind to do.

Eventually, Microsoft became the Godzilla that wiped everything out, leaving me with Word. I adjusted to Word well in the early years. But modern improvements have made it less friendly. Word offer a gazillion templates when I use two. It’s odd how selecting File versus clicking on Open takes you down different paths. Adopting from version to version as the operating system changed has been a major irritant. I also eventually switched from a tower to laptops and notebooks, discarding the notebooks. I was sad to let them go. They, along with pens, were friends and companions, pets of sorts, for a struggling writer.

I honestly thought shifting to writing directly onto a computer instead of paper would be challenging. Perhaps using email and filling out computer forms over the years helped, but the change was easier than I expected. I even came to recognize the many advantages of using an electronic media to create.

I still read books in paper formats, though. Although I read and edit my own online, almost everyone else’s is printed out or purchased in a hard format. Yes, I have devices to read them, but that change is surprisingly taking me longer. I’ve seen articles about fonts and colors and the impact on reading on a computer but to me, it seems to be that I like shifting the book around for different angles, and that still doesn’t work well with the electronic devices.

Of course, it really doesn’t matter to me whether I’m reading a book online or a hard copy, as long as I’m reading. I guess that was the lesson for the transition from paper to computer, from WordStar to Word, it doesn’t matter, as long as I’m writing.

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Something Had Hold of Me

Affirmations, meditations,

nothing seemed to work

sleeping, eating, drinking,

nothing seemed to work

trying, hoping, begging,

nothing seemed to work

something had hold of me

something let me go

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