Sad Day

This is a sad day. For those of you that don't know, my husband is stationed at Fort Hood. He is currently deployed but I am still here. I'm fine, so far most everyone I personally know is fine. This is such a tragedy.


I have no more words. God be with them all.

Music and Writing

Everyone that's doing NaNo...how are you doing?

I keep remembering on the forums how people would ask what music you listen to while writing. I would always said whatever is on the radio or that I'd have a movie playing in the background.

I've discovered that there is one album that helps me. If I play it, I'll be lost in the writing world forever. Whether I'm writing or editing. That album is A Fine Frenzy's One Cell in the Sea.

So I can now say that yes, music does help me write. It's kinda nice. I almost have a writing prep routine now. Turn off the TV, I'd put the phone on silent if my husband was home, turn on that music and get to work. So far it's working every time. :)

Do any of you have certain things you do before you start writing?

Cake pops = Fail

Looks yummy though doesn't it?

Attempting Bakerella's Cake Pops did not go well. Didn't fail horribly. We just didn't want to eat them after the first bite.


I think this is where we failed:

The frosting to cake ratio was not ideal. I figured that out when I discovered we could do this:


Way too much frosting. Bakerella's look slightly more crumbly. We forged on and did our best to coat them in the candy. The candy tasted pretty good. The actual cake part of the pop tasted like uncooked cake batter. The texture was gooy in a very bad way.

I will attempt them again, with less frosting and probably a denser cake. The plan was to make presents and ornaments, as testers for Christmas. We were going to do green and red, but nixed the red as soon as we knew we had failed.

We being myself and my friend, who I really don't think would like having her name on here, we'll call her 'Anabelle'. Why Anabelle? 'Cause I like that name and she has no vote. :D




Separate Note

I'm making progress towards my goal. It's not always great progress, but I'm moving in the right direction.

And I keep spelling progress wrong. I want to spell it 'progess'. Why? I have no idea. Just like why I randomly spell words with the European/Canadian spellings. Like colour. I know I just like how that looks. But still.

And I'm rambling again. I do that a lot lately. Not much focus. Anywoot.

I hope you all are doing decently well.

:)

Things I Like (And an extra cupcake tidbit!)

Taking my cue from Anita's Post, here's a list of things I really like/love. Some are things, some are events.

* Trying a new recipe and having it come out super delicious.
* Rainy days when I can actually sleep in with no one nagging me.
* Having everything I HAVE to do, done before noon.
* Double stuffed oreos. ..oreoes? Oreo's? Brain fart.
* Deep dish pizza, from domino's.
* The welcome home ceremony on Cooper field. Something I don't mind only going to once every 2 years. :D
* When someone stops my husband to shake his hand and say thank you. (Only happens in his uniform, random people don't thank a 22 yr old in flip flops.)
* Writing.
* Reading.
* Pizza rolls.
* Cold winter days. Don't get many down here in Texas.
* Blooming flowers. From a distance, I have crazy allergies.
* Good friends hanging out having fun.
* My new mattress. It's all of 4 days old. :D
* Mop 'n Glow.
* Being able to rent a carpet shampooer.
* French fries.

Okay so the fact that five of my things related to food doesn't escape me. What can I say, I love food.

Cupcake Tidbit:

Just stumbled onto this blog, Mini Baker. She's running a contest to win this awesome looking cupcake book. I know most of my followers are writers, not bakers, but it's cute! The book claims anyone can make those cute cupcakes!

Go check it out. :D

No Excuse!

I have 30 days to complete my goal. One month. Woot!

I will not be doing NaNo this year. (nanowrimo.org, check it out if you don't know what it is.)

I love the rush of it, but 50k in a month makes me way too sloppy. Going back and editing a NaNo novel is just not fun. Maybe next year, when I've just gotten better at writing in general.

I've got 25 chapters total. I have 6 done, and the prologue. I also want to give it a read through when I'm done, I'm figuring two days for that. I'm a fast reader and I will only be stopping to add notes, or to fix anything MAJOR. No line by line editing this time around. And I'll be looking for messed up tense. I switched from present to past. Why I wrote it in present I'll never know.

I have no excuse not to finish this. Now if my husband suddenly came home early, that would count. But that's not going to happen. So no excuse!

Oh and I have plans to attempt to make Bakerella's Cake Pops sometime soon, so I'll be sharing my hopefully successful adventure.

And I can't wait to start making Christmas cookies. My aunt has the best recipe...

gonna go before I start baking now. Laters!

:)

Presents and Goal Fixing

That is a wrapped Christmas present. For this year. Bought this year, not wrapped and forgotten about from last year. Have I really gotten to the point where I am buying and wrapping presents in October? How did that happen?

I am disgusted with myself for how long it's taking me to finish the second draft of Ivory. I've been using my birthday as a goal for this novel. So, I will have this second draft DONE by my birthday. At that point I'll give it another read through, fix any MAJOR blunders then pass it on to the people that have been waiting for me to finish it. (Really I want all that done by my birthday. So that is what will happen.) My birthday is November 18th.

I don't know if any of you watch Family Guy, but one of the running jokes is that the character Brian is writing a novel, and has been for quite some time. I want to finish this so I can try to get it published, either way I want to be able to file it under 'Done'.

Then I need to find a better goal than my birthday every year. I do not want to take another year to write a first draft. I think I'll shoot for June. I know my writing will basically stop right after my husband comes home. So June will give me about 6 months of active writing time to finish the first draft of my next novel.

Sad thing is, I already started that one. Then scraped it because I didn't like the style I was writing it in. I may just scrap the whole idea and try out another one. Sometimes stories just aren't ready to be written.

Early Morning Musings

I am not a morning person. Never have been and never will be. I prefer seeing the sunrise because I stayed up all night, rather than waking up for it. I love to sleep. Anyone who knows me will gladly agree. You don't wake me up even a minute before my alarm goes off. I'll curse and yell, turn my alarm off and sleep for another hour.

Then there are days like today where I had to be awake and functioning well before my normal time. How do I manage it? I sleep until the last possible second, rush around like crazy, yelling at myself for not getting up even 5 minutes earlier.

Every year this changes. When my husband is home I'm awake by 7. That's early for me. When he's not home, I manage to make the habit of being up by 9. This morning, I should have gotten up at 6:30, instead I crawled out of bed with literally 20 minutes to shower, get dressed, pack my laptop and writing stuff up, eat breakfast and get out the door.

I need 45 minutes to do all that calmly. So what didn't make the cut? Breakfast. I don't think I've ever taken a quicker shower. Before today, 12 minutes was my best. Managed it in 8 today. It's just not pleasant rushing a shower.

I don't like skipping breakfast. When I finally eat later today, it will open up a floodgate of hunger. I'll feel like I'm starving after I've eaten a full meal. Then I'll be hungry when I'm trying to go to sleep. So I'll finally give up trying to sleep and go eat something. Then I'll sleep, a few hours after the time I wanted to be asleep.

It's a viscous cycle. The only way I've found to get out of it was to simply stay up all night and go to bed on time the next night.

I do seem to be much more productive when overly tired. I would say I'd love to be like this all the time so I would write more, but then I remember my mad dash out the door this morning, my tendency to speed more, and I really don't want to do that. It stresses me out.

I'll (hopefully!) be starting college classes again next semester. The schedule won't require me to be leaving my house until 9:30am, but my husband will be home, so I'll have to be getting up for 7 anyways.

I know 7 am isn't early to a lot of people. My mom-in-law's idea of sleeping in, is 7am. I think she said she gets up at 4:30 every morning. Why? I have no idea.

Point to this post? I'm tired, it's my own fault. But I'm writing. Well, revising. Either way, I am writing new bits while fixing the old. The most fun I think I have when editing is reading over my work and saying to myself "Why did I write THAT?" The whole 'what was I thinking' thing.

Do any of you manage to stick to routines you set for yourself?