Wednesday, February 18, 2009

Laughing at Myself

This is why I am so glad I can laugh at myself.

Dave recommended this book to me in the comment section of this editing questions post. Helen Ginger backed up the recommendation on the same post. So I went out on a mission to find the book. None of the bookstores around here had it in stock. Didn't want to order it, I kept hoping the next store would have it.

I finally gave and decided to look it up on amazon. As soon as the picture popped up, I recognized the book cover. I stared at it for a moment, convinced I'd seen it before. I go to my bookshelf, dig to the back, and voila! There it is. With pages tagged with sticky notes and everything.

Turns out I got it early last year when all I could think about was getting to the point of being able to edit my novel that then, was still sitting at a dismal 52k. (post-NaNoWriMo blues) I bought it, read through it leaving sticky notes for parts that looked good, stuck it on the bookshelf and promptly forgot about it.

I just stood here, holding the book in my hand, laughing at myself for a good five minutes. Only me, would go searching store to store for a book I already had. If I had just looked at my bookshelf closely, I would have noticed it.

I will be spending the rest of the afternoon, going through the book again. What made me decide to check amazon today? I spent almost a hour trying to figure out how the heck I ended up with a scene 17 pages long, and half page scenes before and after it? Totally unbalanced and it was driving me crazy. :D

I hope you all are able to laugh at yourself when you do something silly.

Thursday, February 12, 2009

Sleepless night wanderings--semi-rambling

I often have sleepless, or at least near sleepless nights. At least when my husband is out of the country due to work.

Tonight I ended up at my cable providers website as my cable went on the fritz around 1:30am. I have already received a reply stating they have sent the reset signal to my cable box and if the problem persists to reboot my cable box, and if it's still there, to reply back saying it still is a problem. I haven't gotten to checking to see if it works. First today (okay, yesterday) my phone service went out, only to find out it was the phone itself, not the phone service. I don't feel like dealing anymore with customer service at the moment.

On to my wanderings. I ended up on WikiHow, because I can never remember the time to cook bacon in the microwave. Yep, I eat bacon at 2 in the morning. Mainly because my awesome fry pan is dirty. Then it lead me to Make Framed Eggs, which I make a lot, don't call it that though. I call it the toast thing with the egg in the middle. Now I want to go wash that fry pan, make one while taking pictures to update the site. I've never been a big wiki fan. But I like pictures when it comes to cooking.

Then I ended up on Forward Motion. I think Forward Motion is going to become a pretty awesome site for me. The site is huge and it is a lot to take in, but there is a ton of useful information, so it's worth it.

I decided the other day I wanted to attempt to switch to the Dvorak typing set-up again. What is Dvorak? I tried out some typing exercises on a different site after switching my keyboard to the dvorak set-up. (Pretty easy, my Windows XP came with it already, just gotta turn it on. And then not look at the keys.) I did pretty well on the typing exercises, just got bored and switched back. It is much easier on my wrist. I just already am a fast touch-typer(touchtyper? touch typer? and my spell check doesn't like typer) so it is not so easy to quickly retrain my fingers and brain.

I played on Ticker Factory for a while. It is not the best for writing progress trackers, but it's got some cute stuff.

I am making slow progress on editing Ivory. I could totally make good use of my sleepless time, if I didn't feel like I should be sleeping. Basic problem is I can't sleep when I'm tired. I have to be exhausted. My brain does not work so well when tired. I don't want to risk screwing up my manuscript by editing when tried. I will however, write when tired. I can always fix it when I'm editing. :D Might just be making more work for myself later, but at least then I'm being semi productive.

I always want to vacuum when I can't sleep. I normally hate vacuuming. I live in an apartment so vacuuming at 2am is not all the good for neighborly goodwill. I can sweep and mop at least.

I am an avid to-do list maker. More often then not, they actually work and I get most of the stuff done. Sometimes though, they become the bane of my existence. I crumple the page up and chuck it in the trash with vengeance. I like adding stuff to the to-do list that is so easy or normal routine just so I can check it off. Like I sometimes put 'wake up'. Just so I can start my day by checking something off the list. :)

Alright, my wrist is done for the night. Day. Till after I sleep. Good morning!

Meg

Tuesday, February 10, 2009

Weather

For the last three days the weather guy down here has been warning us of possible severe thunderstorms starting as early as Monday lasting till tomorrow (Wednesday) night. The storm they were talk about, finally passed over us about half an hour ago. It was a nasty storm and its still heading west. It took a whole 20 minutes for it to pass over us. Gave me a taste of whats to come for this spring. Reminds me how much I hate tornadoes. The one thing in weather I truly am scared of. I grew up with blizzards, ice storms, loss of power for days, but the thought of a tornado rattles me.
The fear does give me awesome fuel for stories though. Always an upside to most bad things in some form. There's nasty weather scattered all over today. The Weather Channel is in their element for sure. Winter weather in the north, spring/summer fun in the south. The rain here did cool things down. If I had to go out, I'd grab a light jacket. Earlier, before the rain, I got sweaty in a t-shirt.
I have a doctors appointment tomorrow, and this time I'm going to remember to grab my binder of stuff to-do. I always forget it, and the doctor is always running behind. I'll bring it this time, and the doctor will be on time, just to mess with me. hehe.
I hope none of you are getting thrashed around by this weather.
Meg

Friday, February 6, 2009

Questions

Do you ever stop and ask yourself, “What the heck am I doing?”
I feel like I should be asking myself that. Instead I am forging ahead with my writing.

The first goal I set for myself, that I honestly tried to reach, was finishing my first novel. I made it with two days to spare. I gave myself a year to write it. Okay, 15 months. But I did it. And that was an awesome feeling. I keep plowing ahead because I want that feeling again. I want that sense of accomplishment. That is what keeps me going everyday. Except the days I don’t care and just crash on the sofa all day. Those don’t happen too often thankfully.

I was wondering, I know I only have 2 followers, but how do you edit? I printed out my finally finished novel and have been attacking it with my red pen. And then typing up fixes, finding more fixes while doing so. Is there a better way? Or is it just one of those whatever works for you deals?

Monday, February 2, 2009

Not Another Superbowl Post

Only thing I'm going to say about the Superbowl: The game was awesome, and the Comcast prank that I learned about today, if I had kids I'd be pissed but I don't, the prank was hilarious. Prank, hack, whatever it is being called. I don't have Comcast so I was spared the interruption of the Superbowl.


Editing while writing is WORKING. I don't lose my focus as often while I've got that red pen in my hand, and I think I am writing much better on my new piece then I did with the first one. I swear sometimes when I'm editing I stop and just shake my head. Some of the sentences I came up with. I can't believe half of the trash I wrote. I didn't really believe people that said that about their own work. But it's true. First drafts are mainly complied of junk. Especially first first drafts. This was my first ever complete novel. My first ever attempt at a novel too.

Editing by hand and then fixing it on the computer seems to be working well. While I'm fixing stuff in the word document, I'm noticing things I missed while I was page editing. This good be a good thing. :D Hopefully it will make my second read through much cleaner. So far I've only had one page that the red pen didn't touch. And it was a half page at the end of a chapter...hehe. Totally a beginning writer here. I'm just happy I really am continuing to learn and I can already see the benefit of knowing I'm not the best writer out there by a long shot.

Off to type up more fixes, later all.