Show and Tell

Ilona Andrews has just posted THE BEST article on showing vs. telling.

Fangs, Fur, & Fey - Show and Tell

Go check it out!

Mythology in Romance Workshop at the Romance Divas!

I’ve been a member of the Romance Divas for a few months, but have mostly been a lurker. Yesterday, I finally came out of the shadows from whence I came to participate in a workshop that I think has been incredibly valuable, called Mythology in Romance:

So cool!

If you’re not already a member of the forums, you will need to register in order to view. It’s free and it’s fun, so sign right up! See you there.

In other news…

I am working on a project that I’m hoping to have up and running in the next week, and I can’t wait to share it

I am finally making progress in my WIP, having finally washed off the icky school germs. Now I can focus. Now I can write! Yippee!

How is everyone else doing? Any good news? Need to vent?

My brain is a whoopee cushion…

…and somebody has just sat upon it.

Finals are finally over. I had to put the pedal to the metal this week, so I cut myself off pretty much completely from my usual online haunts. I’ve missed you guys! I’m gearing up to embark on The Big Write-Off (sort of like the dance-off between Britney & JT way back in the day, or the walk-off between Zoolander and Hansel–pick your poison–except it’s me against the muse, or something like that [or is it the music? damn, I've been listening to waaaay too much Brit & Madge lately!]) starting Monday, so I’ve got to start regenerating those oligodendrocytes.

Anyway, I am going to need a few days to recover, so instead of trying to make rhyme or reason of a blog post, I’m just going to post my final essay here. This one is particularly special to me because it’s about the man who I consider to be my muse. All right, essay is below the cut, I hope you enjoy (I know it’s long, so if you’re not interested, no worries!)

Hope everyone is doing great, I’ll be headed over to catch up on blogs tomorrow-ish

XOXOXO

Paperback Writer…

…again, is more aptly named, Paperback Hero. I absolutely love her, and especially right now, because she took all the time to put together this beautiful list:

Paperback Writer: Complete Friday 20 Index

Enjoy!

We interrupt this program…

…to bring you a non-writing related topic: stupid people.

I love writing about smart people. Heck, they even have their own tag here! Unfortunately, the time has come for me to create a new tag just for Stupid People.

Last night my family went out to dinner–no place particularly “fancy,” (think ancient windy city ;)) but more of a family-type restaurant. For a Sunday it wasn’t all that packed, but there were about six or seven tables pushed together in the middle of the dining room for a larger group of about twenty.

Now you would expect that a larger group might be perhaps a bit louder, just because they all gathered for a special occasion, and probably don’t see each other often. I’m cool with that; I get it. But what I don’t get is the form of entertainment they provided for three children, ages 3-8ish.

Anyone want to venture a guess?

All right, I know you’ll never guess because the answer is so effing absurd: harmonicas. HARMONICAS!!! What the hell kind of sociopath brings HARMONICAS (!!!) to a restaurant for their children? Further, if they were a spontaneous gift of sorts (which is the only sane excuse I can provide for why somebody would bring them into an public establishment), why would they actually allow the children to play them whilst running around the huge group of people?

We, of course, were fortunate enough to sit at the end of the table where the children sat were supposed to be, and were treated to a lovely serenade of random, high-pitched, and very loud whistly tones for over an hour. I kept hoping the parents would enforce some modicum of discipline, but they didn’t. They cheered on their progenies’ musical talents, while the rest of the restaurant had to suffer.

I wanted to go to the management and tell them to do something about it. It’s not my place to discipline others’ children, but when I go out to dinner (regardless of the fare or atmosphere) I don’t think it’s ever acceptable for HARMONICAS (!!!) or any other muscial instrument to be part of the evening’s entertainment. My husband said there was nothing we could do, and we would just have to suffer in silence. I don’t agree. It’s not like I was going to grab the mother by the hair and take her out to the parking lot for a lesson on parenting, but I think that parents have a responsibility to know and adhere to the guidelines that define acceptable public behavior.

When our children were too young to sit still at dinner, we didn’t go out. It’s that simple. It’s not our right to be able to go out to dinner, but it is the right of the people who are dining at an establishment to have a nice time. I will not ruin that for other people just because I’m a paying customer too, it’s just mean.

So what does everyone else think about this? Am I just a cranky, raging biatch? Or should parents set limits on what is acceptable in public, and what is not? Of course, all views are welcome.

Need some lost book ju-ju

I am so motivated right now, it’s not even funny. I’m dead-flippin’-exhausted from the hideous week I’ve had, but this girl is ready to write. And I’m not just sitting down to write, I’m sitting down to replot. Big time. I’ve still got everything I had before but now I’ve got more layers, more complications…more everything. I’m ready to turn my basic cable show into a Special Edition DVD with widescreen viewing and special features

But right now I’m feeling hobbled because I can’t find my Story Structure Architect book! I have been able to go through my old spreadsheets, but I need more than I had before and it’s driving me NUTS that I can’t find that book. Why can’t I stop being so anal-retentive about my plotting methods? And why can’t I transfer the A-R to making sure I put my damn book in its spot when I’m done with it?

*severe eye-twitching*

So if you have some extra time to meditate and some extra ju-ju to spare, can you please meditate my book back to me? Please?

Today’s request is brought to you by the letter L*

 

 

*which not coincidentally, is for Loser.

Just in case that whole college thing doesn’t work out…

Lolcats hiring; spelling skillz optional

Founder of the site has received 250 applications since Monday

By Peter Svensson

The Associated Press

updated 6:44 p.m. MT, Wed., April. 23, 2008

NEW YORK - “I can haz dream Job? My rezumez! let me showz u thm”

That’s the subject line of a cover letter sent by a job applicant to I Can Has Cheezburger, one of the premier sites for so-called Lolcat pictures.

Don’t think the letter will be rejected out of hand — bad spelling is no obstacle to a job in Lolcat world. It may even be an asset.

Lolcats became an Internet craze last year. A typical example shows a picture of a fat and hopeful cat accompanied by a caption in a baby-talk-like dialect known as Lolspeak: “I CAN HAS CHEEZBURGER?”

Apparently, looking at Lolcats all day is an appealing job. Ben Huh, founder of the site and chief executive of Seattle-based Pet Holdings Inc., has received 250 applications since the job was posted on Monday under the headline “Kittehs Want Moar Workerhumans.”

“I got a stack of resumes that I can’t even go through,” Huh said. “You know how they say, ‘Spell everything correctly because the people reading your resume will toss it out otherwise?’ Well, we can’t even do that. We won’t knock you out for spelling…. The traditional resume screening methods don’t apply here.”

The winning applicant will join three other people who moderate ICHC and a few related Pet Holdings sites (think dogs with funny captions). A big part of the job will be selecting from the 7,000 submissions the company receives every day of captioned photos, plus 2,000 uncaptioned ones.

Cat ownership is not required, just “a great sense of humor, a deep understanding and love of the Internets and a strong work ethic.”

 

Copyright 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24281329/

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MSN Privacy . Legal

© 2008 MSNBC.com

Adding some layers

I have spring fever so bad right now! It’s 72* sunny, and I’m seeing baby calves and green pastures on my commute…yippee! Right now I’m writing this post with a migraine on the horizon, but I think if I keep telling myself the headache is from spring it won’t hurt as bad. I love denial.

This weekend I plowed through the rest of my research paper on dark matter, and put the final touches on it this morning. My group project turned out to be more of an “Elle Project.” Normally that would annoy me, but I put my minions fellow members in charge of making a poster so I can’t complain too much. I’m pretty sure the glue is going to be drying Monday morning when we present

On the Big Ass WIP front I haven’t written a word lately, unfortunately. However, I did get some incredible feedback on some questions I had and now I’m ready to see how I can layer them into the BA-WIP. I feel like I’m learning more about my world all the time, and there are some days I wonder if I’m ever going to finish with the new facts that come in. This is really frustrating because I don’t know if it’s because the world and MC is becoming stronger, or my old problem of tweaking things until I make them FUBAR is slowly starting to creep back. Ugh!

Tonight I’m going to wrap up a crit I’ve been working on. I love the idea of the book, and I hope that my feedback is going to be helpful to the writer. I know it’s not all about me here, but I always worry that when I do a crit for somebody that I won’t be able to provide them with anything useful.

All right, off to take some Aleve.

I hope everyone has had a lovely week so far!

Paperback Writer…

…should change her name to Paperback Hero.

When the kiddies are away…

The munchkins are being treated to a weekend at the grandparents’ house right now. Kinda makes me want to head on over to my grandma’s house (I still remember the waffles waiting for me when I woke up over there ). I jolted awake at 7am, freaking out because I hadn’t set the alarm, worried we were going to be late for school. Then I realized today’s Saturday, and I could sleep in. So I did. Until 10:30. I think the last time I slept that late in the morning I was in high school. I haven’t been taking great care of myself lately and I know I’ve been pretty sleep deprived, so collecting some extra ZZZZZs was pretty nice.

I do plan to get some writing done today, but I’m feeling stuck on some parts of my WIP and it’s really frustrating. I used to have a wonderful CP, somebody I have traded ideas and excerpts with for the last year and a half; but her life has become incredibly busy in her non-writing world. I haven’t been able to swap ideas with her much in the last few months, which really sucks She’s read everything I’ve ever written and she knows my characters so well. Whenever I was stuck all I had to do was IM her and we’d have a quick brainstorming session (and of course this relationship worked both ways).

I would like to have something like this again but the problem is, I’ve teased apart my WIP so much and turned off my internal editor (YAY me) so letting somebody else read my WIP in its current state would be downright embarrassing. And then I run the risk of trying to brainstorm with them over something that’s only a theory to them because they haven’t actually seen the rest. Add to that the fact that I want to work with another writer who also writes UA or similar (paranormal romance, paranormal thriller, etc etc), and my chances of finding such a gem are becoming slim. Or maybe I’m just pouting

Putting myself out in the open is a tad scary, but what the hell, I’m going to do it anyway

Even if it’s a small group of writers, I’d be happy to research forums and sign up for a private one where we could post plot problems, excerpts, critiques, etc. I would prefer to work with others who write in the realm of SF/F, UA, Paranormal Romance, and similar, if that’s at all possible. Preferably these writers would already have decent grammar, style, and structure skills so we can all focus on the execution and ideas rather than fixing sentences (but of course there will be help in that arena if you’re stuck). I think it would be nice to keep this group under 10, probably even smaller so we don’t spread ourselves too thin. Members being over the age of 18 I think is a requirement because I know I don’t feel comfortable sharing a sex scene or adult themes with a minor.

I do NOT want to put my regular readers on the spot, so if I don’t see any responses, that is OK–NO PRESSURE! All you have to do is leave a comment here. Your email address goes to my inbox whenever you leave a comment, so you don’t have to worry about posting that for the public. I’ll send you an email and we’ll go from there. Feel free to ask questions or post suggestions, as well.

Everyone have a lovely weekend, and happy writing!

 

UPDATE: I did have a nice discussion with somebody on my LiveJournal, and I’ve now opened an MSN group. So if you’re interested in that, you can let me know. 

All Hail ze OneNote! (Part 2: Worldbuilding)

Ready for some worldbuilding?

Now that you’ve got your previous versions of your WIP in OneNote, or if you’re starting all fresh, it’s time to build your world. I love having a quick, easy to find reference for my information and I hate having to scroll through the entire document looking for one little detail. Another bonus of worldbuilding outside of your WIP is that if you do have to move scenes around you’re not going to have to move the interesting information you’ve included, as well (say you’ve put in some key information about the world in one of the earlier chapters, but decide you need to move that that chapter to later on, when the information you’ve included about the world is too late to start talking about). 

This leaves you the freedom to plow through and focus on writing the story, so you can go in when you’ve gotten your rough draft finished to decide where you’re going to put the worldbuilding and backstory information. Hopefully this helps reduce the occurrence of the dreaded info-dump

Before I go further, I want to say that I forgot to mention in Part 1 that this program is one that uses autosave, so you don’t have to do a darn thing when you’re done working, you just click that nice red X at the top and voila! Don’t save, close, or do anything like that when you’re done working, or you’re going to spend a lot of time frantically searching for files you thought were lost (*ahem* this girl speaks from experience).

Lesson below the cut

Deep thought of the day

All right, not deep like the Atlantic, but deep like your local state park lake.

I keep looking at the title of my blog and cringing. I don’t feel like I’m rescuing anything, I feel more like a mad scientist who knows just enough to be dangerous–and isn’t that a scary thought? 

And after more thinking, I realized I don’t really want to rescue anything, because superheroes have to wear tights, and let’s face it: I haven’t seen the business side of a treadmill in months, people! I’d rather wear some extra-thick black leather, which is slimming, and less prone to jiggle when I saunter in to round up some more minions. Spandex doesn’t hide any sins, and doesn’t look as great with a cute killer pair of black boots.

I feel the need to retitle. Dorks ‘R’ Us is already taken, so I’m going to have to sit on this. Ideas, anyone?

Excuse me, my brain is full

Just finished another lightning round of Cosmos quizzes, and am counting down until the final. We’re getting into some wicked stuff, like dark matter (BWA AH AH AH AHHHH, my little group project minions!), anti-matter, dark energy, and so on. All of it is incredibly fascinating, and is definitely going to be used in my WIP when I get to the point of incorporating science into my fantasy world. You have no idea how much I wish I could’ve worked toward a degree in biomedical sciences *sigh* If only it didn’t require 8 more years of my life to make the degree worth it…

So on to happier science topics. I think theory of a lightning bolt striking into the primordial soup and creating life is effing awesome. God works in the most incredible ways, no matter how you look at it, eh? For the last year I’ve been able to find a few texts that have short mentions of the topic, and because I want an entire volume to look at–an actual paper book to delve into instead of a sketchy Internet site–I’ve searched far and wide for such a thing every time I’ve walked into a bookstore. The thing is, when you’re looking for a scientific text, you can’t really get a feel for the writing and tone of the writer until you actually read the book. It could be written abysmally, or so far over my head that it won’t do me any good. So I can’t just order it from Amazon.

And lucky me, I found a book on it at the UBS last week called The Spark of Life: Darwin and the Primeval Soup. I’ve only had time to skim through a few pages and look at the pictures (some things never change), but I am just dying to crack this baby open and take some notes, because this theme is going to be BIG in my WIP. I’m so giddy to have found The Book of My Dreams, to know it actually exists, when I’ve been convinced it was just a figment of my imagination for so long Now I feel like I can have a well-rounded understanding of the topic, and from a credible source.

On the Big Ass WIP front, I was able to write an entire scene today between classes. That scene came to a total of 954 words, and I also added to some other previously written scenes, so the word count for today is probably somewhere near 1500. I need to do some research on autopsies now.

Share your progress! How are you doing?