I love a good quote and there are so many out there. Here is one from Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, whose wise words were brilliant.
I love a good quote and there are so many out there. Here is one from Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, whose wise words were brilliant.
I love getting those lists each month in my email of what books are being released that month, or what books made it to the top lists. (I love lists too, all kinds.)
While perusing one of those lists recently I came across an Author that reeled me in just by her name alone.
I love just saying it out loud (Yes, I know that I am a total weirdo, but that is besides the point of this post), but it just rolls off your tongue.
Anyways, so after saying her names a few times, I checked out her website and instantly kind of wanted to be her best friend. Seeing as how that made me seem a little more freakish than I care to be, I did the next best thing. Collected the three books that she has published in the past few years. And I became even more hooked.
Attachments, (Adult fiction), had me rolling with laughter. It reminded me of conversations I used to have with my best friend when we worked in the office together. While you were reading Beth and Jennifer’s conversation, you had that creepy sensation that you weren’t meant to read their conversations. It was taboo, so I kept yelling at Lincoln to stop. But then there wouldn’t have been a story now would there? Then while reading Lincoln’s POV, you felt for him and knew that stopping wasn’t an option. I read the story with a sense of foreboding because i thought I knew how the story was going to end. But RR surprised me, and I liked it.
Fangirl, (YA), might have been my favorite. I couldn’t put it down, I finished it in about a day. I have never read anything Fandom related, I have always thought, It’s just not my thing. But reading Fangirl, I walked away with a whole new appreciation for it. Cath turned out to be one of my favorite characters in general. It might have been because I related to her so much, with her insecurities, her smart-aleck tendencies or her reaction to eating alone in the big dining hall. But in this story we watched Cath start out as this shy, awkward,twin who is just trying to hold on to what she knows and loves as she grows into an independent, confident girl who finally figures out who she is.
and Eleanor and Park. (YA), This one made my heart hurt. In so many ways. It had humor, but the humor was lost on me. Not because of how it was written but because I was too busy wanting to hug Eleanor and tell her everything was going to be alright. My favorite character of all was Park’s mom. Loved. Her. Eleanor’s mom just made me want to spit in her face. RR wrote, once again, another story that sucked me in immediately.
RR has her fourth book, Landline, (Adult) coming out this year and I am super psyched and can’t wait to get my hands on it too!
Go check her out and let me know what you think!
Till next time, AJP
Oh the joys of writing and finding yourself slammed face first into a metaphorical solid cement wall. As you know, I am doing CampNaNo this April, and my goal of 30k words seems unobtainable. I am sitting at 7k and should be at 11k.
Ugh.
Two days ago – oh no wait, this will be the third day – I found myself to be stuck knee deep in writing quick sand. And I mean STUCK. I can’t figure out why. I have already had to go back and start over several times, and in doing NaNo, that is not allowed. You are suppose to keep pushing forward, sludge through it until you get to the other side and win the word war.
So why can’t I seem to pull up my big girl pants and kick this stories a$$?!
Well it’s obvious… my WIP is just a big mean bully that needed more hugs growing up.
Or I have spent too much time whining to myself in my own head and finding myself doing other much more joyful tasks.
Let’s go over these said joyful tasks shall we?
Wednesday I scrubbed the small floor space BEHIND the toilet… which led to cleaning the bathroom floors.
So naturally I tackled the laundry room floors next.
Then I decided that I needed to clean all of the wood floors. After successfully breaking my floor steamer, I gave up before I made it into the kitchen.
Come Thursday, I managed to make a full blown dinner menu plan for the next two weeks…. (This is something I hate doing and usually can only plan up to 3-4 days at a time)
Then of course I had to go shopping for said menu plans, and after finding that my local grocery store did not have hoagie rolls and that was a necessity item for last night’s dinner plan, this was a major problem.
So how did I fix the problem?!?! I came home and made them from scratch of course. Homemade bread is the best, but being in the midst of a writing project were I need words, now is not the time to spend hours making bread….
Once home from the grocery store, I then had to clean out the fridge so that I had room for all of my freshly bought groceries, which led to me scrubbing the glass shelves in my refrigerator. When that didn’t waste enough time, I found it to be a good idea to then chop up the old produce -that had seen better days and was going into the garbage – and go mix it into my compost bin (yes I have a compost bin, one of those crazy idea’s I had that seemed like a good idea at the time, now I have a bin of rotting stuff…. A story for another day.).
Once the bin was stirred, the groceries put away, the bread rising, I didn’t really have anything left to do. The perfect time to tackle my WIP, right?
Instead I sat down with my DVR, while the kids played endless games of Trouble, and caught up on my missed episodes of Revenge! Love that show, BTW.
Alas came Friday, today, and how many words have I written?
Don’t ask. I’ve been busy doing laundry. Even though laundry day is on Mondays. What? I am getting a jump start for next week…
So this my friend is my story and process of how to productively procrastinate and get everything done except what you set out to do.
Now I am going to sit down and write. Or run the vacuum…
Do you remember telling knock, knock jokes as a kid? My family loves them.
The other day my daughter started off the morning with one that she thought was hilarious…
Daughter: Knock, knock…
Me: Who’s there?
D: Banana
M: Banana Who?
D: Banana, aren’t you glad I didn’t say orange!
(At this point she is rolling with laughter; I am still repeating it in my head trying to see where I missed the funny part. But wait, there’s more…)
D: Knock, Knock…
M: Who’s there?
D: Orange
M: Orange who?
D: Orange, aren’t you glad I didn’t say banana!
At this point I realize where she is going with it. And I laugh, because well I am her mother, and then try and teach her how to tell the joke properly. It didn’t take; she still can’t wrap her head around the word play.
My son however is a different story all together. He loves jokes, always has since he was really little. His latest;
S: Knock, Knock
M: Who’s there?
S: Mustache
M: Mustache who?
S: I mustache you a question…
Now I am sure this is a joke he has heard from someone at school, but the point is, he told it and I laughed. (And understood it.)
I have two children. They have the same two parents, have been raised in the same house, with the same rules and have gone to the same schools. However, my two children are almost about as different as night and day on some things, but then other moments they are so much alike it is uncanny.
And it had me wondering how they became who they are. Then of course it had me thinking about my currant WIP. (Why is she so moody all of the time?)
Do you ever wonder about your characters personalities?
I am constantly in an eternal debate with my different characters at the beginning of a project, trying to determine what quirky idiosyncrasies they have, should have or need to get rid of.
But do you ever stop and think of how they came about with these personalities?
In the beginnings of a novel I tend to get caught up in the surface traits and behaviors of who they are. It takes me about 5-8 chapters in to really dig deeper as to why they react the way they do to different situations. (She’s moody because her dad died, and her mom remarried a jerk.)
Sometimes (ha, all of the time) I tend to people watch. Everywhere I go, I am watching, sometimes listening. Wow, I sound like a stranger stalker or something. But I like to observe and then debate with myself as to why they are doing something.
Just this weekend my family went to breakfast and we were seated across from these two people, one of which was pouring packet after packet of honey into their coffee. And I mean A LOT of honey. And it had me first thinking, eeww gross. Then came the, I wonder if that is any good. Finally the question of all questions, how did they determine that they liked honey in their coffee? What was the story behind it?
Who knows, I didn’t ask. (I suffer from a terrible thing called shyness and talking to strangers gives me the itching urge to run away and hide.)
But everywhere we go, there is a story. And every story needs to be shared, or twisted up and rewritten and then told.
Every day we go through life and live new experiences. Some days it is just listening to your daughter butcher a corny knock, knock joke. But it gives depth. Every story, every character has some sort of depth behind him/her. Otherwise you are writing about a flat surface, which is boring.
Well I guess I’ll stop procrastinating now and get back to working on my CampNano project.
I am participating in CampNaNoWriMo, 30 days of writing for a word count goal of 30,000. Not too hard right?
Well it’s not going too terribly bad I guess. I am not too far behind, I need only another 270 words to meet today’s goal word count of 3000. But I am behind my own personal goal. See I am not a big writer on weekends. I think it has something to do with everyone being home and having so many other things going on that I am just too mentally exhausted to squeeze any words out of my brain. So for me, I need to average a word count of about 1363 words Monday – Friday to meet the goal by the end of the month. So today I should have 4089 words. I don’t.
It doesn’t help that after pushing out 2270 words yesterday (I kind of didn’t write a single word on the first day…) that I woke up this morning thinking that is not what happened at all!! in my story. So today I had to go and fix the problem (because I had written myself into a major wall and couldn’t plow through until I reversed, backing up and rewriting the scene). I am still not complete with my corrections, but I will continue on tonight after the kids are in bed. I had to take a break once school let out and children started requesting things like snack and help with homework. Stupid homework.
But after all is said and done, I am still pushing through. I am still trying to make my goals because that is what we do. We make goals and fight to succeed.
Without a goal then what do we have?