Bookcase

In case anyone out there wonders, I have a thing for books. Even though my wonderful husband got me a Kindle Fire for my birthday, and I love it, it doesn't mean I won't buy as many tangible books. If anything it will simply mean that I will have MORE books altogether. We had actually just about filled our two bookcases we had (my goal is to someday have a fairly extensive home library). I had actually been setting books on top of other books or in front of them on our existing bookcases, not sure what I was looking for. Then out of no particular reason, other than perhaps curiosity, I entered The Plunderbox, an antique store in Midway, Georgia. As with many instances where I find the perfect thing, it came at the end of my perusing the store. Behold, my (new to me) old double circle bookcase:

Meet the new home of my Science Fiction and Fantasy novels.

In other news, also exciting, my novel is officially over 200 words and drawing to a close soon (i think). I extended my goal of getting draft one complete by the time Rob returns home.

Kindle Fire ignites spark!

No pun intended. Ok, maybe it was slightly intended. It is however, true. I got my birthday present in the mail from my wonderful husband today! (While a couple weeks early, I couldn't wait to open it). It's really cool. I have already downloaded a bunch of free (waste of time) apps! I got Angry Birds, Stupid Zombies, flicking paper balls into a virtual trash can, and fruit ninjas. I downloaded Jane Eyre for free as well. But the spark came when I transferred a section of my novel in progress to it, just to see how it's formats it. Lets just say I about cried when I saw it looking like a book, which ignited the spark to write, so I can finish it, so I can read it on my kindle and start editing it! I wrote: 2121 words tonight! Go me! I can finally see the light at the end of this tunnel. I know where I'm going and in about 15 pages or 4,000 words I should have a completed first draft to work with! I know that there will be a lot of adding to it, taking away from it, and refining it after that. BUT, I am so ready to start that process!

Over 50,000 words

52,716 to be exact! I can honestly say writing this book seems to get easier the longer I work on it. I am beginning to truly know my characters and how they think. I know what they want, how they feel, and what they will do. It's interesting to me how I started with one main female character as my center, and have now branched out to understand the thoughts and feelings of other main characters. I also have traveled down lines of quite a few minor characters that make my main characters who they are.

I am excited to say that I now know where the part that I am working on will go and how it will fit with everything else. I don't think that everyone goes about writing a novel this way, but it seems to be working for me. I started in the middle. Wrote the end. Then I went back to the beginning. Now I am writing the three-quarter spot. Crazy.

Anyway.

The title post is in honor of the book I am currently reading: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer. I picked it up at the grocery store last week. I had seen previews for the movie and was interested in seeing it. I had no idea it was a book. As a rule, books are better than movies. So I did the obvious Tina thing and decided to read the book before I watched the movie. (Not that I will go to see it in theaters by myself so I will probably wait until it comes out on DVD or On Demand). However, the "not going to the movies by myself" rule may be off when The Hunger Games comes out. Oddly, I didn't follow that rule (read the book before watching the movie for Twilight or New Moon. In my defense, I wasn't sure about them. I was teaching high school and once I realized all the girls were ga ga over it, I was concerned it might be teeny bopper. Obviously I changed my mind. I saw the preview for New Moon, had to watch it. So I bought the Twilight DVD, saw New Moon in the theater, then got all the books for Christmas and read them straight through. The books are better than the movies. Movies just can't have as much info. There isn't enough time.

Anyway. (haha) Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close is really good so far. I love the narrator. He is quirky, but realistic. He is full of dimensions and the author doesn't spell them all out, which keeps him interesting. Today I keep going back and forth between reading that book and writing my book. It's actually going well. I have written over 1,000 words already today without really trying. I give partial credit to the coffee, but most credit to my brain and cold fingers.

Until, next time!

I feel like I'm back in school.

I've always loved projects, but I had a very hard time convincing myself to start this one. My motivation used to be to get "A's" which was a good motivator. In this case the pay off (if it ever comes) will be a book that is well developed, hopefully read and (dare I say) liked.(?) I have been putting this off. Since I've needed to complete it in order to continue writing, I've been putting writing off too. It just seems so formal, and that it's not my job. In many ways it's not. My character is the one doing this research. He's the one the mapping, reading, putting things together (in a slightly neurotic way). However, it has to be really done because I while I don't believe in what he's researching (it's fiction after all). He does. Not to mention I created him. So I'm taking "facts" (which is a term I use lightly) and allowing him to make assumptions about them. However, I have to get it all straight before I can allow him to manipulate them. It's really hard to leave my judgments out of it. However, on the positive side, someday if all this works out and my dreams come true and yadda yadda yadda, all of this work could become prized possessions of my zealous fans. ha!

Wow this post makes me sound crazy one more than one level. Until next time.

Welcome 2012!

November and December were months that I slacked on just about everything: exercise, reading, and writing. I did pick up a few new GRE words with the help of a $1.95 audio book for my IPOD containing the 500 most necessary words. The dude has a deep old man voice which amuses me, but he does not pause when his instructions clearly suggest otherwise. In all fairness: R&R and my trip to California, not to mention the Christmas/New Year Season in general seem to be as good excuse as any to slack a bit.
However, I have turned it around the past couple days. I wrote about 500 words yesterday and already 900 today. Meager in the long range, I realize. I had to restart somewhere. I got great advice from inadvertent slacking a few days ago. I was reading an article I stumbled upon while dreaming that one day I may be able to be a member of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writer's of America. This lady, Rachel Aaron wrote an article about increasing her word count. It had a lot of good advice, some of which I knew: I won't write as much if the Internet is available and butt in seat time is a must. However she has a perfect writing triad (or at least that is what I shall forever think of it as), which at each corner had one of the following: time, knowledge and enthusiasm. Time: I have plenty, but I use it poorly. Knowledge: this I was lacking and I didn't even know it! She increased her time by taking at least five minutes to plan out where her novel would go for that day. That way when she sat down to write, she didn't have to waste time making it all up on the spot (which does take longer). Enthusiasm: I sometimes lack, but after planning out where I'm going during my writing time, I am honestly more excited to see every detail play out. While I haven't gotten anywhere near sitting down for six hours to write or 10,000 words per day (which might correlate), I have been able to forgo the session where I sit down to write and become so confused that I give up before I start. So thank you Rachel Aaron (whose link to the mentioned post is below), you have helped me become happier while writing because I'm less confused, more excited, and hopefully will increase my output and finish this damn book!



http://www.sfwa.org/2011/12/guest-post-how-i-went-from-writing-2000-words-a-day-to-10000-words-a-day/

No news is bad news.

At least not when it comes to writing my blog. I have to admit, I've been a bit of a slacker on the writing front lately. However, Rob came home for R&R, which allows a reprieve from writing. Then I went to California to visit my brother. While I did write a bit on the plane, it wasn't enough to make up for the lost month or so. Oh well.

Rob began to read my novel, he was interested, but he asked to wait to finish it until he got home because it was sad. Which I agreed with and to. Sadly, he hadn't gotten to the saddest part. Question of the day (and yes I am looking for input) Can a book be too sad for too long, where no one will want to read it?

I have written a couple of short stories/poems in my in between time. It never seems like too much commitment to write a poem, but I'm sure they're all bad. At least that's what I think about poems after taking the poetry workshop in college. I thought poetry was open and broad and could be whatever you made it. My professor made it seem otherwise, and I could never get what he wanted. Why is what one person wants necessarily right anyway? Maybe my B poem to him would be and A+ to someone else. ?

I have found another conundrum in my story, which I swore I fixed already. The time issue. I found today as I was trying to figure out how old one of my characters was in relation to the other at a certain time that I was off by ten years in some places and five in other. For the record, I made a timeline to prevent this problem. Obviously it didn't work.