When I finish with a particularly difficult chapter I feel like I should be taking out the cigarettes, you know?

I’ve been muttering and bitching about needing to rewrite Chapter 2 for a few days and I finally did it. I knew what was going to happen in the chapter, so the hardest part was theoretically done, but unfortunately it was difficult dialog and difficult character development — it just turned out to be difficult. And longer than I initially thought, in fact a scene I was going to include in Chapter 2 will now have to be written into Chapter 3 or it would have become way too long.

But, I finally finished it and I actually feel tired and triumphant, like after a good run or a good visit to the gym. And now that I’m still “on fire,” I’m going straight to Chapter 3 (which will also need to be rewritten now).

3:34 pm | Category: Writing | | No Comments

It never ceases to amaze me the random things that crop up and constitute as “research” when you’re a writer. Last night, I was researching cookie jars to see if I could find a design that would be more chuckle-icious, as per Amelia June’s suggestion. As I would like Tayce (I will get it up on my Works in Progress page soon, I promise! I’m just looking for new, Vista-compliant stuff now that all my old tools and tricks don’t work ) to not be the dark, angst-fest that many urban fantasies are these days (just have some action, some romance, some nice dramatic moments, and creepiness when it isn’t being chuckle-icious — hopefully I pull it all off). I originally had a plain glass cookie jar, but it was pointed out that something funnier would work well in the scene. The original suggestion was a sad eyed beagle cookie jar, but I wanted something…different. And so began my search.

There are a surprising amount of cookie jar websites out there. I had never realized this. There’s Cookie Jars.net (which has a creepy “Mammy Cookie Jar”), Craig’s Cookie Jar Collection, the Cookie Jar Store, Wikipedia’s Cookie jar article* (which has a cookie jar from the “Hey Diddle Diddle” nursery rhyme), and Cookie Jar Collectibles. Just to name a few.

Some of them are damn expensive, too. $100 for a vintage cookie jar? Yeesh. Anyway, right now the ones shaped like pigs or garden gnomes are winning. Although this one amuses me simply because of the quote, and knowing what’s going into the cookie jar.

Did I mention that Tayce fills the cookie jar with grave dirt from her father’s grave?

* Did you know Andy Warhol collected 175 cookie jars?

1:27 pm | Category: Writing | | 1 Comment

So I was trying to write today and I’m seriously debating just printing out what I have right now and editing it, all 90 pages of what I have, mostly because I’m so confused as to what I have and what I don’t and what goes where that things are taking longer than I like. The major problem is that I wrote about 14,000 words that I completely lost due to the Great USB Fiasco of 2007. Now, I find myself thinking, Wait, I can’t do that because of this…oh wait, I lost that scene, so it hasn’t happened yet. And then I realize that what I’m writing now contradicts something I wrote earlier. I really need to either:

1) Read through what I’ve written and edit or
2) Outline so I have a better idea what’s happened and what should happen.

I feel a little amateurish for allowing myself to get confused. Does anyone else experience this problem? But it leaves me a bit baffled about what to do. Do I cut my production to edit (I usually don’t edit until I have a first draft) or make a brief outline and just keep chugging along? Suggestions are always helpful!

It’s frustrating, and I finally got frustrated enough that I stopped writing the main storyline and wrote a love scene between the two main characters just for fun, even though that isn’t going to happen. I just needed an outlet so I had a little fun — and it was fun! And silly, and wrenchingly romantic. It’s a good sign when I’m invested in my own characters that I write a bit of my own fan fiction, right? Oh, and in case you were wondering, “Stuttering” by Ben’s Brother is a very good background song when writing romantic scenes.

8:03 pm | Category: Writing | | 2 Comments

Woohoo! I finished cleaning my office! It’s something that I’ve been meaning to do since October and I finally bit the bullet and did it. The desk now actually has some elbow room, and a glistening surface because I even Pledged (mmm, orange scented) it. Not only that, but I actually went through my file cabinet! Now that’s something I’ve been meaning to do since 2005 (and desperately needed to do since I graduated with my B.A.)! I cleaned out things from the year 2000 in that file cabinet. And even found my high school transcripts (yes, I was an odd teenager who filed away her medical and school related papers)!

With the file cabinet cleaned out, I finally had space for my critiqued manuscripts. I’ve recently joined a critique group and now that I’ve got work coming in with critique, I need to file them away so I can easily find them when I need to edit. And since the file cabinet was in such dismal shape (three of the cabinets had old junk in it like old notebooks) I was just stacking the papers on my desk. I still have one cabinet with things that I’ve been meaning to put into the photo album and one cabinet with some books I need to go through, but now my writing stuff has it’s very own cabinet!

Not only that, but I dismantled the tree today and John and I lugged it to the TreeCycle program. That was kind of a pain because we have a Saturn SL2, which is a very small car, and by the time we jammed the tree in the back seat (we didn’t want to tie it to the top like we did when we brought it home because we didn’t have any rope left) I couldn’t see out of the rear window and the tip of the tree stuck out the side-rear window by about 2 feet. I know, not very safe for driving. But I took it slow and we made it pretty easily to the TreeCycle center (which was just an undeveloped area of a park with a huge heap of Christmas trees littering the ground). The only heart-stopping moment was when a police car passed us. I gritted my teeth and thought, Crap, not being able to see out the rear window and having a Christmas tree sticking out has got to be illegal somehow. But thank the powers that be, the cop car just kept going.

The pile of Christmas trees was a little sad, especially when our tree was added onto it. John and I have never been able to A) afford our own Christmas tree or B) had the space for it ever before, this is the first year we’ve had a Christmas tree. Seeing that huge pile of trees…it made me a little melancholy. And it also made me want to jump into that pile and come out smelling like pine, but the pine needles would have scratched me (I already got a few scratches on my back when we were carrying the tree to the car, somehow) so I resisted the urge.

So, all-in-all, today has been a VERY productive day. Tomorrow I get to back up everything on my old computer and begin cleaning it out so I can give it to Mom (so she can finally have her own computer instead of thinking of using Dad’s and then deciding that’s too much of a bother). Then, I’m setting up my new computer and the first thing I’m doing is playing Sims 2 and whimpering in delight when full graphics and anti-aliasing doesn’t slow it down.

And yes, I know that this probably doesn’t interest anyone besides me in the slightest, but I’m pretty damn proud of myself. And organizing my filing cabinet was one of my New Year’s Resolutions, so I’m doing pretty good this year. Now all I need to do is clean and restock the fish tank and buy some new bookshelves.

12:47 am | Category: Journal | | No Comments

As my writing did yesterday. I was going over the beginning chapters of “Tayce” because there was something I needed to fix, having changed it in subsequent chapters, and I came across a line which if I had my USB key here (and if I wasn’t technically cleaning my office — if I bring my USB key, I’ll just procrastinate more!) I could quote exactly. Needless to say, when I re-read it, I actually chuckled out loud before I could help it! So, even if I don’t make anyone else laugh, I know my writing can amuse me.

2:53 pm | Category: Writing | | No Comments