storyfires

It's the un-namable month. That time of the year. Toxic air. My lovely city: worst air in the nation. No, that's not a snow cloud. Dirty, left-over snow. Cheesy movies. Sleezy underwear and barf colors in all the stores. Death and sickness. The good news: Uh, let's see. I'm writing. Yes, making progress on this book. At last. I mean, I don't dare go outside for fear I'll pass out from lack of oxygen, so might as well sit around with the lap-top, right? And, ok, next week Megan Whalen Turner is braving the cloud and coming to the Life, the Universe, and Everything conference in Provo. I signed up for an LTUE pitch session with a New York Agent. Maybe I'll get the spot. Maybe not. First come, first pitch, and I signed up late. But still get to hear MW Turner impart her wisdom. Feeling cheerier already. And oh, yeah (!): leaving the poisonous air for Newport, CA soon for my son's wedding. :) Apparently, even L.A.'s air isn...

Death, be not proud, though some have called thee Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so; For those whom thou think'st thou dost overthrow Die not, poor Death, nor yet canst thou kill me. From rest and sleep, which but thy pictures be, Much pleasure; then from thee much more must flow, And soonest our best men with thee do go, Rest of their bones, and soul's delivery. Thou are slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men, And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell, And poppy or charms can make us sleep as well And better than thy stroke; why swell'st thou then? One short sleep past, we wake eternally And death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die.                                      --John Donne For Parker. Love you, Allreds!

The reading list for 2012 was shorter this year: final count 42 books.  But I read what I wanted. I'm pretty happy with my reading year.  Books. Cocoa. Butter cookies. Yes. Discovered some old classics I'd never gotten around to, like Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway .  Enjoyed my friend Brodi Ashton's paranormal debut, Everneath, a creative retelling of the Persephone story. Found some new treasures, as some of my favorite Young-Adult/Middle-Grade authors kindly released new lovelies this year: Gary D. Schmidt, Jessica Day George, Rick Riordan, Patricia Wrede, Nancy Farmer.  Did some more research for my current WIP, though some of that wasn't actual books. Learned a lot. Ate many persimmons, testing out some of what I learned. Just need to take that trip to Collinsville, Illinois, but that's on the schedule for April, because I found a new accountant who is helping me figure out taxes on a job that produces no money. Yet. Of course. Finally got...

It's November--always auspicious, since it's my birth month--so I signed myself up for my first official NaNoWriMo, which all of you writers know is not a teeny-tiny poem; it's short for National Novel Writing Month, in which, technically, you're supposed to write a 50,000 word novel start to finish before month's end. Here's the trouble: my novel is already 40,000 words fat, and that's probably only half-way to The End, but I need a push to finish, so if I write 50,000 new words this month and finish the second half of the novel I've been eking out for a year and a half, and then end up with a 90,000-word Beast, am I cheating? Do I care? Just need to finish this book. And then spend the next two months after NaNo hacking and slashing (oh, the pain) down to a more appropriate word-count. Not quite a nano-sized task, but I'm geared up and ready! (Yes, that was an exclamation point. That's how geared up these fingers be). I've info...

I'm always interested in how individual writers write. The whole process fascinates me, especially since it's so different for everyone.  Here's more on researching for your (fiction or fantasy) novel, this time from Shannon Hale, who, by the way, is doing a great little series of blog posts  where she goes through her award-winning Princess Academy chapter by chapter, analyzing and answering questions.  Someone asked if Shannon did all her research for the book as she wrote the first draft, or if she wrote first and then researched to fill in the gaps.  Shannon: " I do minimal research before beginning, write the first draft or two, and then do more intensive research, so that I already know what I'm looking for. I like the story to lead the research, not the other way around. I know other writers research in different ways." Another chaos-writer. I'm feeling a bond. Only, the way she describes it, the whole process sounds rather orderly. J...