Publishing, Allergies, and a Bit of Bad News

My dad's cat, Willis. Rest in peace, buddy.

    I've been saying how busy I am for weeks, but it's finally coming together: the book will be released March 28th.
    Other than that, I'm trying to catch up on some other stuff I've let slide while working on my book, like blogging. However, once again, life intrudes.
    Last week, my dad's cat died very suddenly. While he didn't like my cat, he was a very sweet kitty and passed too soon. We think he had an aneurysm, and there would have been nothing we could have done for him because of how quickly it happened, but it was very upsetting because he was relatively young for a cat. My cat (aka The Furball) is happy to have the run of the house again, but it's very strange not to have our other cat around.
    Then, this week, I realized just how close spring is: my allergies kicked in! And they didn't just crop up, they returned with a vengeance. I have been miserable, blowing my nose, sneezing in threes and sometimes fours, and wiping away tears from watery eyes. Not only does the end of my nose look like I rubbed sandpaper on it for two hours, the top of my lip went bright red from all the moisture being rubbed off. I've never had allergies this bad, and to boot, my usual medicine isn't cutting it. It dried my nose a little, but it did nothing for the itchy nose/eyes. I started a different medicine on Friday, and it was an improvement, but it still was not providing me with the kind of clear-headedness and sneeze-relief I've come to expect from allergy medication. I switched to Allegra yesterday, and what a difference! I still don't feel 100%, but I'm about 90%, so that's close enough for me. It's 24 hour too, so I don't have to keep remembering to take it during the day, and it really has knocked out most of my symptoms, so that's a huge relief.
    While I'm really excited to be wrapping up editing and publishing my (third!) book, I may be even more excited to get back to writing again! I feel like I've been editing for ages, and the only thing I've written since I started this editing project is blog posts. It's like my creativity is has been accumulating for the past couple months and it's ready to be set loose.
    What this means is that, as soon as the book is finalized and released, I will probably start six different stories in the next few weeks, and I will probably only finish one of them. If that. I'm looking forward to it though. As much as I'm looking forward to getting back to writing--I've got about three stories cooking in my head as it is--I'm also thinking about the two books I wrote last fall, prior to and during Nanowrimo. Both science fiction. One maybe involves more crime/drama than hardcore science fiction, but because the main storyline focuses on a project that is science fiction-y in nature, I'm still calling it sci-fi for now. I really enjoyed those stories, possibly because they're so different from anything I've ever written before, and I'm really looking forward to working on them again.

The new book cover.
Minus my author name ;)
Thoughts?

    However, that won't be for a while. I think I want to write, exclusively, for the next few months, and then I will consider getting back into editing around July or August. I'd like to put out another book by the end of the year, but I haven't decided which one yet.
    (I cheated and started writing last night. It feels like cheating because I haven't completely wrapped up my other book yet, but it was awesome. I don't know if I'll get anywhere with it, but just putting together character descriptions, a very rough outline, and writing a page or two before bed felt amazing after so many months of just editing!)
    Anyway, a lot's been happening and a lot is going to happen in the next few weeks (at least I hope so). I'm hoping that I'll have good news to share about my book, but we'll have to wait and see what the initial responses are.
    This is what publishing feels like, whether you submit to a house or try to do it yourself:

We have to continually be jumping off cliffs
and developing our wings on the way down.

-Kurt Vonnegut

The Key to Coping: Keeping Busy

  I'm sure whoever is still stopping by and reading this is sick of hearing about this, but it's cathartic for me, and since it's my blog, you're SOL.
    I've actually been doing all right overall. I think I had about two or three days in which I lost it a little bit, thinking about being alone and being dumped, but it didn't last all day on any of those days.
    My main anesthetic? Avoidance. Not denial, but avoidance. I have blocked his posts on Facebook. I have removed his contact and photos from my cell phone. I have disconnected myself from his projects for the most part, except for one. The exercise DVD program we had set up on a website is still mine to work with. Why? Because I was doing most of the work on it to begin with, so I figured instead of just throwing away all that hard work I've done over the past several months, I'm going to take over the website and completely reimagine it.
    I'm going to transform it into a broader health related blog, as I think one of its issues before was that it was too narrow a topic and there was not enough good information (i.e. new blog posts) to get people interested in the product. I'm a little concerned I may have bitten off more than I can chew--it's a pretty drastic change, and it will mean I'll have to be posting regular content (in addition to the other 4 blogs I write), but I think it'll be good. It's a new angle, it's going to be more women's health oriented, and it's going to be useful. Instead of just sharing what other people write articles about on Twitter, I'll have my own new articles to share.
    Since I'm not a doctor or a personal trainer or a dietician, I'm going to have to include some disclaimers and make sure that I use credible sources (i.e. not Web MD) for the posts I create, but I think it'll be good. And the best part about it is that I won't have to look at pictures of my ex all over the home page anymore. The DVD will still be included on the website because I don't feel right about removing it completely, but anything related to it, questions and any potential (albeit unlikely) sales that come through will go directly to his email. Only questions/comments relating to the new articles and content on the website will be my responsibility. I don't know whether it will pan out or not, but I'm hopeful.
     Beyond taking on this new project, I've been editing my new book. It's taken up a lot of my time, and there's still so much to do before I release it, so I've been trying to keep up with it all. I'm actually considering paying for some marketing solutions this time around. Partly because I am working now and I have a little bit of extra money to spend (not really, but I have more now than I did when I released the last book when I wasn't working), but also partly because I really want to have this book do well and if it's just up to me to do the marketing, hiring a little temporary contract help for a blog tour may not be such a terrible idea.
    The book itself is coming along well, though. I still have a few more rounds of revisions to get through, but this round has been a lot less painful because it's mostly mechanics and minor tweaks rather than rewrites and major cuts. However, figuring out these mechanics is no easy task. I'm relying on a gigantic textbook of the Chicago Manual of Style and it's not always straightforward where to find the correct usages. Despite how thick it is, I think it could use a better index.
    In any case, keeping so busy has also been helpful in terms of keeping my mind off things. I think in terms of grief over the loss of the relationship, I'm at the anger phase. Not wanting to see, speak, or even think about anything to do with him. Since we don't really have the same friends or even live in the same city, running into each other isn't much of a concern.
    As to the other phases, denial seemed to come and go pretty quickly. I'm not quite sure how the bargaining stage is supposed to play out since I have absolutely no intention of putting myself back into that situation, but I guess I'll find out in the days, weeks, or (I hope not) months to come. Mostly, I'm still trying to keep my head up, focus on what comes next, and hope that whatever happens will be better and I'll be better for it.

Idle hands and what-not.

Getting Back on the Horse

  It's been a rough week. Not only am I behind where I expected to be on my editing, but I'm getting that itch to write again, and it's really difficult to choose to finish editing one book instead of jumping into writing another one. As much as I enjoy editing most of the time, I am a storyteller at heart, and I still prefer to write.
   Aside from that, I've been dealing with some other stuff at home. I keep looking over my finances trying to figure out if I have the money to be able to move out any time soon. Unfortunately, I think I'm about $250 short on monthly income to be able to do that comfortably.
    I was feeling sick for a while there too, and it gave me an excuse to put a few things on the back burner, including the blogs.
    The biggest hit came last week. My relationship ended just shy of my 7 year anniversary. It threw a major wrench into my motivation, and most of the weekend was spent in pajamas with plenty of Netflix, Ally McBeal, and sugary food.
    Somehow, in spite of my sugar jones, I managed to stick to my calorie counting and I'm down 10 pounds since the New Year when I first started, which is amazing to me. I haven't been at this weight since high school and it's kind of incredible to think that I finally succeeded in coming this far.
    I didn't really want to talk about the split because I think it hasn't completely hit me. Much of the time we were together was spent communicating long-distance, so I'm used to not seeing him that often. I think what I felt above all was confusion: I didn't see it coming, and that was probably what caused the biggest shock and hurt. Every relationship has obstacles, but we've come so far over the past few years and we've worked through so many things in that time that I expected to be able to continue working through it.
    On the one hand, there's a part of me that would love to vilify him and shout it from the rooftops what a horrible, cowardly, lying two-faced a-hole he is, but I still haven't processed it and made up my mind about how I feel about it yet, so I don't want to be the petty or vengeful one. I would like to think I'm better than that, no matter how much pain it caused me.
    You should know this is a big improvement from how I felt Friday (when it happened). I was ready to sue for emotional damages--seriously. I wasn't expecting to get more than a couple video game consoles out it, but it seemed like a plausible idea at the time.
    At first, I had every intention of trying to stay friends. It seemed like such a strange idea to sever ties completely after 7 years, but the more I think about what happened, what he said and how it ended, I'm not sure I want to stay in touch. The worst part is that if we don't see each other anymore, I won't get to see his family either, whom I consider good people and good friends. I'm sure I'd still be welcome there, but I also feel like I might be looked at differently. Not as a villain or anything, but maybe a bit pathetic and or pitiful.

    As of now, several days later, I don't feel incredibly upset or angry, but I'm still a little confused and still a little unsure about things. I'm trying to take it one hour, sometimes one minute, at a time, and that's been helpful for me. It hasn't helped me get anything done, but it has kept me from losing my shit for the most part.
    I think overall, I feel hopeful. There were a lot of things that didn't always make sense in that relationship, things that fall into the "opposites attract" category. Now, I'm trying to focus on the future, on the possibilities, and to stay hopeful that I will find my way to better things. Career-wise and relationship-wise.

Some days are diamonds, some days are rocks.

-Tom Petty

The Great Morale Booster of 2013

  While I've made some great progress so far in 2013--I've already lost 4 pounds on my new diet (sidenote: counting calories sucks when you like Coke and Chipotle so much), I've added over 8,000 words to my edit-in-progress, putting it over 50,000 now [cue excited shriek], and I'm even getting back into a better exercise routine.
    Yet, 2013 has already been a little tumultuous. My car may now have transmission issues. The check engine light came back on with the same error code as before. My release date for my edit-in-progress may need to be pushed back a few weeks. And I'm still not any closer to moving out.
    However, perspective is the theme here. Whenever I feel like nothing seems to be going right, I turn to Ally McBeal. Yes, the television show. Why? Because nothing in my life ever seems as awful as she seems to think things in her life are.
    Ally McBeal always makes me feel like my life is in way better shape and the winning combination is just about to make itself known. Although season 1 and 2 did a better job of this--I'm now on season 3--her neuroses and hallucinations and self-sabotage make me feel like things around here are on the verge of turning around. It may seem silly, but if it weren't for Ally McBeal, my outlook on life would be a lot more pessimistic than it already is.
    Over time, the show has actually become funnier, too, which helps. And, Ally became more of a sympathetic protagonist. I actually hated her character when I first started watching this show, but I kept watching it because it was cathartic. Over time, especially with the addition of Lucy Liu's character, the show has become funnier, more complex, and more entertaining overall.
    If you can get through the obnoxious theme music (the show's theme, not Ally's personal theme music), you're golden. I muted the Carole King theme song from Gilmore Girls almost every episode I saw over the years because it was so annoying to me. The Ally McBeal theme has grown on me a bit (sidenote/funny coincidence: Vonda Shepherd, the theme's singer and show regular just sang the Gilmore Girls theme song in an episode I watched earlier), but it's a little too loud and not quite pop enough to be catchy and enjoyable. Unlike the theme from Friends ("I'll Be There for You") or Scrubs ("I'm No Superman").
    Back to this show's ability to help boost my morale: Money problems, job dissatisfaction, disappointment with the progress (or lack thereof) on my personal projects that I work so hard on and which mean so much to me--all of these things seem to be much less terrible circumstances than how Ally McBeal's life seems to her.
    So, if that's what it takes to keep my morale up, I guess I'm only sorry there are only 5 seasons of the show to watch. Hopefully by the time I watch the series finale, some of these issues will be resolved and I won't have to start over or find a new show.

Lillian: "...When Jesus closes a door, he opens a window."

Mary: "Yeah, so we have something to jump out of."

-Saved, 2004

Swearing: Vulgar or Free Expression?

  I've been told I sometimes have an "unladylike" tendency toward adult language (I attribute this to being a hockey fan and befriending too many dudes in my teenage years), but I thought I had gotten better at censoring myself that it was not as widely known now as it once was, but as I edit a story I wrote just two years ago, it's quite clear I must have been a sailor in another life.
    The editing is going well, but I'm starting to realize that I may have pushed through it too quickly when I was writing it. It seems to be missing some things that will add some depth, so I've made some notes to add some more character development, and even a little bit more plot development, to clarify a few things and make the story more complete.
    One thing I've noticed, however, in addition to having rushed through the first draft a bit, is that when I write strong women, they often become a little vulgar. They adopt some more male personality or behavior traits in order to compete or keep pace with the men they are constantly surrounded by. I don't have a problem with the concept--I swear, I spend time with people who swear, and I think it's perfectly acceptable for women to swear as long as it's not over the top (e.g. every other word).
    Looking at it from a reader's perspective though, the average reader, and potentially the type of reader who might pick up a story like mine, some of my character's swearing might be a little over the top. It's not excessive and I don't think it's especially vulgar, but in some cases, it goes beyond what a woman might say among her female friends and ventures into the realm of how she would express the same sentiment or tell the same story among a bunch of male friends.
    Again, I don't find it especially problematic, it is after all how I would probably tell the story to just about anyone, but I think it might turn some readers off. Not to say my hypothetical readers are necessarily prudes or old-fashioned, but it just might be off the mark from what they would expect, and that in itself can be a turn-off.
    So, I have cleaned it up a bit. Not to the point that it isn't my character or my writing style anymore, but I do get a little Tarantino when I write dialogue sometimes, particularly if it's during a heated exchange in a scene.
    Still, to my mind, swearing is a part of modern vernacular. The English language would not really be the English language today without the innuendo, curse words, and vulgarities it has spawned over the years, and while some are just there to be insulting or ugly, others have actually helped us express ourselves in new ways.

Sticks and stones. 

My Belated Holiday

It's been an extremely short December! I feel like it's lasted forever, and at the same time, I can't believe it's two days before Christmas! I JUST got my holiday shopping done yesterday, but I already have to exchange something because I bought the wrong item and I need to get photo paper because photos were a part of my gift. I know I have photo paper here somewhere, but I cannot find it. That's what happens when you move in and out some many times. Stuff gets lost in the shuffle.

I've been working on editing my new book to publish and I've hit a snag--I'm starting to wonder whether I need to cut out a character because I'm not sure how much they actually help the plot. I just skimmed the rest of the story last night, and I think I need to straighten out some of my themes a little better. Right now it looks like a really long run-on sentence/stream of consciousness thing.

The holidays snuck up on me this year. I was so prepared last year--I had everything bought and shipped weeks before Christmas, but this year, I was so busy, I lost track of the time and had to do all my shopping 3 days before Christmas! I don't think that's ever happened to me before. It's also the first year I didn't put the Christmas tree up.

Even when I was living on my own, I came back home and put the tree up at my dad's house, but I lost track of time and my dad ended up putting it up! It actually looks nicer I think--I usually get carried away with the ornaments because we have so many pretty ones.

I am getting started on my New Years Resolutions though, though I'm trying to think of them more as goals rather than set-in-stone resolutions.

So far:

1. Edit/Publish 3 books next calendar year
2. Write a new novel/screenplay (haven't decided which)
3. Write a children's story
4. Lose weight (unoriginal, I know)
5. Find a way to earn money at something I enjoy (earning money from my writing or my books would be nice, but if I found a regular job that I liked and that paid decent enough, that'd be all right too)
6. Win Nano again :)
7. Plus a few other things I've been wanting to do for a few years now, but haven't had the time/motivation to teach myself to do or the money to have someone else teach me...

Well, the world didn't end the other day. I didn't really expect it to. But with all the terrible things that have happened around the world and especially around the country lately, I'm hoping 2013 will usher in a new year filled with more positivity, peace, and compassion. I'm hoping these things go in cycles, and that 2013 is the beginning of a new cycle with more ups than downs.

New Year's state of mind.

It's Going to Be a Long Fall (Season)

  It's going to be a busy fall season! If you hadn't realized, it's already the second week of October, which means National Novel Writing Month is coming up in about 3 weeks.

    I am wrapping up one novel--with the goal to finish it before November 1, planning for my NaNo novel, also due November 1, preparing to edit a story I wrote a couple years ago--something I'd like to finish by the end of 2012, as well as continuing marketing for my recently published book through social media, guest blogs, review requests, etc.
    This marketing process will be ongoing until either A) it does so well I don't need to spend as much time telling people about it, B) it starts getting such bad reviews that I won't be able to recover, C) my next book is ready to release and I will have to devote more time and effort to promoting that one.
    And all of that is just the stuff on my "book/writing" to-do list! This is on top of my marketing work for my friend's website that I've been doing, as well as searching for a new job.

    However, I have an ace up my sleeve this year: I recently bought (with my awesome NaNo winner discount) the software program Scrivener. If you haven't heard of it, it is a writing software that can help you organize and lay out writing projects more easily. It features outlining, pinboards, keyword assignment, and too many other things to name. I've started using it with my current book, and I can't tell you how much easier it's been for me to figure out what I need to do next, which sections need to be added to, where previous characters appeared, and refer back to my outlines, character descriptions, maps, and other planning documents.

    Granted, I had to spend some time getting all those things in order first--uploading files and separating them out, adding the keywords,  etc., but since then, it's been so much easier to go back and work on chapters that need additional scenes or find any anachronisms in my timeline.
    Once I get to the editing process, I think this program will be even more helpful, rearranging scenes, matching up subplots, organizing the timeline, and catching any plot mistakes.
    Last year, I did a post on why you should do NaNoWriMo (make sure to read the comments!). This year, I'm going to go over how to do NaNo when you have a schedule as busy as mine or busier. You know what my schedule looks like for the remainder of the year--this is all on the schedule regardless of whether I get a part or full time job in the meantime. Check back tomorrow for the follow-up, "How to Do NaNoWriMo Next Month."

Ain't no rest for the wicked.

Crazy Weather We're Having, Eh?

  Gigantic heatwave? Check. Untamed wildfires? Very much so. Flash flooding? Cherry on the sundae of a rough Colorado summer. Being home all day has been a challenge with 90 to 100 degree temperatures burning through most of the day hours. Me trying to be green/being cheap, I've been running a small oscillating fan instead of the AC. It's been pretty effective most days, but some days it's worse than others and I have to resort to the AC. 

    And then, after about three or so weeks of hellish heat, rain. Not just the usual rain we get here, where it goes for about ten minutes and quits. It poured for a couple days and even caused some flash flooding in some places.

    They're still calling for storms over the next few days, but at least the temperature's dipped below 90.

    In other news, I sold my first few copies of my book! To people who aren't me! I started talking about it at a 4th of July get-together the other day and suddenly everyone wants to know how I did it and where they can get it. I don't expect everyone who said they wanted a copy to actually get one--it's not the next Harry Potter or anything--but it was nice to have people support me and ask me about it.

    Also, a bunch of people have signed up for my giveaway on GoodReads! I'm glad I don't have to pick who gets the copies or I'd probably go nuts trying to narrow it down. (I think they do it semi-randomly anyway--incorporating info from people's profiles and previous book interests.) But yay for people being interested enough to get a copy. Some people have even added it to their list of books to read, which I hope means they might buy it if they don't win it with the contest.

    Double bonus, I'm THIS close to finishing the story I'm working on right now. It's not going to be a full novel, probably closer to 20 or 25 thousand words, but it's coming along. Next step, I either must invest in a new printer or new cartridges for my existing printer to start editing. I would like to have another self-published book out by the end of the year, if not sooner, and so I need to find a new printing solution to manage my editing.

Upside: there are 171 shopping days left 'til Christmas :)

It's A Keeper

  I am currently in the process of revising my novel (different from editing, as you should know based on this post), and it's a little rough. The novel looks great. But as I go through it line by line, sentence by sentence, word by word at times, I look at it and go WTF was I thinking? Why did I use this word or have this character say that? What purpose does this nonsense serve? But if I stand back, and look at the whole paragraph, the whole page, or the whole chapter, I say, wow, I wrote that, look how well it turned out!
    Revision is painful because you have to tear out beautiful phrases or funny bits of dialogue because they don't move the story along in some way or another. It's painful because you have to let that internal editor out--the one you tied up and locked in a closet while you were writing--and let him stand there and mark up your beautiful prose with ugly red ink, with that sniveling, condescending look on his face while he does it. And at the end, you're left with pages and pages covered in red marks like they got in a fight with a tiger and lost. That internal editor is one mean bastard. But, in the end, your writing is more cohesive, more interesting, and more of what it should be.
    I finished editing it last week--fixed all the typos I found, corrected a few formatting and syntactical errors, and set out to print it out again to revise. Unfortunately, my printer is dangerously low on ink at the moment, so I think it's amazing I've managed to print out over 130 pages twice without any black ink.
    Printing job 1: navy blue ink.
    Printing job 2: maroon ink.
Amazingly enough, I succeeded. I didn't even run out of red ink by the time it was done! The only issue is editing in red ink on a print-out made in red ink. The shades are just different enough to tell, but I'm having to be much more careful as I read through the print-out to make changes to my digital document so I don't miss anything.
    What makes this process all the more difficult is that my head has been bothering me lately after using the computer all day at work. I have been having a hard time looking at screens again when I get home, which makes things a little challenging. I can work on the print-out copy ok, but when I have to go back to the computer to add those fixes to the digital version, I have to take a break every few minutes so I don't get a headache.
    I have glasses, but it's not a matter of seeing and not seeing the screen. I think it's just the extended amount of time using the computer has caught up with me and I need more rest in between usage. In any case, I have a few solutions yet to try to fix that problem, so we'll see whether I can overcome it or not.
    I will be hammering through the rest of the novel revisions over the next couple weeks, I hope, but after that, I think I should have a little more time on my hands to blog. Unless lightning strikes again and I get another idea to start writing. But I won't be under a 30 day deadline this time, so I should theoretically still have more time for other things.

Right. Write. Rite. Revision: The rite of writing right. Or something like that.

Does anybody have any revision tips, comments, or gripes?
Share in the comments!

Oh, The Weather Outside Is Delightful

  Hello Dear Readers! I had to take a bit of a break for a while, and if you are wondering why you couldn't get in to read Insistent and Persistent the past couple weeks, I temporarily changed my privacy settings due to a breach. (Post coming soon: 10 Reasons Not To Friend Your Mother On Facebook--just kidding. But seriously, don't do that. Even if you get along well with your mother.)
    Without further ado, this is why I opened the blog back up and wanted to write today: I've been dreaming of a white Christmas since about July, and in Colorado, we rarely get a real white Christmas. "Real" being defined as snowing on the day or the day before, preferably overnight. This year, once again, it looks like I will be robbed of that dream once again, but on the plus side, IT'S SNOWING!! I wasn't sure if it was actually going to happen--but almost the minute the winter storm watch went into effect up here, it started snowing on my drive home from work.
    Funnily enough, it smelled like rain rather than snow, but there was also a smell of static electricity in the air. I never listen to the weather people when it comes to precipitation in Colorado--they have a nasty tendency to disappoint in terms of accumulation. But sometimes, they underestimate the storm and it dumps a few inches more than expected. As much as I hate scraping car windows and driving near so many crazy people (most of whom are from out of state and have never driven in snow before or just suck at it), I still love the snow.
    My cat (affectionately known as "the furball" received his Christmas present in the mail today--a catnip toy squirrel--another furball. He doesn't love it as much as I'd hoped, but he does like it, so that's good. (I'm hoping this might give him something to do during the day so he will consider leaving the furniture alone.)
    I got most of my shopping done online this year, for the first time. It is quite convenient. And I expect to still have money left over from what I budgeted, which means I may buy myself a rather sizable Christmas present... Or early birthday present. Or early anniversary present. Whatever. It seems like everyone is being a little lean this Christmas, compared with last year, but I think I've spent more than ever.
    I also get to go up skiing this weekend--hopefully this time I will not fall on my face again. Hoping to make great strides in my ski skills so that I won't have to stay on the Bunny Hill for the rest of the season.
    Aside from my blog, I have been getting the opportunity to write for real at work (real this time means I am actually credited!). I cannot tell you how positively tickled I am to be able to do that. I am probably spending way more time on it than i should be, but it's important to me. I want the stuff I'm writing to be good, worthy, sort of. All the other writers on the site are professional writers or journalists and have been for several years, so I feel like I need to write well enough so that I seem like I belong among that group. If you know me, you can find that stuff on Facebook. If you don't, you'll just have to wait until I decide to use my real name around here.
    Remember how I once said bad things happen in threes? I had one of those this past week. My brother got some bad news which meant I got some bad news; I got my FIRST EVER speeding ticket which I am still super-pissed about; and one of my co-workers was let go earlier this week. That one hit hardest. We're a small company, and whenever something like that happens, it affects everyone because we're all pretty close. I think what bothered me most about it was that it happened one week before Christmas.
    Not to put a damper on the holiday spirit, I discovered a new cocktail: gin and ginger ale. I received an excellent bottle of gin from a local craft distillery a couple weeks ago, and I was amazed at how clearly I could still taste the flavors through the ginger ale.
    I am also currently editing my novel that I abandoned the blog for during November. I made all the edits by hand, so now I am transferring all those changes to the document on my computer. Next step will be to revise it. What's the difference, you say? Editing: typos, spelling, grammar, syntax, vocabulary--the nuts and bolts of the writing. Revision: rewriting scenes, adding scenes, deleting scenes, removing or adding characters, etc--the heart of the story. I'm hoping not to do too much revision, because I think after going through it once now, it actually turned out quite well. But, we'll what happens when I really look at it with that in mind.
    Sorry for being out of the loop. I just had to recover a bit from my privacy scare before I was ready to come back here and start sharing again. I welcome you back, and I hope I didn't scare everyone away by changing the security settings for a couple weeks.

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas...

Resume Building Is Hard Work!

  I just updated (but still only 80% complete) my LinkedIn profile to include some more skills, past work experience, and a summary, among other things, and I think I've been at it for two or more hours! I'm not looking for another job at the moment, but as volatile as the internet business is, I think it's better to be on the safe side and be 80% prepared in case anything should happen that would put me out of work.
    Needless to say, I was pretty thorough in the parts of it that I completed. I wrote what I think is a rather clever summary (Translation: it may contain too many attempts at humor and not enough actual job experience/information), and I pretty much copy/pasted my coworker's specialties and inserted a few of my own that fit better with my job description. It's probably a damn good thing I didn't start writing this blog until I was employed or 2010 would have been a hell of a depressing year with me talking about the USA Arcade on USANetwork.com, and how unfortunate it was that nobody would give me a chance. Not many people know what the hell to think of some kid who spent four (though technically I finished in 3.5) years in college studying philosophy, let alone people who actually know what you'd study if you studied philosophy.
    I am incredibly content to be employed, though I don't quite make enough to satisfy any apartment landlords application requirements without a cosigner. I get to do interesting things at work, I work with amazing people, and every now and again I get to write or edit or come up with some creative tweak to some design or plan we're working on. I'm not even going to complain about my job, although I could--I always can find something to complain about.
    But back to the resume thing. I do find it rather entertaining that LinkedIn makes completing your profile like a game, where you have to get 100% or you can't win. I suppose job searching and networking is like a game. You have to say these words, and not those ones, have these skills, and be clever or lucky enough to get to the end of it all unscathed. (I couldn't decide between a card game metaphor or a board game metaphor, so I dodged both.)
    So, with my profile 4/5 complete, I think I'll move on to slightly more interesting endeavors this evening for the remaining hour or so that I get to stay up. Some online movies, or Stephen King? Decisions, decisions.

Decision made: No King before bed--King=nightmares!

When Writing Gets Ugly

  Everyone has had a moment where they looked back over something they wrote and went, what the hell was that supposed to be? Sometimes it was just gibberish; other times you just ended up with a completely ungrammatical sentence; and still other times, you managed to mangle a word so badly with your 120 WPM skills that the auto-correct didn't even know what to do with it. I do that last one frequently due to the dyslexia my brain seems to pick up when it's trying to get something written in a hurry. Except my WPM is far from 120.
    But ugly writing, though it may seem useless and frustrating, considering you have to go back and fix it later, is not a bad thing. It's a start, and for those who write compulsively or regularly (and not compulsively), a start composed of crappy writing is WAY better than a blank page/screen. But that ugly writing isn't going to get pretty on its own, and revision, for some writers, is almost a dirty word.

"What? I didn't write it perfect the first time? 

You've got to be kidding. 

That is 100% quality prose right there." 

    Once we put our egos in check, however, there's a rare occasion when everything comes out brilliant and with no revision necessary the first time around. So while I love editing, I love it only as long as it's not my writing. I am pretty good at giving constructive criticism on other people's work. But when it comes to my own writing, I procrastinate to an obscene amount. If it's shorter, like an essay or a poem, or a blog post, I can do it because I know it will be quick and relatively painless. Every blog post is at least a second draft. And every 2 or more page paper I've written in the past eight years has been a 2nd, 3rd, or 4th draft.
    But the truth is, it can always be better. The question we must ask ourselves is: how much time do we want to/are we able to commit to making it better? To this end, I'm currently enacting a new strategy in my creative writing project, though I didn't set out to do things this way. I wrote--a good 2500 words or so in a day--and then steadily tacked on a few hundred words a day until I got blocked. I suddenly found myself writing the story into a corner (forgive the mixed metaphor) and I stopped. I thought about where I had gone wrong and made notes about where to fix it. And then I did. It took me about two weeks, off and on, to do the rewrites and the make the changes, but I think it's improved. And it's put me back on track. On a track I didn't realize I was going on, but a forward moving track that is not headed for a corner, or dead end.
    Revising 3500 hundred words or so is a lot easier than writing upwards of 30 or 40 thousand words first and then trying to go back and revise all of it. It's a lot of ground to cover, so much ground that it seems impossible not only to try to reread all of it, but to do more than fix a couple commas here and there.
    So, whenever writer's block sets in, going back and revising (and revisiting) what you've written can get your brain unblocked. It may not be pretty, looking at how far off topic you've gone or how ridiculous that string of dialogue sounds (people don't talk like that, do they?), but it helps. It is one day, or one set of however many pages/words you typically write in a day, at a time. Get through it and you can move on in a direction that may be even better than the one you originally had in mind.

Even the ugly duckling turned into a swan.