If you live in Western New York, you spend a lot of time at the mothership. It's just a fact of life, and probably one of the best parts of living here. On average, we have over 200 cloudy days a year, our winters are long and hard, our summers can get really hot and humid, and if we want to climb stuff we have to take a trip (it is flaaaaat here!). But we have the most awesome grocery store in the history of grocery stores. So there. When I'm shopping at Wegmans, my favorite activity, of course, is to visit the book section. Many a pint of fro yo has gotten good and melty while I parked my … [Read more...]
Item # six million and ninety-two on the Why Neil is Awesome list
When I talked to Neil on the phone last weekend he hinted that I should keep an eye out for something in the mail.I assumed it was a cartoon. Neil draws the most amazing cartoons (that's item # six million and seventy-four on the list). It wasn't.On Monday, a small white box arrived. It contained four hats and a letter. The first three hats say "The (Character Name Here) Hat," and the last one says, "The 4th Hat for Jeremy."In the letter, Neil says that while I've been focusing on Van, now I'll be juggling support for the book with moving forward with my next projects."What should go on … [Read more...]
I am not good at relaxing and it stresses me out.
I turned in the manuscript for STAY on Wednesday. It was the second round of revisions. There may be more changes, but this is probably the last round of major changes. Everyone I've talked with since has encouraged me to relax, take some time off, and/or chill out. The problem is that I can't. Firstly, while working on my manuscript, I left a lot of things undone. There's a small forest growing in gutters. The weed situation in my garden is completely and totally out of control. Bills must be paid. Laundry done. Dog hair vacuumed. That kind of stuff. And then there's the exciting stuff. … [Read more...]
“I went to bed with gum in my mouth…”
Do you remember that book? I didn't wake up with gum in my hair yesterday, but I wasn't having the greatest of days. I woke up feeling kind of eh all over, and then a bunch of stupid little things went wrong. Everything was getting to me and I was feeling like I was on the verge of tears even though I couldn't pinpoint any one single thing that was really worth crying about. When I was out running errands in the morning, I decided, as an attempt to cheer myself up, I'd buy a six pack of fancy root beer, even though it was way more expensive than what I would usually pay for junk food. It … [Read more...]
Non-writing
There's a part of my writing process that involves not writing. And not only is it not writing, but it's not doing much of anything productive at all. It's not doing dishes and not doing laundry and not vacuuming. It's not paying bills and not mowing the lawn and not going grocery shopping. It is basically sitting on my butt and reading, or watching movies, or playing Scramble on my phone until my thumb starts to hurt. This, for me, is the hardest part of writing, because even though I know I need it, I have a really hard time justifying it to myself. I need downtime to be productive. I … [Read more...]
Writing exercises
When commenting on the last post, Dingo said:"Thanks for sharing this process. It's really eye opening. So, tell us, where do you get your writing exercises? Do you still do them? How do you know if what you've written is any good?"I got a lot of the writing exercises I use through taking creative writing classes both in college and after college. There are tons of books and websites dedicated to writing prompts and ideas to give your brain a jump start.I don't use writing exercises in a formal way as much as I used to. I use writing exercises primarily to develop characters, and right now, … [Read more...]
“Who knows where thoughts come from? They just appear.”
You get so many points if you know what movie that line comes from. At Ithaca, when Lady and I got really stressed out and needed to decompress, we'd to run to Wegmans and buy a box of popsicles, the red, white & blue kind that look like rocket. Then we'd sit in my dorm room and watch that movie over and over again and eat all the popsicles, because it's not like anyone ever kept anything frozen in the little teeny tiny freezer section of a college fridge. After half a box of popsicles and two to three rounds of reciting the lines along with the movie, we'd be ready to conquer the world … [Read more...]
Um. . .
So, you know how yesterday I said that CALIFORNICATION was excellent? Well, the first six episodes were. There were subtle complextities in the characters and their relationships. The story lines were interesting, moving, and funny. The second six? Total nosedive. It all just became gratuitous. And I'm not even talking about the nudity or the obscenities. I'm talking about the stiff scenes, overly "clever" and smarmy lines, and the forced storyline. When we got to the end, we thought maybe the show had gotten canceled and they were trying way too hard to tie up all the story lines. But there … [Read more...]
Tweaking
I know you haven't heard from me all that much lately. It's because I'm back in the rewrite process. The last round was pretty significant. This round is more about tweaking. A little more here, a little less there, some technical things, a few reworded sentences. But it's still hard to dive back in. I think the editing process requires a lot more attention than the writing process. For me, writing is something that happens in conjunction with everything else I do - I'm driving to the grocery store and I think about my main character - I'm doing yard work and suddenly I know the back story … [Read more...]
I just like being blonde
I'm not a very girly girl. I don't tend to leave the house without a little eyeliner and mascara, but that's pretty much where it stops. I loathe shopping. I never get my nails done. And for several years getting a haircut meant holding my hair behind my back and lopping the ends off with a pair of kitchen scissors (it was really long and curly and didn't much matter if it was a little uneven). I'm kind of low-maintenance, (although, if I'm being brutally honest, I'm probably "the worst kind." ) I've celebrated this level of not doing things for me like it's something honorable. Like not … [Read more...]
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