Brainstorming

One of the greatest things about having a writers group is having someone to help you brainstorm. My ideas flow so much better when I can talk them out. On Saturday iChat I got to do three things I love...Girl's Night Out at a Real Soccer Game while brainstorming! The game was a bust...grrrrrr...but even though my boys didn't come through my characters made a huge break through! I have wrote over 4,000 words last week. Much of that was thanks to my awesome brainstorming session over chocolate covered strawberries from Zuppas after the Real game! Since I finished my math class last week, and am done with my history paper for this week my goal is to write 1,000 words a day until school starts. That may change if I get a new job I am looking at, but now that I know where E,J, and R need to be going I don't think it will be much of a problem.

Kiss and Tell

This week has been crazy for writing. In addition to regular life, Minchkin has been sick. Her fever has sat around 103 for a few days and then down to the 101.5 range for several more. She is nauseous constantly and has lost 9 pounds which is fine when you are me, but when you already weigh next to nothing, not such a good thing. And although she is turning into a teenager before my very eyes, she needed her mommy, and I wasn't about to give that chance up. So we spent a lot of time watching shows together, talking, and just trying to get her to feel better.

I also had a job interview this week and a history test, a party for my church girls at my house (I teach the 10 and 11 year olds), and D was out of town for 3 days. The point is, writing got put on the back burner--the far far back burner. I hate it when that happens. I understand that sometimes it has to. My family comes first, which means right now school has to come first as well so I can finish this degree and have more time to spend with them, but it is still hard to neglect my characters for a whole week, even if I am thinking of them, and boy was I thinking of them. Mostly because I couldn't figure out where they needed to go.

I tried one thing, and then another, and then another. I rewrote the end of chapter eleven three times, and chapter twelve just wouldn't start. (Another reason I probably allowed myself to put writing on the side lines.) And in the midst of all this not writing, I remembered a piece of my own advice. My friend in writers group has been struggling to submit things as her life is just as crazy and possibly more so than mine. So two weeks ago I told her not to worry about anything, just write the scene where they kiss. And guess what? She turned in an assignment that week!

I took those pearls of wisdom and decided to see what would happen if I threw a kiss into the end of the chapter. It was a first kiss and technically a fake kiss, a kiss to cover up a lie, so I knew that when it ended I would have to deal with the whole awkwardness of the we-just-kissed situation. I didn't want to deal with that. I'd had enough awkward up until that point, another scene was just going to go over the top. But I had to write and so I did and guess what? In the middle of their kiss, out of the blue something happened that not only allowed me to hold off on the awkward talk moment (yes, I know it still needs to come, but not for awhile) and also changed the whole direction the book was going.

One small sentence in the middle of their kiss changed everything. There I am typing happily along and it just came out. I had to look at it three times, and I kept saying, "Why would I have written that?" And then it dawned on me, because it was perfect and it opened up a whole new world of possibilities for E and J and even R. All it took was a kiss, not even a good swoon worthy kiss. But it was worth it.

My book is a YA novel, so there was bound to be a kiss in it. Your's might not have any kissing in it, but still, if you are struggling, wondering what comes next, why not try out something totally unexpected and see where it leads you? It might be horrible and you end up deleting the whole scene, but then again, maybe you won't.

Oh and since it is Father's Day, I better go upstairs and give a kiss to my favorite main character! Because our first kiss was another kiss that changed my whole world, and look how good that one turned out! Happy Father's Day and Write On!

Writers Groups

I love writers groups. I love them so much that I have two, three if you count Codex--the online writing community that I have the privilege to be a part of. If you want to write, more importantly if your goal of writing is to make it the best you possibly can, there is nothing much better than finding yourself a good writing group.

Each of my groups offers me a unique look at my writing. The first group started out as several of the writers that I attended Orson Scott Card's literary bootcamp. It has changed a bit over the years with a few great additions, but the quality of critiques I get have never changed. There are members of this group who have published their writing, there are members who are line editing pros, there are members who strive to make all my science fiction plausible. It is a great group and I wish our busy schedules allowed us to meet more than once a month.

Since I need more of a push to meet deadlines, I took a chance a little over a year ago when I was invited to joy a stay at home mom writers group. We meet once a week and while the kids run around crazy we talk writing. At first I wasn't so sure about this group (sorry girls). I only knew one member and not well. I wasn't sure how serious they were in their writing. I didn't know how to handle critique feedback because I didn't know the personalities of the other members. But I stuck with it, and over the past year these talented wonderful women have not only become my writing lifeline, they have become my dear friends.

In our short time as a group three of us have completed novels and our resident picture book author has put together three or four great story books. We have talked, laughed, cried, and learned. We have had lunches with published authors including, Dave Wolverton, Dan Wells and E.J. Patton. We have pushed each other, ripped apart whole chapters, and have all become better writers. This group keeps me writing. We meet once a week, and now that all the kids are out of school and getting together weekly with that many young ones is harder, we have been doing an online video chat instead, which has been awesome, with a once a month no kids allowed night planned.

So, if you love to write, and you want to get better, by all means write, go to workshops, read a ton, do what you are doing, and then find yourself a writers group. Hopefully you will find one as amazing as mine are!

Write On!

Writing New Stuff

I took an advanced fiction writing course this past spring at the University. A whole class where I didn't have to do anything but write? It sounded perfect, and for the most part it was. I wrote and edited a 35,000 word novella. A fairy tale I had been thinking about for a long time. It is rough and really needs to be made into a novel to get the complete story out, but it got good reviews from my writer's groups and from my peers in class. Someone even said, "This is the type of writing you were meant to do." Pretty high complement huh? But it wasn't what I wanted to be writing at the time. I struggled everyday writing on that when all I wanted to do was go back to my YA novel that I was 30,000 words into before the class started. I wrote my fairy tale because it was a cool story that I'd thought about. I have the setting down pretty good. When we were in Germany a couple of years ago we found this amazing castle called Hohentwiel. I know the ending because I have imagined it in my head for the past three years. I have a novella written that basically needs to be flushed out. But still the minute class ended and I got my A, I went back to my YA book (Room). It was a little rock at first, as time away had given me some insight on things I wanted to change, so the past month has been spent editing the first 38,000 words. It has been fun. I love my characters! It is no wonder why I couldn't wait to get back to them. But now I am at the end of the road I had set for them and today I need to step off into the unknown and give them knew problems, and insight, and romances. It is a little scary. So scary that I almsot want to go back to my safe well adjusted fairy tale. The problem with that is I know once I go back to the fairy tale those characters will find the same (well not the same, but similar) problems that I will not be sure how to solve, that will keep me up at night debating what comes next. So I am going to finish Room. I am going to step off the path into the darkness and see what will become of my characters lives. Hopefully by the end of summer (or should I say before Fall semester starts) I will have a completed first draft of Room. I'm excited. Writing new stuff can be scary, but I'll have my characters with me every step of the way! Unless of course I decided to kill them off :)

Juggling

Going to school takes a lot of time. Working takes a lot of time. Raising three children, managing a home, and being a wife takes a lot of time. Doing all of those things at the same time, well there isn't a lot of time left for anything else. I would love to be super organized and have cute chore charts for my kids, themed lunches, and arts and crafts time for them everyday. I would love to have a spotless house where I never had to worry who was knocking on the front door because I wouldn't be embarrassed to invite anyone in. I would love to get up at five everyday and start my morning off with a refreshing workout and a healthy breakfast. And I would love to write four or five hours a day and get all the thoughts that clammer around in my mind, out on paper. But let's face it. None of those things are going to happen. So I need to get better at juggling. I have a lot on my plate right now, and although the end is in sight (I graduate in December), it is still a ways off, so I will not do more than I can. Which means I need to be more realistic about my writing goals (its easy to tell myself I can't deep clean every room of the house everyday) but telling I have to be realistic about writing is hard, because I want to write. Besides being a mom and wife, it is all I want to do. But I have other obligations, and so my goals need to be tapered off. Luckily I have an awesome writing group, that keeps me in line. They tell me when my goals are too outrageous, and help me shoot for something I can do. This week it is to send one query and write 30 minute a day, plus blog once a week. I've sent my query. Here is my blog, so that just leaves the writing time. I didn't do anything yesterday. No really, I stayed in my PJ's all day and watched supernatural and made a cake. I should have written, but to be honest, I really needed that do nothing sort of day. So I will start today, and get my writing in. Hopefully next week I will be able to report that the new book is coming along. Until then, Happy Writing!

Winter Camping Fun

I don't think there will be many years where we can go camping at the property on the 30th of December and have it be close to 50 degrees! We had a great time (camping life is so much nicer when you get to sleep in a heated trailer). The kids had a blast running all over as usual. Out by their favorite rock (Turtle Rock) water had pooled into little ponds and they made their own ice skating rinks. D made us a huge fire in the pit late at night and we sat looking at the constellations for a long time. It is amazing what a walk in the middle of nowhere can do for my writer's block. A scene I've been hung up on for over a week totally resolved itself while I was out there. But it was Hertha who had the most fun of all. She was definitely in doggie paradise. 40 acres to roam and run made her one happy camper. She even found the perfect stick she was determined to carry all the way back to the trailer. Anyone who knew me five years ago would never believe that two of my favorite past times could be camping and hanging out with a puppy, but that just goes to show you that you should always give new things a try. You may find out something you were sure you hated could turn into memories that will last a lifetime.

Happy New Years Everyone! Hope you find new adventures in 2012!

Breaking Dawn Update

So this really isn't an update on the movie, but on where I was in life last night when the movie premiered. I have been waiting for this movie to come out for many different reasons, and non of them had to do with seeing Sparkly men or adolescent teen wolves.

Last year around this time, I was cleaning my room and I came across a picture that had been taken a few months before at the Eclipse premier. Maybe I had hidden it to not be reminded what was very obvious as I looked at the newly found picture---I was fat, and not just a couple of pounds, we are talking over the wall, seam ripping chunk. I quickly hid the picture and refused to acknowledge that I had gotten that way. I mean, I have three kids, a few extra pounds was normal, right?

Needless to say it wasn't until my birthday a couple of months later that I stepped on the scale and it confirmed the sad truth. That day I dug the picture back out and it has been hanging on my mirror as a reminder that when Breaking dawn came out, I was not going to be embarrassed to take my picture...and I wasn't. Last night we took tons of pictures and I was 37 pounds less than at Eclipse.

The final movie comes out in one year. I have 15 pounds to go. I will be at that midnight showing and I will be as skinny as I was in High School!

Also when Eclipse came out I was in the midst of trying to decide what I wanted to do with my life. Being a stay at home mom was great, but I knew there was more I could do. I was already taking some classes at the local University, but no major was declared, I had no goal in mind. That has changed as well. I am officially one year away from my BA in History with a 3.96 GPA (stupid A- in Biology!). I signed up for my Senior Research Project class which will begin in January and from there it is all down hill.

Next Year at the midnight showing I will be a few weeks away from my degree and taking a much needed break right before finals.

As for my writing? At Eclipse I had Sky in hand and a three page rejection letter telling me if I just rewrote the whole thing I could maybe go somewhere. It was a challenge that I took to heart.

As of last night, Sky has been completely rewritten and is a million times better and different than I could have imagined. I finally feel confident to really send it out to agents and publishers and not have them laugh at me.

I am now five chapters into a new story which will from here on out be called Room for Two (Room) until a better title falls in place and am discovering the joy of a fresh story all over again. By the time the last movie comes out I hope to have that story in the same polished position that Sky is in.

So from one movie to the next I have lost the weight, got the brains, and found the joy. Last night I rewarded myself by having that Dr. Pepper, getting a manicure and message, hanging out with a dear friend, talking and laughing, and of course watching Vampires and Werewolves slug it out.

Next year I plan to be with the same friend at another midnight showing with a whole new set of milestones that I have overcome. Until then it is back to eating Primal, studying hard, and writing continuously...all intermixed of course with being a soccer mom extreme! The one thing that I hope won't wait until next year is another post!