bookmark_borderAnother day, another bunch of words

Missed my Dare goal of 118,000 by 13,803. I had forgotten February was a short month.

Went over my goal of 80,000 rewrite words by 4398. You can see all the numbers on the CLOG page.

I had a great count for January (70,829) but February was less than half that (33,368), giving me a 1766 daily average.

I did, however, do good on Butch Girls today. I got in the conflict I needed, although I am not sure it is what the book needs. I need to dissect this monster before it gets out of hand. See, conflict is what makes the book worth reading. Some ‘experts’ believe that every paragraph must have a conflict. Not a war or battle necessary, but more along the lines of a tough decision. For example, who wants to read a book about two people dating the perfect date? Wouldn’t you rather read about how they set up trust (you don’t know it ’till you lose it) and boundaries (you don’t know where they are until they are crossed)? What about dialogue? Same thing applies. If they just sit and speak plain words that have no meaning, why bother then?

Kelly and Grace have acknowledged the attraction. Now Kelly has to re-learn it all and Grace must …what? See, I don’t know. We all have hangups. We all have something that we carry with us from one relationship to another. We all have ‘issues’ that need ‘processing’. So what is Grace’s issue? Is her maternal need to only love those who love her kid? If so, then there’s no conflict since this version of the story has Kelly just fine with kids. I keep leaning toward her hinted problem with committment. Kelly gives it all or nothing. Grace gives it in bits. Hmm, maybe I have something there….

bookmark_borderWords

I got over 2K of words in today, far short of the goal but hey, I still have a the rest of today and all of tomorrow!

I figured out what was going on with Butch Girls. No conflict. Nothing was happening. Sure, it felt good, but there was nothing else. So I am working on that some now.

My snip earlier from “The Guide” has resulted in some positive comments. I like that folk like it. Gives me a good case of the Big Head.

I’ve played around some with the various plug-ins that are available for WordPress. I’ve gotten some of them to work but not the ones I want. That’s the way it goes, isn’t it?

Well, time to like, you know, write words. Fictional words that is. Y’all know that what I say here is true non-fiction, right? Yeah, right.

bookmark_borderWebsite vs Writing

Priorities.

The whole world revolves around priorities. I prioritized playing with the website over writing words. No one ever said prioritizing was easy nor always made sense. Be sure to check out the sitemap.

I did, however, get some words in today. I even managed to get some sleep, about four hours suppose. I worked on an old-ish WIP called The Guide. I had a different idea for the beginning and played with it some. So far I have over 2300 new words. Here’s a snippet. Keep in mind this is very rough draft.

Continue reading “Website vs Writing”

bookmark_borderWebsite

I didn’t get any words done on my WIP.

But I did get a chunk o’ this website done. Check out all the Fiction pages. And don’t forget you can always go to the sitemap and the siteupdate pages.

I matched the color scheme/theme on this blog’s colors. Basically. Sort of.

Lorna and I had a fun afternoon. We ran some errands then went out to dinner at Olive Garden. Our waitress was excellent! Lorna ordered somethinganother that had fungus on it (portebello mushrooms) or rather it was supposed to have them. There was one single chunk and that was it. She mentioned it to the waitress and within two minutes, two managers, the head chef, and the waitstaff supervisor had come over to apologize. The supervisor brought out this gravy boat sized container full of fungus. THEN they took her dinner off the bill. We love Olive Garden and this was the first time we had any complaints. By the time we left, Lorna was feeling no pain from the two glasses of wine and I was downright giddy from the dessert.

It is 2AM. Reckon I’ll get some writing done tonight? I doubt I will be able to reach the Dare goal of 118K words by the end of the month. I need exactly 22,222 words between now and midnite my time Feb 28th which comes out to, roughly, 7407 words each day. Reckon I can do it?? Stop laughing!

bookmark_borderTripping

Today was ‘one of those days’. You know the kind. The ones where you wish you could just backspace far enough to start over. The ones that cause you to question your sanity and/or the sanity of those around you. The kind you just want to say ‘f- it’ and go back to bed.

Today was one of those days.

Throw into that the fact I had a doc appt, and it began to transmutate from ‘one of those days’ to ‘a helluva day’.

‘Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?’

Good news: coming off two meds
Bad news: had a suspicious thingy from my shoulder frozen; being sent to the hand doc to check out my right hand.

Whoopie! and rah.

So you do you like the looks of me blog?

bookmark_borderConcert

Last night we went out for a concert. We went to the Thomas Wolfe Auditorium at the Civic Center to hear Lyle Lovett, John Hiatt, Joe Ely and Guy Clark. It was acoustic guitars, just the four of them on the stage. Wonderful music! John Hiatt can play some wonderful guitar. I won the tickets from WNCW, one of our local public radio stations. They had four tickets to give to two winners and I was one of them! First time I’ve won anything like that. Seeing as how the tickets we won were $40, it was a good win!

The only reason I entered the contest was because Lorna likes Lyle Lovett. I don’t know why, but she does. So when I was told I had won, I realized that meant *I* would have to go too. I’m glad I did though. It was along the lines of the Hall and Oates concert I saw in Philly. It was all acoustic too.

I did get some writing done during the day and later when we got home. Merged some scenes together and did some chapter transitions. I really need to get working on this stuff though. I’ve fallen out of rhythm.

bookmark_borderDone

Lorna got the wall done today. All that was left was the bits and pieces of wallpaper backing that wouldn’t come off without help. Simple warm water does the trick. Anyway, after that we cleaned up and moved the table back into place and moved in the bookcase to put next to it. We have several years of Nat’l Geographic which are now displayed on two shelves. Lorna has one shelf just for her meditation and Bible stuff and I have one for my computer/writing/whatever stuff.

The desktop is not hooked up again and everything works. Cable management is a real bitch! Got it contained for the most part. A real helper is the Liberators from CyberGuys.com. That and hook-and-loop strips.

I hope to get some serious writing done tonight. I haven’t gotten anything done today as of yet but the night is young.

bookmark_borderAck! Cleaning house and tearin’ down the wall

Lorna, my partner of, well, a long time, is off for three days. One more day to go. Sigh. Yesterday and today, she proceeded to start cleaning off my desk. Caution: image is not for the OCD inclined!! It is most likely not my desk anymore since I rarely use the desktop. Anyway, she started cleaning it, making piles and stacks and throwing away a lot of stuff. She promised none of it was mine. Should I believe her??

After cleaning the desk, she then had me disconnect the desktop from all its components. (notice how I do what she asks without question. good me.)Then she moved the table/desk and proceeded to pull more drywall down. This meant that other than early Saturday morning, this is the first time I’ve been on the ‘net. Right now I am connected directly to the modem and not through the network. Ah…I’ve had my fix.

Got a lot of editing done yesterday and last night, despite the noise and dust and crowded living room. I’m sorting through the chapters, checking out my timeline. I’m making chapter breaks as I go and making sure the transitions are not too crazy. I also added in two scenes early in the book and I think they are great! I had to show how Anna died and what ‘mess’ happened afterwards, especially since THAT is what Kelly is having to deal with, still, two years later. I will also have to add in some flashback scenes so that the reader fully understands how much Kelly loved Anna.

Well, reckon that’s enough. Got some catching up to do with the cyber world!

PS: A word of advice: while giggling, it is very difficult to hit the nail and not the board

bookmark_borderWhooHoo!

I got the upgrade done! *doing my own version of the snoopy dance*

(Much thanks to the folks on the DreamHost and the WordPress forums.)

Hang in there folks whilst the look of the blog changes. If it’s not here when you come back, just try again later.

Writing? Yeah, I got some of that done on Butch Girls. Fine tuned a comedic scene today, finally getting it right by the end of the day. I also smoothed out some transitions from importing original scenes into the rewrite. Still has some work to do on it but it is looking good. And, Butch Girls is up to nearly 60K already!

Okay, back to work I go. Later dudes and dudettes!

bookmark_borderAnother day, another count

I managed to get in over 3K of words today on the rewrite of Butch Girls. I think I got some things out of order so my job tomorrow is straightening them out.

By the way, you can keep track of my word count (if you are odd enough to want to) by clicking the ‘wordcount log’ link at the top. I keep a grand total; monthly totals; the current goals and their counts; and the current counts of the major WIPs I am working on.

Anyway, Grace and Kelly have gone on their first official date, although Lucy went with them. Next is the Thanksgiving gathering and by Christmas, their dating is more official, altho they won’t do the deed until after New Years. I think. Lorna is of the opinion that sex scenes should be sexual but not erotic. There is a difference. She likes scenes like that to fade-to-black, letting the reader use their imagination. Or, if it must be there, to gloss over it without details. We both agree that sticking a tongue into someone’s mouth while kissing is the grossest thing ever. Yet, every straight and lesbian romance I have read, they always do it. Gross. You can put it elsewhere (hint: back of my neck), but don’t stick it in my mouth.

Sometimes though, a scene just needs to be written through. I cut them out and keep them all in a file named ‘explicits’. One of these days I may put them all together in an anthology of sorts or turn it into an erotica novel. I even have explicit scenes from Lea and Sarah!

Okay, done with that. Going to go over some of the stuff I wrote today, perhaps even work some on the outline in Inspiration. By the way, I still LOVE that program.

Speaking of programs, I am a big fan of open source software. I use OpenOffice.org, Autorealm, the GIMP, Firefox, and Thunderbird. I use other smaller programs as well. Sites to check out are The Open Source Community, ObjectWeb, and SourceForge. Have fun!