Author: tamaramorning

A Little Bit of Writing

As far as updates go, this will probably be brief. I haven’t gotten too much done on the writing front this week. I did start working on the 2YN story again, and finished up the chapter where Samantha finds the help she needs to complete her spell. It was really quite easy to slip back into her voice/character, much easier than I expected. Then, today, I finished up another chapter on the NaNo story. It actually turned out to be a couple thousand words, which surprised me. It didn’t feel like that much. This story is on the downhill slide now, moving towards the climax. I don’t quite have a feel for that yet, so I guess it’s a good thing I’ve got a little bit to work up to it. I haven’t done any work on the zombie story this week. I started to, a couple of days ago, then realized the scene I was supposed to write had to be from Moya’s POV. And since I’m not writing Moya’s POV, I couldn’t very well write that scene. Dang it. It would have been fun, too. So now I have to come up with something else to write. I’ll do that tonight.

I haven’t even been doing much reading. I finished up the Earthsea trilogy, and I’m currently reading the anthology Holidays Are Hell, with stories from Kim Harrison, Lynsay Sands, Marjorie M. Liu, and Vicki Pettersson.

Toady I went and saw I Am Legend. I liked the movie a lot, despite the fact that it made me cry. Twice. I got the book as a Christmas gift, but I wanted to watch the movie before I read it. (Afraid the movie would spoil the book.) It was kind of dark, and depressing, since he was the only man left alive in New York City. I can see humanity destroying itself with something like that, so that part scared me. Of course, I don’t like scary movies, and this one kind of fell on the border for me. (Yes, things that go bump in the dark qualify as scary for me.) I’ll probably be paranoid for a while when going outside in the dark. Me and my overactive imagination. I know it’s a good thing for a writer to have, but it’s a little unsettling when you’re always imagining vampires or werewolves are about to get you!

Another Wasted Week

I know it’s the holiday season and all, but where does the time go? It seems like I never have time to do much of anything, starting with cleaning and chores, much less things that I want to do, like reading and writing. It’s frustrating me a little bit. My procrastination tendency is coming to the forefront, and I don’t like it. I must stomp it to death!

In the last week, I really haven’t done much writing. I wrote a new chapter in the zombie story. I think that one’s coming along nicely, although I’m still trying to develop a feel for the characters. The next scene should be fun, though. A thwarted attack, retaliation, and accusations of attempted murder. What’s not to like? I also did a tiny bit on the 2YN story, about 1k or so. Trying to get back in the swing of things with Samantha. Hopefully I’ll get another chapter or so this week in all three stories.

I’ve had a little bit of time for reading. I read the second book in the Wizard of Earthsea trilogy, The Tombs of Atuan. Pretty good. Again, short and the language is formal, but it wasn’t bad at all. Interesting culture, and I like the sense of history behind everything.

Next up is Your Coffin or Mine? by Kimberly Ray. As always, a fun and entertaining read. Made me laugh several times. Especially the cat named Killer. I have five cats myself, so I could really relate to those parts. And the image of a prissy vampire turning into a giant pink bat never fails to make me laugh. I have a couple of friends who love the Shopaholic books, and I’m thinking I need to turn them on to this series. There’s a fun mix of paranormal creatures, along with the whodunit aspect to this story that I really liked.

Last but not least, is The Red Tent, by Anita Diamant. This is not my normal reading material, but a friend of mine said it’s her favorite book and wanted me to read it. I’m glad I did. This book was disturbing to me on several levels, but it was an excellent read. It’s about Dinah, daughter of Jacob and Leah (from the Bible). I know it’s fiction, but the description of the way of life in this time frame was very detailed and interesting to me. Sometimes the everyday details fascinate me more than anything. I can’t imagine the interaction between the four wives of one man, especially with two of them being sisters. The portrayal of some of the men in the book bothered me. I guess I never really pictured biblical characters quite like that, but they were vividly drawn. And the story itself was sad. But it was a very good book, and one I intend to buy.

In other news, well, not news. I’m wondering if anyone has read The Golden Compass, and the rest of its trilogy. I’ve heard some disturbing things about what the books are about, and I would really like to know.

Books Galore!

I’ve actually done quite a bit of reading over the last couple of weeks (while I was avoiding NaNo). Two books in series I’ve previously read, three new authors, and one author that I normally don’t read.

I read Confessor, by Terry Goodkind, the last in the Sword of Truth series. I really like these books, and I’ve enjoyed all of them. I discovered them quite by accident. I read something about one of the books, I think it was Temple of the Winds, and thought it sounded good. So, I went to the bookstore to get it. And discovered it was the fourth book in a series. I decided to try the first one, and was completely enthralled from the first sentence. I devoured that, and had to go back the next week to get the other three books. Terry Goodkind is not afraid to be very, very cruel to his characters, and I know I cried several times while reading the series. Parts of it are funny, parts of it are very serious. There are so many layers to the series that it amazes me. Confessor was a fitting ending to the series. I enjoyed it a lot, and I think he wrapped up everything neatly (although I would still love to read more in this world). Richard and Kahlan are great characters, and after reading the series, I feel like I know them personally.

Next up was Halfway to the Grave, by Jeanine Frost. I heard her speak this summer at Conestoga, on a panel about vampires, and I was impressed by what she had to say (Plus, she gave away really cool cover flaps of her book.). Halfway to the Grave is about a girl who lures vampires and slays them, in amateur fashion. One of her attempted murders goes awry when she tries to stake Bones, who takes her under his wing and trains her so they can go after a really bad vampire who is kidnapping and selling women. I wasn’t too sure about the first part of this book, but I ended up really enjoying it, and I’m looking forward to the next in the series. I thought Frost’s writing was strong, and she did a good job with this story.

The High King’s Tomb by Kristen Britain was a very enjoyable story. I stumbled over the first book in this series, and have been hooked ever since. (Strangely enough, I was checking Amazon to see if she had written anything new, and it happened to be this book’s release day). The characters are great, especially Karigan, and even minor ones are well-drawn. There is always a lot of action and mystery, and I enjoy that. (And dang it, I want Karigan and the King to get together!) I think I read somewhere that Kristen Britain is a protégée of Terry Goodkind’s, so the story quality is definitely good.

For some reason (my mother made me), I read Nicholas Sparks’ A Bend in the Road. I don’t normally read Sparks, because I’ve read several of his things in the past, and I just don’t enjoy them. This one wasn’t a bad story, and the writing was fine, but I figured out what was going to happen early on, and I’m not a big fan of predictability in my reading.

Also read Cormac McCarthy’s The Road. I’ve heard a lot about this book this year, so I decided to read it. It was…a little strange. Mind you, I had to force myself to put it down at night, but it was an uncomfortable book to me. I thought it was odd that the characters’ names were never revealed, and the whole world was depressing to me. Good writing, just not a book I would read again.

Last up is A Wizard of Earthsea, by Ursula K. LeGuin. I’ve never read anything of hers before, and tried this one on a whim. I enjoyed it, despite its brevity and the formality of the language. Ged is an interesting character to me, and he grew a lot in this story. I’m now working on the second book in the trilogy.

A City Divided

Over the Thanksgiving weekend, my family and I visited New Orleans. I had been there once before, about eleven years ago. Everyone else in my family has been since Katrina hit, and I had heard my dad talk about what the city was like on his many trips there to volunteer after the storm, so I was really curious to see what had changed. I have many vivid memories of that previous trip, even though we were only there for two days. I fell in love with the city then, and always said that if I had the opportunity to move there, I would (funny how those things come back to you). Since that visit, I’ve always read everything I could about the city, especially any story set there in any time period. I was afraid that the trip this past weekend would completely overshadow my memories of how the city was.

We did visit the French Quarter, which is fascinating to me. The buildings are so beautiful, and I love the wrought iron balconies. For someone much more familiar with the DFW area, it’s like a foreign country down there. The narrow, crowded streets and the buildings crammed together make me a touch claustrophobic. Jackson Square was interesting, with all the “psychics” sitting around offering to tell your future, and musicians playing everywhere. Café du Monde was great (and very crowded). Wonderful beignets and coffee. We drove through the Garden District and looked at the beautiful, wonderful houses. In short, we did most of the tourist things.

But…you drive through these huge neighborhoods full of big houses, and you realize that only two or three houses on a street are occupied now. There are still “blue roofs” everywhere, the damage from the storm covered by bright blue tarps stretched so tightly they look like you could bounce a quarter off of them. You can see the holes in some of the roofs where people escaped the rising water. And everywhere, everywhere are the spray-painted Xs on the houses with the number of dead bodies found there and the date and crew who searched them. It’s been over two years, and still parts of the city look like a ghost town. I think the creepiest thing for me was going past the now-deserted Six Flags theme park. It’s just past Lake Pontchartrain, in the middle of an expanse of weeds, brush, and broken trees. The empty rollercoasters rise up out of that mess like giants, and they stand there all by themselves, like sentinels for the lost.

My dad took us to the Lower Ninth Ward. Having heard so many stories about what a bad neighborhood that is, I was more than a little nervous. (Oak Cliff in Dallas doesn’t even make me nervous.) So much of the neighborhood is empty now. I know it used to be row upon row of shotgun houses crammed together, but we drove past empty, overgrown lots, and then suddenly, in the middle of nothing, there would be a house, standing crooked and abandoned. Or sometimes a brand-new rebuilt house. Deserted cars in now-empty lots. Street after street of empty lots and occasional houses. The farther away from the levee you get, the more houses there are, although many of them are still empty. Up close to the new levee, there are really no houses. I think I saw one ramshackle house that somehow managed to stay standing when everything around it didn’t, and one half-crumbled brick church. The levees aren’t what I expected either, just a mound of dirt with a wall on top of it. I know people live in the Lower Ninth, but the only signs of life we saw were a cop sitting in his patrol car in an empty parking lot, and a man walking through what my dad told me was a hippie commune called Common Ground. Quite sad, actually.

But the people we met were friendly. I love to listen to them talk, their words have such a musical rhythm, sort of flowing along. And they say “sugar” and “darlin’,” and “all right” (which comes out sounding like “aw ‘ight”). I love it. Already an idea is niggling the back of my mind to set a story there. Definitely. And the research will be great!

Also posted to A Figment of My Imagination.

The End of NaNo

NaNo word count: 57,117

Word count for the year: 181,284

So, NaNo is over again. Now, I might have mentioned that my personal goal for NaNo was 100k. Needless to say, I missed that mark by quite a long shot. At first, I beat myself up pretty good about it. I mainly did my writing on weekends, instead of my goal of writing at least a little bit every day. It should have been so much easier this year, with a set schedule and set hours, and not having to get up at the crack of dawn. But it certainly didn’t work that way for me. Granted, I have a lot going on in real life right now that is pretty stressful, what with trying to get everything ready to move out-of-state in January (hopefully). But I was still down about falling so far short of my personal goal. Then I actually looked at the numbers and broke them down.

I wrote 51,117 words and only wrote 12 days out of the month. That averages out to 4,700 words a day. But….on seven of those days, I wrote less than 1200 words (and one day only 105), which isn’t much at all for me. So, my average word count on the five days I really put effort into it was 7,600, which cheered me up immensely. Now I feel much better about my efforts, even if I haven’t written anything for almost two weeks now, and I need to get a grip on my story and push on.

I’m determined to hit my yearly word count goal, which is 200k, and that’s only about 19k to go, which should be a snap, considering my weekly goal for the 2YN story is 5k. And I’m still planning on working on the zombie story, and my NaNo story this month. And…that’s pretty much all that’s been going on with me. I did go out of town last week to New Orleans, which is wonderful but sad, and I’ll be writing more about that hopefully later today.

NaNo Day 18

Word count goal for the day: 10,000

Actual word count: 6,017

Total NaNo word count: 56,097

Word count for the year: 181,284

So, I fell a little short today. I’m a little disappointed, but I do realize I’ve had a good word count for the weekend. I’m afraid to force myself to write more, since I don’t want to lose whatever tenuous grip I still have on the story and have it spin out of control. I’m just trying not to stress about the writing. I’m already aware this will need extensive editing, and I have a feeling that Samantha’s voice is creeping into the story, and that’s not quite who Nerina is, so I’ll have to work on that. But otherwise, I’m pleased. I’m currently writing about the Underworld!

I did get a bit of reading done this week. I read Rhett Butler’s People, by Donald McCaig. Now, I was really excited about this book. Gone with the Wind is my favorite book ever. Period. I’ve read it probably 25 times. I’ve read Scarlett several times as well. I don’t like it as well as GWTW, but it’s still not a horrible book, and I thought the characters stayed true. Rhett Butler’s People? Not so much. Frankly, my dear, when I finished it, I wanted to throw it across the room. Aside from a few things I found different from GWTW, there were some other problems as well for me. From the flap copy, I expected it to be told, hmm, from Rhett’s point of view? Well, part of it was. And a big chunk of it was from his sister Rosemary’s POV. Then there were some scenes from Scarlett’s POV. Did I mention a couple of scenes thrown in that, if they actually happened, should have been in GWTW? I didn’t have any problems with the writing itself. No issues there. Just story issues. Did I mention that I didn’t like what the author did with Melly? No? Consider it mentioned. The absolute worse thing, though, was…(spoiler alert)…THEY BURNED TARA! Yes. Can you believe it? I couldn’t. I mean, this is Tara we’re talking about here. If it hadn’t happened right at the end of the book, I would have tossed it. Sigh. But apart from that…Seriously, though, the author is much braver than I would ever be. Can you imagine what kind of nerve it would take to write a sequel to such a classic book as Gone with the Wind? He deserves respect for that, if nothing else.

I also read A Lick of Frost by Laurell K. Hamilton. I’ve been looking forward to this since I heard her read the first chapter at Conestoga back in July. I was a little disappointed it was so short, but I enjoyed it. It resolved some things, and finally answered the question of how she was going to pick just one of Merry’s men to be king.

NaNo Day 17

Word count goal for today: 10,000

Actual word count: 10,236

NaNo word count: 50,080

Word count for the year: 175,267

Woot! I managed to pull another 10k and I hit 50k today! Yay! That’s almost a week later than I wanted to hit it, but still way better than nothing. Now if I can just pull another 10k out of my, ah, hat tomorrow, I’ll be all caught up and back on track to reach my personal goal of 100k.

Brief Update

In short, this week has been another crappy writing week. Some days, it seems like I’ve lost my will to write. I think stress is the culprit, but I’m trying not to let it get me completely down. I started getting up a little bit earlier, so I can get some sort of writing done before I leave for work. That has helped me pick up the odd hundred words or so. Basically, I’ve gotten less than 2k written total all week. But…I intend to get 10k today, which will put me at 50k. And I intend to get another 10k tomorrow, which will put me right back on track to make my personal goal of 100k. I know I won’t be able to hit the requisite 3,333 words a day, but I’m hoping to make those words up on other days, despite the fact that I’ll be going out of town for 5 days next week. I’m determined, though. So, here are my current stats (Not including the 2k I’ve already written today).

NaNo word count: 39,844

Word count for year: 165,031

I’ll be updating this later tonight with today’s progress. How is everyone else doing?

NaNo Day 11

Eh. Not a very good (writing) day today. My family decided to take a last-minute trip to visit my grandmother, and I went with them. By last-minute, I mean that I sat down at the computer, opened Word, and then the phone rang (My mom, calling to ask me if I wanted to go.). I tried to type in the car, and did a little bit (In fact, the only words I wrote were in the car.), but I’m easily distracted and my laptop was not fully charged, so it died in half an hour. Oh well. I did get some writing done. Then, when we got home, we went to a service re-ordaining my dad before he takes his new job. That ceremony was a blessing to attend, and I’m very glad I did. So, I might not have gotten anywhere near as many words as I wanted, but it was still a great day.

Word count goal: 6,000

Actual word count: 874

NaNo total: 38,084

Word count for the year: 163,271

NaNo Day 10, Or, Getting Back on the Wagon

Okay, I must confess. I have not written anything since last Sunday (unless you count the pathetic 105 words I got on Wednesday. Which I don’t. Horrible.). I know, I know. I’m a terrible NaNoer. I skipped five days. FIVE whole days! Arggghhh! It was terrible. The guilt. The shame. The embarrassment. But I have a really good excuse, okay? (Alright, maybe not a really good one, but an excuse, nevertheless.) I was exhausted. The time change always kicks my butt, and I always forget that, so I’m sitting around wondering why I’m about to pass out at seven o’clock. Also, work was horrible this week. (Seriously. Why people feel they have to act like complete morons at work is beyond me. And then they get angry when the have to face the consequences.)

But…I went out on a limb and decided that this weekend, I was going to try to make up the word count I skipped during the week as well as the word count I had planned for the weekend anyway. So, make up 13k, and also write the 12k already planned. (Ambitious, me?) How did I do? Well….excellent today! I’m really proud of my word count, and if I can just do the same again tomorrow (which will be a true miracle), not only will I be caught up, but I will also break 50k. So wish me luck!

Today’s word count goal: 6,000

Actual word count: 12, 507

Total NaNo word count: 37,210

Total word count for the year: 162,397