Cloudy

I saw a link to this website from Lynn Viehl's blog. You can paste in a snippet of text, and it will produce the word cloud for you. I think you can tweak some of the settings to change colors or how the words are arranged a bit, but mostly it uses the frequency of the words you type in. Kind of cool. This one is from a quick piece I wrote a month or so ago in response to a writing prompt. It could be the first chapter of a book at some point. Maybe.

I think I might play around with this website at home, with some of the chapters in my book. I keep thinking that I"m repeating some words too many times, and this might give me a big, visual clue about which ones to look for.

(Note, sorry if you see this post twice! I had to fix several links that I pasted in wrong)

More fun with Blogger

If you haven't noticed, I've been playing with my layout a bit recently. It's kind of like my living room: every now and then I feel like moving all the furniture around. Blogger's tools are making it easy for me to play with page layouts. I just wish I had better control over the items at the bottom of the page--I'd like those archive and label links to be side by side instead of one on top of the other. Oh well.

I made some writing progress on Monday night, including getting one important scene out of my head and onto digital paper. Actually, most of my scenes from this point on are just in my head. Except for my ending--I've written at least two completely different ones so far, adn I'm not happy with either one. I kind of know where I want the book to end. By "where" I mean where in the world, not in terms of character development. It's a romance, so my hero and heroine will "end" with their HEA, of course. I've just had a lot of trouble scripting how they get there in the physical location I want. I might try resolving their relationship one scene earlier, and then have a sort of postscript scene.

Thursdays are my big writing day, where I typically leave work a little early and write for a couple hours before an exercise class. Tomorrow I'll be "home" with the kids instead, so my "leave work early" is dependent on my husband's schedule and good graces. We'll see how this works.

OK, so the post was only partly about Blogger. Anywho.

First RWA Meeting

Saturday I attended my first RWA meeting with a friend. It was fun. I'm not a member, but have been checking out the websites off and on since I started my book last November. I'm glad that Amanda joined first--I'm horrible about social situations, and it definitely helped to know someone in the room. I will likely be joining at some point, and possibly getting involved with their critique group.

There were three parts to the meeting. Well, there were 4, but we didn't join the group in going out to lunch afterwards. First there was an informal gathering in the cafe section of the Barnes & Noble talking about characterization. There were maybe a dozen of us, nursing our coffee and tea. The lady (whose name I don't remember) who led the talk was pretty thororough, though I've heard/read all of her suggestions before.

Following that was an organized chapter busines meeting. I haven't been a part of anything like that since college really. As a guest, I neither had an opinion nor would have shared one, but it was interesting to see what all they are doing. They are really doing a lot of promotion of their members and had several events that folks could get involved with to do book signings and help at various events around town.

After the business meeting they had a guest speaker, Maya Reynolds, to talk about the business of publishing. I recognized the name--not from her book(s?), but from blogging. I hadn't been reading her blog, but had seen her mentioned on some I do read. From her talk, I gather she's following a lot of the same agent blogs that I do, and is represented by one of the blogging agent groups that I regularly (Book Ends). She was fun to listen to. She has a great personality, she was funny, and presented a nicely rounded view of the market--both the back end, business of it, as well as the author-agent-publisher end. There were some interesting side discussions on the future of publishing and the importance of Amazon, copyrights, and e-readers. There are some fun debates in those topics that I would have enjoyed listening to more of.

She was signing books, but I didn't pick up a copy of her book, Bad Girl. It's erotica, which isn't one of my favorite genres, and I've never been much of a "book signing" kind of person (until recent years, I never had enough money to spend on a book worth being signed). To date I own one signed book, which I won from the author's website. Maybe I should change that. I suppose that if I ever come close to publishing, I should at least attend one book signing so that I know how the darned things work! I think mainly I just wasn't interested in adding another book to my shelves--I have at least a dozen in my "to be read" pile, and when I spend money on a book, I feel compelled to read it.

That about sums up my weekend of writing. Oh, I think I have chosen a pen name. I'm not real comfortable ever using my real name or even my maiden one, as you could pretty easily find me in the phone book and other public records. I like the idea of being more anonymous. I may post it at some point, but I want to reserve the domain name first :) And I may have to migrate my blog, too...there's no rush though.

Goal Busting

It's always good to set goals that you can easily reach. It makes you feel productive. I guess I should have stretched more on that 60k word mark, or else I started a little closer than I thought. In any case, I still want this darned thing "draft complete" as I'm calling it, by the end of July. Even better by the end of June. If I can do June, I may have to reward myself with something....

Promises, Promises

I think this happens every week. Wednesday rolls around and I realize that 1) I haven't written anything in several days and 2) The last time I did write, I didn't update my progress. Well, it's Wednesday, I haven't written anything since Friday night, and didn't update my progress. And I'm at work (slacking, obviously) so I don't know what my progress is. I find most of my writing time lately on Thursdays and Fridays. This week will be the same.

I had a personal goal of finishing Chivalrous by the end of June. But, I'm not there. I'm getting closer--that word count on the left doesn't include scenes/chapters that just need editing. Those alone would bump that word count to at least 60k, if not more (hopefully more). Assuming I don't re-write any of them. That's why they're not included in the wordcount yet. I'm not taking as much time for it, and I probably should. Except for my dedicated-out-of-the-house writing excursions, I'm not making the time. I'm doing laundry, or dishes, or reading (darn you Robin Hobb...).

This reminds me of the sweater I crocheted for my daughter a couple of years ago. I was gung-ho at the beginning. I'd never made an entire garment out of yarn before. It was great. It was spectacular. It was exciting. Halfway through it got repetitive. Then I fantasized about other projects--afghans, scarves, a sweater that was entirely knitted. Finally I finished the darned thing. It was cute, if I do say so myself. Maybe someone will call my book "cute" too :)

So, new writing goal. I will hit 60,000 words on Chivalrous by June 30th, or you may ridicule me at your leisure on my blog and I will not delete your comments. Then, I will finish my draft by July 31st. No promises on future edits, but the book will be draft-complete and I will be able to start something new and NOT FEEL GUILTY!

Tuning In / Tuning Out

I keep reading posts about writing to music. Romancing the Blog, the Wicked Wenches, Robin Bielman, and on and on.

So, do I write with music? Well, it depends. I grew up with a big family in a small house. I'm one of 5 sisters, and there was no such thing as quiet. This was back in the early days of Walkmans (Walkmen?), which I never really owned. I think I had a knockoff at one point, but mostly I either locked myself in my room (as one of the 2 oldest, I got a teeny tiny room of my own), or just tuned out the chaos. I am still quite good at tuning out chaos when I need to be.

For a long time at work, I depended on having a radio or a stack of cd's and a pair of headphones to be able to concentrate. Cube farms are supposed to be good for collaboration, but they're horrible for getting work done when your neighbors are having a loud and interesting discussion. Lately, due to annoying rules in my current office, I"m back to silence at work--music silence, that is. My IPod isn't allowed in the door, and my work computers can't play CD's (and I"m too lazy and cheap to buy a separate CD player to bring in). So, I've been honing my "tune out the world" skills again.

I've been writing a lot at coffee shops and the library lately. Not that I've been writing a lot lately (I'm averaging about 3 hours a week), but rather that most of it is out of the house. There are too many distractions (mainly 3ft and under) at home. Which gets me back to the music question again. Starbucks doesn't limit my IPod usage, but now I'm out of the habit of working to music, and am finding myself distracted by the lyrics. I think that the stuff I listen to most often is the easiest to tune out, so anything newer (or anything of my husband's that I've ripped) pulls me out of my writing. The moral of the story? I guess I need a few playlists of stuff I can write to.

As for what I listen to, well, try not to laugh. I buy music in spurts, every couple of years. My Ipod is very new (a birthday present this March), and I have yet to buy a single song online. Everything I own is on CD (though my husband has a large archive of cassette tapes from high school and college). There is very little rhyme or reason to my taste in music. Much like my taste in books it varies by day, phase of the moon, and the price of eggs in China. About the only thing I don't own is country. Some of my favorites (and the ones I can actually work to):

Bon Jovi (old, old, old stuff...like Slippery When Wet)
Aerosmith
Guns N Roses
Creed
Nickleback
Evanescence
Yanni
Josh Groban
A handful of Disney movie soudntracks (Lion King, Toy Story...currently searching for my copy of Mulan)
The Eagles
Chicago
George Michael
I freely admit to having at least one Michael Jackson album ripped onto my ipod (I can appreciate his music even if the rest of his life seems a little...odd...)
There is more, including a strange variety of heavy metal, easy listening, pop, and soundtracks with a dusting of classical and instrumental :)

Fun with Blogger

So, I've discovered (finally) how to schedule a post for future publication in Blogger. You set the date to the future. That's it. Gee, you'd think I might have tried that once on my own.

I'm bad about my posting. Some days (mainly Mondays and Tuesdays), I'm full of ideas and sometimes have 2 or 3 posts to compose in a single day. And some days I've got zero (mainly Fridays and weekends). Now I can spread the wealth(pain) out more evenly through the week.

Also, on a side note, does anyone have a copy (in Outlook or soemthing) of my old post called "Epiphany" where I talked about getting inspiration from Grisham about how sports guys talk? Could you email it to me (or post it in the comments here?) I managed to delete it while trying to delete a draft post that I never finished. I know, it did ask "are you sure" and I did say "Delete it" a second time. But I had already clicked the button when I realized that it was the wrong one. I got smart, though, and now have my blog forwarding to my yahoo account so I will have a copy somewhere else should I be that clumsy again. (It's not critical that I retain every whine and progress report I ever wrote, but darnit, I kind of liked that post...there's a reason that I'm now the owner of a USB flash drive for backing up my WIP....)

So, I hope to hear from ya'll sometime tomorrow afternoon, as I'm scheduling this post for the future. After all, I've already posted twice today (it's a Tuesday).

Agent Query

SELECT distinct agent FROM writers_market
WHERE accepting_solicitations = true AND
represented_genres in ('romance', 'contemporary romance', 'womens literature')
ORDER BY
average_advance DESCENDING,
response_time ASCENDING,
commission_pct ASCENDING


Sorry, couldn't resist. I've probably been at work too long...
(June 18: Updated the title to make a bit more sense with the joke. I know, I know, it's still only funny if you're a writing computer nerd....)

Progress and Whine

It's been a slow week. Memorial Day weekend was busy busy busy. We did a small home-improvement project (installing some trimwork) that spilled over into last week, and is still not complete. Accordingly, the house is a mess as everything is shifted around and piled up in funny places. Last weekend we had an out-of-town wedding that was in my hometown (Indy), but ironically, involved friends and church members from my adopted hometown (St. Louis). I should have done some writing on the drive (it's not like the scenery along I70 through Illinois is particularly riveting). But I am beginning to fight carsickness in my old age. I couldn't even read well for the parts of the trip that I wasn't driving. I wonder if I am due for an eye exam.

I did have some time last Thursday in my spare hour between work and my sole exercise class of the week to sit in the local library and write. It was more editing than writing, but it was progress. Then I did more assembly/editing last night, and my current wordcount is up to 48xxx. There is more work to be done on these sections, and two of the scenes that I incorporated last night need a bit more action, dialog, and/or internal processing. I'm also thinking about re-arranging a few that are coming up. One conversation between my heroine and one of her friends where the subject of the hero's fiancee's possible indescretions needs to happen sooner than I originally wrote it. The heroine definitely needs to be aware of the situation before the hero is.... How's that for a vague teaser? And I have a nice scene of the hero conversing with his intended father-in-law that may end up in the "deleted scenes" folder--I like it, but I'm not sure it's really necessary.

This morning so far has been hard. I'm at work, blogging as I wait on other processes to complete. I took a brief walk earlier in the humid sunshine and darnit, I want to be up there. 15 minutes of allowing my mind to ponder the possibilities and start composing dialoge is not enough. And then I had to walk back into the building, and down the stairs to the cool, artifically lit basement with gray cube walls and uninspiring work. I could write for my WIP instead of blog, but I don't have any of it with me (and transporting it here would be complex for reasons I don't care to expound upon) and I am trying trying trying to avoid actually penning any potentially salable words while I'm on the clock for my employer. Conflict of interest and all that, you know?

I need a winning lottery ticket...one that will pay the bills so I can spend time daydreaming in the sun and writing without feeling like I am stealing time from my job, my house, my children, and my husband.