Biting off more than I can chew

I'm on a roll with Power Trio. Only 8 more pages of garbled mess to sift through until I can officially say that I have finished the first draft. So, with this entire day free, what better to do than work, right? But then I had this great idea... I mean I have 15 hours! That's more than enough time to accomplish a bunch of stuff.

I live in a rental house, and when I moved in there was this ugly mirror on the bedroom door. It was curvy and in a whole bunch of pieces that rattled every time I shut the door. I didn't really like it, but it looked like the mirror was attached really well, so I figured I'd just have to live it.

A week ago, I shut the door and I heard something tiny hit the floor. A small little ting, hardly noticeable above the sounds of my two cats chasing each other around. I opened the door and crawled across the floor, but I couldn't find anything. Then, the next day when I shut the door, I heard a much louder crash. One of the mirror panels had fallen, but luckily it didn't break. And, even more good news, it turns out all I had to do to take it down was pop off a few plastic caps. Yay!

To cover the peeling paint!



However, I finally figured out why someone had put the mirror up in the first place:

I wasn't sure what I wanted to put up, so I searched for some options for covering a door. I thought about painting it with chalkboard paint or wrapping fabric around it. Then I found an article about covering a door with French memo boards. Perfect!

So with this huge 15 hours of unplanned Sunday time, I decided to spend a few of them making something to cover the ickiness. Then I'd get right to work on Power Trio. 

They look done, but they still need
the buttons on the bottom right
added to every place the ribbons meet.



Eight hours later, I am still working on these French Memo boards. Things always sounds so easy on paper. I do have Power Trio open right now, and I am going to put in a solid hour or two before bed. These memo boards will have to wait.

Kind of like writing a book, right? I keep reading these stories about people who write a book in two months, edit it in two, then get signed to an agent and published within a year. I'm almost three years from the start of Power Trio. (I can remember because I had the idea during an annual conference that I am about to head to tomorrow morning.)

Reading the instructions for these memo boards, the process sounded so easy, but then once I was into the process I realized it was not going to happen easily. It was going to take work. I had to troubleshoot a few times, but every thing gets me another step closer to finishing! Before long I'll be able to say that I've finished a book and four memo boards! And you guys will be the first to know.

Okay, time to get some editing done. Wish me luck! Hope that you had a great weekend too! 

Blogfest: The Magic Ring

As part of a super fantastic blogfest in honor of Elizabeth's fantastic fifty followers, I am posting the only story I have ever completed in my entire life, recently discovered in my parents' basement underneath a pile of holiday decorations and dust. I'm actually traveling right now, so I'm not able to post it in its entirety or with the images I had promised, but I will get them up as soon as I can. I was thinking it might be nice to do this as a series, since I don’t want anyone’s eyeballs to erupt into flames from the awfulness.

In order to retain some semblance of dignity, I will not be telling you how old I was when I wrote this, but I will say that it was prior to taken a decent English class. I have left the story "intact" and in its full glory (aka, spelling and grammar errors abound… yes this was the first paragraph. Which also happened to be the entire first page. I love large fonts.). Please to enjoy:

The Magic Ring

Many years ago in a land called Finchton, a young princess, named Sandra, lived with her mother and her brother. She had long, wavy brown hair. Her bangs feel over her face blocking the view of her most striking feature. Her eyes, which seemed to stare right through people, were an almost invisible, crystal blue. They didn’t seem to match with her dark hair and brown tan. Her brother was the one who made her cut her hair to cover her eyes. He thought that when she was with him everyone was looking at her and not him. Her brother, Xander, was king and felt that everything should be his way or nothing at all. Sandra’s father had been the king before, but he disappeared last year while fighting in a war. The Beniffs, a people from a kingdom across the big river, had tried to expand their castle across the river. A war had broken out and it lasted almost a year. The king had been lost, but the Beniffs had retreated. Before the war, Finchton had been a prosperous kingdom, but after King Theo disappear the land fell apart. As soon as the king had been reported missing her brother had taken control of the land. He was an heartless and wicked king. He made the peasants work all day long with no pay and then at the end of every month he taxed them even more. Xander cared nothing for anyone, but himself and all he wanted was money. One day Sandra decided she was fed up with the way her brother was treating everyone. She had never given up the hope that her father was still alive and now, she decided, it was time to see if she could find him. She got a beaded bag made of golden thread from her room and went outside to the shack in the back of her house. This was where the servants kept their tools. She knew that the guards would be watching for intruders on the castle grounds tonight, so she needed a way to sneak by them and over the tall wall that surrounds the castle. She took a rope and a black gardener’s robe, to keep her warm, and hid them in the bag. She snuck back inside and into the map room. She grabbed a map of the forest and a blueprint of the Beniffs castle. Then she snuck back inside and up to her room.




Oh, yes. She did sneak back inside twice! She's super sneaky. Who knows what she was worrying about. And for those of you wondering, the first illustration is a drawing of Sandra. So, you can see those crystal blue as just as soon as I get a hold of a scanner.

Setting Goals

I love goals.  "I love the whooshing noise they make as they go by."

Okay, that was Douglas Adams, but I actually do love setting goals. I love making lists. I love calculating how far I will get if I... [lose 0.6 pounds a week], [write 750 words a day], [jog 30 minutes every morning]. But here's the thing about setting lists, they don't mean anything unless you stick to them.

I can't actual jog for 30 minutes straight, but I have signed up for the Peachtree Road Race (Atlanta's huge 10K run). And I'm actually training this year, as opposed to other years that I've done it. My goal is to run a significant (>50%) chunk of the race. (I'll keep you updated! I'm on week 1 of a Couch to 5K program.)

After six months, my blog is still a lie. I still haven't actually written a book. But I get closer every day! In high school, I used to reward myself for studying with equally spaced M&Ms. Is there a grown up equivalent? What do you do to help you stick to your plans?

Side note: Netflix on my PS3 is dowwwwwwn! What to do with my life?! Achieve my goals, you say? Nonsense!! (I do realize this is a possible sign that I should open my WIP tonight.)

I love the South

After enjoying a sunny, 80 degree day, I went to the first cookout of the season. Summer's here, right? It's official... Dear weather, please don't take this away from me.

Hope you all got to enjoy some great weather as well- no matter where you are.

On a related note, I didn't get any writing or editing done today. No regrets!

Update: And now I am watching Twin Peaks. This show is so strange and fantastic- how have I not seen this before? I like to call this researching, since I'm trying to write a mystery/detective novel. This counts as research. Definitely.

Editing up a storm

I wanted to share a little progress report with everyone:

School of Life

Student: Elizabeth

Science: A+

Math: Incomplete (I still need to finish my taxes!)

Home Economics: C (The laundry is not going to do itself.)

P.E.: B- (Time to hit the gym.) 

Procrastination, with a concentration in TV watching: A++

Blog Updating: B-

Editing: A

That's right- an A in Editing!! Aren't you proud? Feel free to hang it on your refrigerator, I know I will.

I've made some really awesome progress on Power Trio. I'm not sure how other people go about doing this, but here's my approach: I have a document, entitled 'Power Trio', that contains my first draft. I have a second document entitled 'Extra Lines' which is full of 10,000 words of things I wrote in that first draft and then deleted or funny quips or lines I thought of that haven't made it into the actual document. Maybe they will, maybe they won't. Yet to be determined. Then, and this one has been the bane of my existence, I have a third document labeled 'Second half- incomplete 11 2010.' Sigh. I work in that documents and move the chapters over to the 'Power Trio' file. Over time 'Second half' shrunk to 'Third third' and now it's hover at about 'Final fifth.'

If all goes well, I'll officially finish the first draft by April! How fantastic!

Also, I have some incredible news to share. I'm always blabbing about how I only recently discovered the world of writing. I was not one of those kids who grew up writing. I couldn't even keep a journal. Instead, I grew up with my chemistry set and my science summer camps (Why, yes, I was a Young Astronaut!). 

But wait! I have stumbled upon a gem of all gems. This is the Holy Grail of Wannabe Writer history. I wrote a story! And I did the illustrations. After reading it and laughing so hard I sobbed, I have decided to share it will you for Elizabeth P.'s upcoming blogfest. You should consider participating too, but definitely come back here on April 1 to join me in celebrating my progress as a writer.

Only two things in life are certain

Death and taxes. And the latter is driving me crazy. It's amazing how much it has made me nostalgic for simpler times.

Maybe that's why I write (aka, am trying to write) YA. I'm secretly and intensely jealous of teens because they don't have to pay taxes. Growing up is tough. I remember being 15 years old and wanting nothing more than to be 25. Life seemed sweet for 25 year olds. They could go where ever they wanted, eat whatever they wanted, stay up as late as they wanted... how could life get any better?

Turns out, even when you grow up, you don't get to go wherever you want (it costs too much money), eat whatever you want (it goes straight to your hips), and stay up as late as you want (gotta go to work in the morning- how did 14 year old me not realize that adults had jobs?!).

But, if I want, I can eat ice cream for dinner! And I stay up as late as I want and willingly pay for it in the morning. So even though there are things I miss from those fantastic teen years, I'm happy to be where I am (and will be much happier after April 15).

No matter how old you are, there are things that suck and there are things that completely rock! And what you focus on can make all the difference. So, I'm going to lay back, watch some funny TV, and put off those negative things for a later day.

Yay! Contest! Winner!

I'm happy to announce the exciting conclusion of the super sweet Spring contest:

The winner is... Elizabeth Poole! Congratulations!
I have to add that I've been reading her series on How to Write a Novel and learning a ton! For example, I've noticed that I overuse exclamation marks in my writing! Can you believe that!

Elizabeth, shoot me an e-mail and I'll send you the list of ARCs (teaser: I've got some strange ones).

Thanks again to everyone for being a part of my journey to writer-dom. I didn't get much editing of Power Trio done last night, but I did a good bit of reading, and I am more convinced than ever that