No Rest for the Wicked

Let's see, on May 5th I went to the Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival. The following weekend was my three day camping trip to Virginia. The weekend of the 19th my mom and I went shopping and saw Spidey 3 and Dad and I went to our writer's group meeting. Last weekend was four days of Balticon 41. That's a lot of busyness for an entire month of weekends. You would think I had earned a rest, right? Not hardly.

Today we went into DC for Learning and Product Expo: Art! DC 2007. They had a juried show with one of my mom's pictures in it. They didn't have the good taste to give her an award for it, but it was an honor just to have a picture in the show. It's not my favorite of her pictures, but you can judge it for yourself here.

I bought a lot of art and scrapbooking supplies and we took a watercolor class together. I was actually enjoying the class until the end. The teacher asked me to take my picture to the front of the class so he could demo something on it. I was so flattered until he took out a spray bottle and splattered all but a tiny spot with blue paint and then splotched a couple of ugly purple flowerlike objects on that one spot. It was horrible. My mom knew immediately that I was very angry and leaned over to reassure me that she would help me fix it, but it was too late. The entire picture is ruined. It wasn't good before he destroyed, but now it's hopeless. I would think I was just being picky, but one of the other students and I talked afterwards and she gave me her sympathies because she was appalled at what he had done. It was the very end of the class and I think he got in a hurry and just didn't care what he did. He's probably so used to slopping these things together that he forgets how much work this is for students. Idiot.

Tonight I got out my new colored pencils and pad of paper and tried to do the first of the exercises in one of my books. It turned out pretty badly. I guess I should have saved my time and money and done a little computer art instead. At least with computer stuff you can always hit CTRL-Z and undo the mistakes.

I'm ready for a break, but I won't get it anytime soon. Next weekend I'm meeting with my accounting client to talk about his website and his bookkeeping and one of the guys from work wants me to redo his website. In the meantime I'm working on a complete solution for the 30 Stories in 30 Days website and I still need to rewrite my novel and figure out whether or not it's salvageable.

Anyone want to guess why I haven't been blogging lately? LOL

Happy Belated Easter!

I hope you had a good holiday. Ours was very quiet. We had Easter baskets, of course, and went to church and spent the rest of the day goofing off. In fact, I goofed off all weekend except for doing a little writing. I wrote my eighth story tonight, so I'm still on track for the 30 stories in 30 days challenge.

The one I did yesterday is getting the strongest reaction, with people either laughing at it or telling me how much they hate it. I didn't write it to be funny, but I guess it is, a little. I also didn't want people to hate it, but since it's the content they hate and not the writing, that's ok with me. I would rather have a strong reaction, even if it's negative, than a bored one.

The writing of it was fun because it is all dialogue, which I love to write, and it was fun seeing if I could carry an entire story without anything else. I think it works. I would post it, but it's got a couple of strong words in it and I would rather not have that on my blog. Maybe I'll censor it and then post it. Not tonight though, it's bedtime.

30 Stories in 30 Days Has Begun

I don't know if you remember, but I decided to do a challenge similar to NaNoWriMo. I'm trying to give myself a break from my novel and force myself to look at new ideas, so I came up with the 30 Stories in 30 Days challenge. I was going to start on April 1, but that wasn't possible, so I began on April 2 and will run it until May 1st. I know, it's a little off, but then so am I.

The rules are simple, write 30 stories of at least 1,000 words for 30 days. If you write a story that is more than 3,000 words, it counts as 2. If you write one that is more than 6,000 words, write a novel!

I started a story yesterday but it wasn't going well. I started another one this morning, but it was having problems, too. Finally, I started one during the drive home tonight and it went as smoothly as silk. It came in at just about 3,000 words, so I can count it as two. That means I'm right on track!

My dad started this challenge with me. He finished the NaNoWriMo challenge before I did, so he'll probably show me up this time, too. I don't care because it means I get to read more of his writing. There is nothing in the rules that says your story has to be fiction, so he's doing memoir pieces. I may do one of those later this month, we'll see. The story I started this morning was from Harley's point of view, but it wasn't working. I still like the idea, but I'll have to start over.

It's not too late to join us, you know. If you can't catch up, do 28 stories in 28 days. Anything is better than nothing.

More Plotting More Writing

I thought last Saturday that I had worked out all of the plotting I would need to finish the book. But in the last couple of days I realized that my pacing was off. When I finished last night's section with them stopping to take a nap only a sections from the climax, I knew that I had a problem. Mom and I went out to Olive Garden and talked about the problems. She claims she is not a writer, but my mom is clever and creative and we managed to rethink the ending sequence. I am excited because I think this ending is going to work well.

I have had trouble getting my butt in the chair and my hands on the keyboard, but I finally started writing about 6 tonight. I got 3,845 words written, bringing the total for this month to 14,152. I am only 3,705 words behind schedule. If I manage to get more than 4,000 words done tomorrow, I will be less than a full day's writing behind. It would take 5,491 to get my completely caught up. I know, too many numbers. Did I mention that I used to be an accountant?

The story is getting pretty exciting. I wish I could share it with you, I would love your feedback, but you may have to wait until it goes on sale to read it. At the rate I work, that could be a decade or so. You won't mind waiting, will you?

I put a little content on the 30Stories30Days.com website, but I am just testing out some applications. I may move it to this server, I have to talk to my friend and see if he has room for another of my websites. I am pretty sure I will be doing that challenge in April. Any of you thinking about joining me? It is less of a volume commitment than NaNoWriMo, but it will take more creativity as you will have to come up with 30 plots, 30 sets of characters, 30 settings, etc. You might want to start jotting down ideas but remember, you shouldn't start writing until the day the challenge starts. There are no prizes if you finish, but I would be happy to give you a certificate showing that you did it. :)

I should be getting to bed, I have a lot of writing to do tomorrow, but I am waiting for my dad to get home. He's been in Cuba all week and should be home in about ten minutes. Mom and I have missed him, but maybe not as much as the dogs have. They love their grandpa.

Friday!

Last night's blog didn't make much sense, and I should change it, but I'm just as tired tonight so I'm going to leave it alone. I managed to write 1,821 words tonight. I quit in the middle of a scene because I am just too tired to care. I am sure Mom will holler at me in a minute when she gets to that point, but she'll just have to wait until tomorrow. I am not very happy with what I wrote tonight and I may have to redo part of it in the morning. That's ok, maybe in the morning I will love it. You really never know.

I registered a new domain name today. It's 30stories30days.com. Want to guess what it is for? I can't remember, have I mentioned the idea I had that I want to try after I finish this book? I want to write 30 stories (of 1,000+ words each) in 30 days. I thought that maybe I could convince some other crazy writers to join me and, if so, that website could be our home. Don't bother checking out the site tonight, it has nothing on it so far. I will let you know when it has content on it, and if you want to give the 30 stories idea a try, just say the word. Crazy folk should stick together... just look at most families.

*There is Mom hollering now!