Today’s page came out so well, I had to share it:
I also had to share this cuteness. Little Lanta likes to nap in the strangest places.
Tag: writing
:NaNoWriMo 2018:
I’m going to be a rebel this year!
I am not writing a novel.
I am not writing fiction.
I am not hitting 50,000 words.
Nope.
Instead I am dedication the month of November to posting daily on my blog. It’s a blog I’ve had for years and have sadly neglected. It just sits gathering dust and taunting my wallet. So, I decided to commit to daily blogging. I will publish one post every day, maybe more than one a day (ah…the magic of smartphones!)
Why is this a priority? Well, I feel like if I can’t do this, then I need to just let it go. Maybe blogging is just not for me. Really, though, I just want to get into a rhythm, like I do with my writing.
So, there won’t be any validating, but I will be updating my daily word count.
Good luck to everyone else doing the full NaNo! (Including my daughter!)
:how i spent my summer:
Actually, I’m pretty sure you don’t want to know. My summer…my summer was a bit on the horrible end of crazy.
Now, how I ended my summer. That’s worth a read. Here on the Grace Homestead I’d like to introduce you to our two newest members.
Hercules (A.K.A. Herc or Boo Cat), who came to us at four weeks old and in the mouth of our kill-everything dog Cassie. I was shocked when D sent me a text asking be to bring home kitten formula and some litter. This is the only cat Cassie-girl has not tried to kill on sight. He came from our neighbor’s property (the had two stray litters), and due to an injury we figured we would keep him and nurse him back to health. Farms do need a cat after all.
and Atalanta (A.K.A. ‘Lanta), from the other litter on our neighbor’s property. She’s three weeks younger, and the mom abandoned the whole litter. We took her and the rest went to a neighbor down the street who works with kitten rescue.
We have also added our flock of chickens back into the homesteading dynamic.
The business of raising orphaned kittens and caring for a flock has given this place a bit of a boost as far as how our days are spent. The garden ended up producing a little bitty zucchini and three giant yellow squash plants. We have so much squash, I don’t even know what to do with it!
As far as the writing front goes, I am getting back into the swing of things. I did a ton of reading this summer, and it has fired up my juices to get back to my story.
I’ve got my BuJo all set up to get back into the swing of our regular school year and to make sure I start looking at my work as a writer as my WORK.
:haven:
Growing up, I have always re-written stories. Long before I knew what fan fiction was, I would close the book on the last page of a story, and imagine myself into that world. I was a princess, befriending the dragon everyone feared and ultimately saving the kingdom. I was the young girl crossing the American west into a brave new world full of hardship and discovery. I was the space pilot, stranded on the enemy ship and trying to find a way back to the rebellion. Those stories shaped me more than anything else in my life. Through books I have lived thousands of lives. I have saved planets, vanquished villains, found my true love, and found my purpose.
There is nothing I like more than a good book.
I’m one of those people who walks into a used bookstore and feels better just breathing in the smell. I can spend hours and hours just drifting along the stacks. I love to touch them. I love the feel of them in my hands.
If I was ever the last surviving human on earth, I would be happy as long as I had books.
As a child, I was shy, painfully so. It was almost debilitating. Books were my refuge to another world where I was brave and beautiful and had a ton of friends. Where I had a sharp and witty comeback to every taunt, and were bullies always lost. My sister, the gregarious one, was my buffer. I always had a book on me, and social discomfort usually found me retreating to a quiet corner and escaping into another world.
I am so grateful for books, in all their forms and genres. Maybe that is why I have long wished to write my own. I am working on that now. I started my first attempt with winning NaNoWriMo last Year. Now I’m looking ahead to Camp NaNoWriMo in July.
Maybe one day my own story will be among the others on the selves.
:library treasures:
Don’t you just love it when you hit gold at the library?
:NaNoWriMo manuscript update:
So…
My update is there is nothing to update.
I, unfortunately, still have a sprained wrist. Typing is getting easier, but it still has not healed enough to allow me to write 2,000 words a day. I think about writing it out long-hand, but every time I go to do so my mind races far too fast to capture it all on the page.
I loved the flow I experienced during NaNo. I got lost in the world I was creating. To me, it was real.
Tangible.
Right now, the best I can do is sketch out bits of locations or characters.
I want that flow to happen when I go back to my story.
:my mornings:
Mornings are my favorite time of day. I love when I can be up before anyone else. Just a cup of coffee, a pen and my journal. I spill my heart onto those pages. Dreams, desires, hopes, fears. Everything comes out through the tip of my pen. There is no censure, no judgement, no fears allowed in this space.
At first, with my brain still groggy from sleep, the words don’t come easily. They are stubbornly out of reach. Still, I put pen to paper and write.
Some mornings it only takes half a page for the words to start coming to me. Others, I’ll be well into the second page before I feel myself relax into the writing. I don’t think I’m ever aware of the moment when I stop hunting for the words and they just come to me.
Solitary mornings are rare for me, since my husband also tends to wake early, but I cherish the ones I do get.
:reconnecting:
I’ve been texting and asking friends to send me their addresses.
I want to send them a letter.
Yup, good old snail mail. So far I have written two. I have no idea if they will write back, but I am hoping a few will.
This is a lost art.
My letters are awkward and stilted. My handwriting, normally reserved for my planner (which no one cares about), my journal (which no one will ever see), and my grocery list (which even I don’t care much about), is…hesitant. It does not flow, the words feel forced.
Plus, there is no autocorrect to save me from my craptastic spelling.
Never the less, I am enjoying it.
Now, let’s see if someone writes back.
:writing it out:
I can’t remember the first journal I used. It may have been in second or third grade. All I know is once I started, I have never been without one. There have been breaks in my writing, but putting pen to paper is one of the things I do. When the words pounding away in my head get to be too much, I can come here and spill them out onto the page.
I’ve had cheap composition notebooks, fancy hand stitched leather beauties, Moleskines, glittery diaries with a unicorn on the cover and a key to keep my ten year old secrets locked up tight.
Lately, starting my day writing instead of checking Instagram has proved centering. The method is Julia Cameron’s Morning Pages if you want to look it up, but it’s been around for a long time. I had gotten away from journaling first thing in the morning to get sucked up into the internet and see what other people were doing with their mornings.
Now, I don’t think I could start my mornings without my journal, a pen, and a cup of coffee.
Many times, it’s not even what I write.
It’s the act of writing.
The feel of the pen in my hand.
The way the ink stains the smooth surface of the page.
The movement of the pen across the paper.
Sometimes the words are secondary.
:writing pains:
So, one of the souvenirs I brought back from the cruise is a sprained wrist. I’ve had sprains before, but this one has proven to be painful in more than one way.
It is a bad sprain. Probably aggravated from what it was originally by the fact that I did not get it in a brace until I got off the cruise ship.
But what is really hurting is the way this sprain has thrown a wrench into my writing. It hurts to type. These blog posts are just about the limit of what I can do with it, and I am scared to push it much more because I want it to heal fast.
The novel I started in November is still waiting for me to finish it. My plan had been to come back from my vacation and use January to complete the first draft. Just do a single-participant NaNo.
You know what they say about the best laid plans.
I know I can still write it out longhand, but the times I have tried have felt…awkward.
The flow just isn’t there.
I started the draft in Scrivener, and I enjoyed the software enough to buy the full version (with my NaNo winner discount!) I am hoping to be able to get back into it in February. I am not really able to dictate my writing. My hands are my best tools for storytelling.
My plan had been to do 1,500 words daily for January, but now I’m thinking I may need to throttle it back to 750 words in the first week of February and see how that goes.
piligrace 