The Great Internal Debate and the Kidlit Contest

So.  I wear contacts.  And glasses, sometimes, but only under protest.  I went in for a free Lasik consultation and was told that I am the perfect candidate.  My eyes are ideal for Lasik.  Now, how often do I hear the words "perfect" or "ideal" and they refer to me? 

Not very often. 

Especially not as a writer.

I'm having a huge debate with myself about having it done.  Do we have enough money?  Yes, but not much will be leftover after (because we've just had Christmas, gone to Disneyland, and I've just signed up for a couple conferences).  Sure we could finance it, but that adds $500 to the cost.  And I really don't want to do that.  If I do it, I want to pay cash.  But how many things would my husband rather spend the money on?  Am I totally selfish that I want to see without getting headaches???  It doesn't help that I'm constitutionally unable to make a decision.  Really.  I'm not kidding.  Try going to a restaurant with me.  I fall apart into a blibbering mass of indecision.

Will someone please tell me what to do?  Whether to Lasik or not to Lasik?

Anyway, between all the biting nails and wringing of hands as I try to decide, I have managed to get some writing done. 

This week:  4,949 words
Total word count:  25,267 words

Of course, I wrote almost 2,000 words today and then realized that I had a problem.  It's probably not that big of a problem.  Not nearly as big as it seemed when I noticed it, but something that needs attention nonetheless.

And I'm still having fun with it and that's the important thing, right?

For anyone interested, Kidlit.com has a writing contest going on.  Submissions are due on January 31st, so there isn't much time left to enter.  For the rules and regulations, go here.  Mary Kole, who runs the site and will be judging the contest, is the agent for Kim Reid, one of the writers I met at WIFYR last summer. 

Cool by Association Doesn't Work for Me

Last Saturday I went to a reunion for the WIFYR class I went to last summer.  I skipped all my high school reunions, but wouldn't have missed this one.  Not only was the class full of some absolutely incredible people that will, if all goes as planned, be taking over the world soon, but Shannon Hale joined us for dinner and stayed chatting for quite a while after. 

She is very cool. 

Unfortunately, none of that coolness rubbed off on me and I managed to gross people out by talking about mice that have been genetically engineered without skin cells.  The scientists put chicken skin cells on the mice and the mice grew feathers.

And I wonder why I don't get out much? 

For a very funny recap of the evening, check out Brodi Ashton's blog.

While I was gone, our two year old decided to eat a cabbage.

These poor children.  They have no chance at being normal, do they?

 

 

In Which I Should Have Failed First Grade

I try to go in and help with my son's first grade class every week.  I went yesterday and sat through a lesson on how to add -ing to words.  Those kids know what a schwa is.  I don't think I knew that until I was far older than I care to admit.  And then there is the grammar homework that they bring home and I can barely figure out what he's supposed to do with it.  I want to be a writer and I can't figure out my six year old's homework?  How embarrassing. 

Let's not talk about that.

Let's talk about what I do well.  Like my current word count for the week:  4,182. 

And that's just for Monday and Tuesday.  (A lot of the word count came on Monday when my mom took my older kids so that I could have some free time while the toddler napped.  Thanks, Mom!)  I'm pretty happy with how the story is going.  Of course, it helped that a friend and I are exchanging chapters and she called me first thing this morning to order me to finish it because she loves it.  Yay!  It's always nice to hear someone else likes it. 

I've also been in a baking mood this week.  Cookies on Monday for family night and right now I'm making a couple loaves of whole wheat bread and used some extra dough to make chocolate sweet rolls that I'm taking to my husband at work.  Because who doesn't want warm chocolate sweet rolls on a cold snowy day? 

WIP Progress

A friend and I decided that we needed to be motivated to make more progress in our current WIPs.  Our goal was to write 7,000 words every week and then we would report at the end of the week.  Okay, that was her goal and I was going to try my very best, which I was sure would fall short.  Not so, it seems. 

Last week I wrote 8,536 words! 

I'm pretty impressed myself since I forgot all about the goal until Wednesday.  Apparently my brain disappeared somewhere in the post-trip existence.  (And no, my living room still isn't presentable, but I cling to the belief that "an immaculate house is the sign of a wasted life.")  The week ended with my WIP at 13,706 words (about 50 pages).  I'm aiming to have the first draft around 50,000 words, so I'm (pulling out the calculator to do the math...) about a quarter of the way through!  Yay! 

So will I make my goal this week?  Doubtful.  Most of the writing occurred on Friday night when I wasn't doing laundry or something along those lines.  This Friday, though, I get to be the chaperone at a sleep over for our young women.  So no writing then, and on Saturday, I will be spending the day reenacting Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, with me playing the part of the zombies.  It'll be exciting, I'm sure. 

How is your current work in progress going?  Are you writing an exploratory draft or revising at the moment?

Upcoming Conferences

There are a few conferences coming up that look like they'll be amazing.  Plus, I'll be going and what could be more amazing than that?

The first is Life, the Universe and Everything at BYU on Feb. 11-13.   Attendance is free and they always have fabulous panels and lectures. 

On April 23-24, the 7th annual LDStorymakers Conference will be held in the Provo Marriott.  I haven't attended it before, but it looks like they have some wonderful speakers. 

Writing and Illustrating for Young Readers will be held on June 14-18 at the Waterford Institute in Sandy.  They don't have information up yet on who will be coming to the conference, but they've always had terrific guests in the past and I'm sure they'll keep with that tradition. 

In other news, my sister gave me season one of Castle on DVD for my birthday. 

I'd heard good things about it, but am surprised by how much I'm loving it.  I love the fact that things never turn out quite the way you expect them too.  Plus, there is just some fabulous dialogue and I'm always a fan of that.  And who doesn't love Nathan Fillion?

Housekeeping and Birthdays

I'm not the best at keeping my house clean, but it's even worse after a trip.  Particularly when we get home in the evening and all the luggage gets dumped on the floor to be dealt with the next day.  Well, it's the third morning we've been home and my living room still looks like this:

People keep dropping by and this is the sight that greets them.  Friendly, warm, and inviting isn't it?  Everyone loves to be met with bags of dirty laundry.  I might have to actually do something about that today instead of writing like I did yesterday. 

I've also been reading On Writing by Stephen King.  I'm only about halfway through (so past the memoir and into the toolbox) and one thing really hit me hard, so I'll share it.  John Gould once said to him, '"When you write a story, you're telling yourself the story," he said.  "When you rewrite, your main job is taking out all the things that are not the story."'

Wow. 

Apparently it also hit Stephen King hard if he can remember it all so vividly so many years later.  (And, yes, I just used an -ly word and I'm cringing about it.  Argh.)

In other news, Bree Despain's birthday is today and she's doing a giveaway of Dark Divine inspired jewelry.  Go check it out if you get the chance and wish her a happy birthday. 

Escaping from Reality

We went to California last week.  Where there was sunshine, flowers, and warm enough weather to go swimming outside!  A much needed escape for all of us.

We went to Disneyland and had a wonderful time.  And I have no pictures to show of it.  Well, I have pictures, but the ones of me are dreadful.  Really.  Trust me on that. 

While we were there, we did some things we've never done before.  Like the Aladdin musical.  I insisted.  My husband thought I was crazy.  We waited outside mashed in the center of a mob.  It was hot.  Everyone was grumpy.  I nearly decided we should just give up.  Finally they opened the doors and let us into a huge theater.  Okay, it's not the biggest I've been in, but it was substantially larger than I thought it would be.  We found our seats and the whining continued. 

Then the lights dimmed and the show began. 

It took about three seconds for our most vocal complainer to be glued to the stage.  The show was fabulous!  They did have to cut it down to under an hour, so the plot is a bit sketchy in places.  But still!  If you get the chance (and you enjoy theater) go see it!  The costumes and sets were fantastic---including Aladdin riding through the audience on an elephant (not a living one, of course) as well as the magic carpet flying over the audience. 

My favorite part, though, was the genie.  Not only was he hilarious for me and my husband, but he also had the kids laughing.  Which is hard to do!  Needless to say, I was impressed. 

So go see it next time you go to California Adventure. 

One of the hardest things for me to learn about family vacations is adjusting my mentality to the fact that it's a family vacation.  I have a hard time letting go of the whole, "We need to get our money's worth and do as much as possible."  We tried that on the last trip.  It ended up with a bunch of cranky, tired people on the verge of giving up and going home early.  This time it was so much better because we just tried to have fun and enjoy what we were doing instead of trying to cram as much as possible into every moment. 

And that's not an easy thing for me to learn.  I'm not patient.  I'm impulsive, temperamental, and incurably bossy.  It's hard for me to relax.  It's hard for me to relax about writing too.  I want to be a writer and find an agent and publish a book and I want it now.  But sometimes trying to fit everything in just leaves everyone cranky.  And me ready to give up. 

Relaxing and pacing things, accepting that I can't have everything all at once, works so much better (even if it's so much harder to do). 

The Dark Divine

Over the weekend, I went to the launch party for The Dark Divine by Bree Despain. She had a lot of fabulous things to say and did some wonderful things with her book. But I won't say what they are. You'll have to read it yourself.  Plus, I've only read the ARC (advance reader copy) and Bree said there were a few changes between that and the final version. I couldn't actually buy the final version because the King's English Bookstore had completely sold out of the book.

Here's Bree dispensing of her wisdom to us.  It's also a picture of the back of my head---I'm in orange in the front row.  My friend and fellow writer Chersti Nieveen is beside me. 

The Dark Divine just went into a second printing, so big congrats to Bree! 

Voice

Happy Birthday to my big brother! (My family has lots of birthdays this time of year.)

We're leaving this afternoon for a family vacation to celebrate my birthday in a couple of days. I'm excited, but it's been a bit stressful and I keep getting distracted from planning and packing by my WIP.

Right now I'm struggling with the voice. I love the tone of the first couple of pages...and then it fades away. I know what happened. It was at that point that I realized I couldn't just tell a fun story, but my main character really ought to have something resembling a personality, however miniscule. So the next several pages are all basically my brainstorming her a personality. It works, but it doesn't work with the first few pages, which are very lighthearted. The next bit, the working on the personality bit, is much more serious.

So, do I cut what I love or do I make the rest of it more lighthearted? Should I even worry about it at this point? I have a tendency to get halfway or more through it and then start over at the beginning because it's all wrong. I told myself I wasn't going to do that this time. Yet, here I am, less than 20 pages in and debating starting it all over again.

If it was something in the plot, I might shrug and move on. But voice is so integral in determining the story that I don't think I can move on until I've decided whether I want to tell something serious or make it playful.

What are your thoughts on voice? What is the hardest thing for you to work out when you start a new work in progress?

Some More Writing Advice

I thought this had some good advice, so I thought I'd pass it on.