The Bling

     I know you are wondering what Bling has to do with writing... right? Well, I'm not talking about jewelry exactly, but those things we add to our books or manuscripts that help to flesh them out. Things like maps, time-lines, family-trees, etc.
     I am very big on maps. Not just maps of these fictional lands, but also blueprints of buildings when those buildings play a large roll in my writing. I have probably mentioned this before, but I can spend hours, if not days, trying to come up with a design. I start with my mental image and plan the layout then add in some logic. By that I mean I build a house that fits the footprint rather than having more rooms than there is floor. Most houses are not the Tardis, (i.e. bigger on the inside.)
     Sometime things come together in an hour, like a recent castle for another story. Sometimes it takes days, and I have to walk away from it for a little while to get a better perspective.
     So recently I have been working on maps for the Chronicles of Odde Series. It's rather complex, because several books include a lot of traveling, one across the entire continent, so I like to plan where things are in relation to one another. It helps for future books as well, I can decide if I need the world map or something more localized.
     For the Chronicles I've decided on a style that is more representational than accurately spaced. I like the idea of being able to "see" the places I am talking about rather than the distance between point a and point b. I know the scale of the map is all off, but I like the art as much as I like the information it is portraying.
     That being said, here is a very rough draft of one of the maps. I am still working on several others for the series. This is the map of Telios, a land I will be visiting in the future. The story that accompanies it is still in the planning stages, but I had a very clear idea of what this placed looked like, and it was easy for me to put it to paper.

     As I said, this is a very rough draft, just paper and ink. I've scanned it in to clean it up. I might even hand I over to Melli and her Art degree to bling out. (I used some internet images to help with the style.) I really like the perspective. I am not so sure about the color.

     Well, that's all for now. Have a wonderful day and WRITE ON!

Back from Outer Space

     Yes, the real world has taken up most of my time as of late. I am sorry to have gone so long without posting. Not that I think you are missing my prose, but that I had made a promise to myself that I would commit to this and I have let myself down. Well, back on the band wagon!

Life Update:
     Writer's block! I am stuck with my latest book (don't even want to look at it. I am pretending it doesn't exist!), and while I let a friend take a look at The Beast of the Ruin manuscript I am avoiding my writer's block by working on other things. Most recently an older novel, my first official work, and trying to prepare it from printing. Thanks to NaNoWriMo I have two free paperback copies coming my way and I plan to have the book ready by the march deadline. On the other hand I am working on something different, a time-travel romance. Yes... it's been done, but not by me. I can't get enough of this genre on my own reading list, so I hope that someone else will appreciate my addition. Right now it is a lot of planning and research, but I enjoy those aspects as much, if not more than, the writing process sometimes.

     My organizational efforts have proved fruitful though somewhat unfocused. I am good at starting a project but somewhere in the middle I usually loose steam, yet keep pushing through. This means the job gets done, eventually, just not exactly as I might have first envisioned, i.e. there is something lost in the execution. Take for example my filing system.

     I recently went through my story files and school papers. I tried to group like things together, assign colored files to certain things, but I'm cheep and if I already had a plan vanilla folder for something , I am loathed to change it. And yet, I got rid of a lot of stuff I didn't need. Four garbage bags later I am somewhat more organized, though the Virgo in me is screaming to color code the crap out of everything, and I am currently figuring out just what that might entail. That is to say, I am looking at organizational how-to's on pinterest, youtube and the web. Let's just say my hours on the computer have doubled recently and leave it at that.

     In other news, my family has graciously put up a new shed for me and I now have an empty building waiting to receive the tubs of "really good stuff" that I can't find room for in the rest of my house. I am well aware that not everything in these said tubs is "keep" worthy by most standards and I have planned for that. I am calling this endeavor The PURGE! Yes, my predilection for naming things is rearing its head. And really even caps and bold italics can't convey the tone in which this title echoes in my mind in that deep narrative voice reserved for overly dramatic and sometime terrifying movie trailers. Really, it is great!

     The PURGE will consist of going through every box, every drawer, every canister and hidey-hole and evaluating pretty much everything I own into one of several categories: Keep, Sell/Donate, Garbage and Family. I plan to have boxes ready and the salvation army on speed dial. I am big about sharing the love, and so we give items away to family and friends or donate a lot of things. I preferred to recycle when I can. Though I am still in the air about yard sales. Yes, recouping some of the money I spent is appealing, they are just so much work and I am not looking forward to having to store the sale items until the warmer weather comes my way. I like donating because there are instant results. No mess, no fuss, no bother. Drop off and done!

     For now I have to wait from some sunny weather to start my project. I am so excited, I am literally smiling from ear to ear just thinking about it.

     Well, that's about all for the life update. I have to get back to my medieval research. Bring on the websites!

The Sticky Note of DOOM!

      The Sticky Note of Doom isn't really as bad as it sounds. I was just having trouble deciding what to call this post. I suppose I should back up and explain before talking about my sticky notes. My friends and I were trying to motivate ourselves during our community college days and one friend in particular came up with the idea of naming things to make them more awesome. With little imagination and a lot of things that needed awesome new names, one phrase came up more than any other and I bet you can guess which friend suggested it. So the ...blank... of DOOM became the title we gave anything that needed a pick me up. Because DOOM was so much cooler than anything else, at least in my friend's opinion.
    So the Sticky Note of Doom was born, so was the Binder of DOOM and the Cleaner of DOOM. There was just a lot of Doom going on, and it was awesome. The phrase has stuck with my circle of friends and will probably be around for a very long time.
     Now, back to what I had intended to talk about; the perks of being a writer, sticky notes... and all those little odds and ends that make writing, and editing, a blast.
    There is nothing I love so much as buying school supplies, as my desk drawers can attest! I am hooked. Luckily the shopping gods have set up a time that I can indulge in my obsession without breaking the bank; it's called BACK TO SCHOOL. Yes, I know. I am, technically, not in school, and I don't even have kids to justify my purchases to the cashier, but who cares?!?! I have ten notebooks for a dollar, pens to see me through the year and more sticky notes than anyone has every seen. I'll use them all too!! supplies are the best, and having the right stuff makes me feel accomplished and organize while working on my writing and subsequent drafts.
    I like typing on the computer, but I'd rather edit in hard copy. I get my manuscripts printed out at my local Staples. They even make it possible to submit your project on-line, which saves me from having to make an extra trip into town to drop off my Flash drive. Printing can be difficult, especially if you have some creative fonts, but there is nothing like see your work printed, double sided and spiral bound. The spiral binding only costs a few dollars and it helps keep the manuscript in order.
     I go through my draft, with my sticky notes and labels, to mark things like chapter headings, important events for quick reference, and any sections I have issues with, most recently trying to decide on the type of font for written letters and texts inside my fantasy novel. With these references I can look up a plot point a lot faster than having to flip through the whole thing.
    One time I used these new see-through sticky notes to keep track of how many days the Heroine's journey was taking. While you think your character is gone a week, you may have only talked about a few days or taken a month to get where you intended. My Heroine was visiting another continent and was supposed to stay for several months, but the original time-line was only a few weeks. The notations helped me keep my time-line straight.
    It's little things like spiral binding and see through sticky notes that help make writing so much easier. I enjoy all the little bits that help me organize my work and make editing fun.

What makes writing fun for you? Do you have a favorite pen? A must have card stock? A secluded spot where creativity lives? Do you have your own version of the Sticky Notes of Doom?

Clean Sweep

     Along with resolutions to be healthier, many start the new year with plans of becoming more organized. For me that means revamping and reevaluating the systems that I already have in place. My first step is to go through the papers I have been saving and trying to pare down to what I really need to keep. That includes the notes and sketches for story ideas. Organizing the many story files of ideas and drafts is no small task, not to mention the everyday paper that I collect.
     I have a lot of places I store things, boxes for this, holders for that, but still there was a pile of papers on my desk that never disappeared.
     My first step was to clear the piles and go through the boxes and holders. Then I looked at what I was holding on to and there was a lot of things that I didn't need; magazines, notebooks with only a page or two used, etc. There was a lot of paperwork that I had only glanced at, stuff that after a closer look was just junk. I shredded anything with personal information, kept a few documents and threw out everything else. Now I have a stack of now empty notebooks, those few pages were filed away with their corresponding stories.
     There was also some things that I needed to keep, but that didn't necessarily need to be where they were. Filing the papers away made it obvious that my next more is to go through the keep files, even those for previous years. The top of my closet is full of "To Keep" items. I wonder what treasures I'll find there, or how many bags of trash I will take out.
    With the bags of paper, there were bags of clothes. My family is big on donating what we no longer need. I went through my closet and removed everything that hadn't been worn for a while. It was easy to tell what I hadn't worn because earlier this year I made the switch from plastic to HGTV space saving, velvet covered hangers. As I wore items I put them on the new hangers, and everything left on the old hangers was up for the donate pile. Of course I left things, hoping to fit into them in the near future, and I am packing away those items I won't need as the weather turns warmer.
     Next is the rest of the house, culminating in the garage. A massive project that will take days to complete. I have to say that I am super excited already.
   
     I love the feeling after the deep cleaning, organizing, and donating are done. When the project is doing what you intended, there is a sense of space, freedom and possibilities. There is room to think.

What dose any of this have to do with writing? Other than organizing my files, nothing obvious, except that a clean and organized life means less stress over things, and more time to write.

New Year, New Me?

     While I can say that I jump on the band wagon of New Year's resolutions, I can not say I've ever had any luck with them. From the popular health and wieght loss mumbo jumbo to living happier, I find that if I plan to start something new, it's best to just get on with it rather than wait for some special date.
     I have all the best intension for myself and the new year, but we've all heard what happens with those. Life gets in the way, you fall off the wagon. I don't know about you but I need more motivation than the New Year hype can provide. That being said, my prep for some serious life change just happened to fall on, or around the new year.
    With new health insurance and some free time, I've started the health assessment process with my new carrier. Blood tests, check ups and diet changes. Due to family history I and my sister are going gluten free. We are not replacing our bread and pasta with gluten free options, only eating more green and cleaner foods. A food journal with www.myfitnesspal.com is very good for keeping track of what I am eating. It's not easy and my body is missing all the carbs...
     Along with diet changes, comes some exercise and moving towards being more active on a daily basis.
     While it might not make me happier to exercise, it will make me very happy to be healthier. After last year's health issues with family members, I am motivated to keep going, more so than ever before.
     The long and short of this post, it's never to late to be healthy.

Writer's Block and Other Stumbling Blocks

Writer's block. The word has always been a vague sort of problem for me. I've heard horror stories but have never really experienced anything like it until recently. Not that my tale is a horror story, it's been, in most part, a large amount of procrastination, pinterest and facebook games. Usually in that order.

I hit a bought of writer's block near the end of NaNoWriMo. I wasn't worried, I'd already surpassed my word goal and validated my novel, but for the life of me I couldn't figure out what happened next. I had the ending of my novel outlined but how to get to where the heroine met up with our wicked sorceress was a mystery. There was a gap I couldn't cross. My Heroine was two kingdoms and at least twenty pages away from where she needed to be to reach her happily-ever-after. The ideas from the next leg of her journey kept falling through. The story I was going to use for inspiration in this area was nowhere to be found in my stacks of books. So I gave up and tried editing for a while until even that was going no where.

Today, almost two weeks later, I've not written a word more, not even opened my document and tried to type a short phrase, but I have the inspiration I needed. I was sitting proctoring a test, a very lucrative if boring job as a cheat deterrent, I watched the test takers for signs of foul-play and thought of my next plot point. Sure it's not all the way to my ending, but it's a step closer.

Somethings fell into place, some ideas bore fruit that just might be even better than what I was looking for. Thank You GOD! I am on my way. And so I must switch gears, and return to my writing.

Good luck to you who are powering on after finishing NaNoWriMo and moving toward the completion of your novel!

P.S. I thought I was good at this stuff, this being my second year and my third book but my sister, Melli, is blowing me out of the water. I am so proud and amazed by her talent. She is the best!!

Christmas is Just Around the Corner

December all ready?!?! I can't believe it's a little more than a week away from Christmas! We have a fire in the fireplace, a Christmas tree bedecked in my favorite colors and a few dozen cookies to hand out to the neighbors. I hope we don't eat most of them before that can happen.
Presents are on their way to friends and family. I have a few cards to get out, but the first batch is away! One would think we are on the ball this year, but they would be wrong.
Speaking of presents, I thought I'd share my wishlist this year. I've come to realize that what I want really won't fit under my Christmas tree. My wishes are looking a lot like last year's resolutions, but this time I pray they will last longer than January 31st.

Wishlist
1. Health: For my grandmother most of all, but for myself and the rest of my family. We've had some big wake up calls this year, and yet things haven't changed much. I am constantly tired, stressed about finances, the future and wanting to curl up in a ball and sleep through the next ice age.
2. To be debt free. That would mean I have a steady income that is greater than the flow going out each month. Not just for the credit cards and bills, but to pay off my sister's and my student loans. I wonder if I will  live to see them paid off, even if I live to be 100. I want to be financially solvent and saving for the future, but that is hard when you don't even have a part time job.
3. Time to finish what I started. Somewhere in this wish is the need for more motivation, energy and free time, not just for my writing but for the dozen or so projects I have around the house. From hanging the towel bar in my bathroom to putting up the shed in the side yard. I just can't seem to follow through. What was put on hold by a bought of procrastination has turned into a matter of me not having enough time or energy to complete.

A thought has just occurred to me, these very vague wished are connected. Health means energy, energy means getting stuff done, debit equal stress which means less energy and less health. It looks a lot lit a mathematical equation. I dislike math. I always make it harder than it needs to be. Does that apply to the answer to this equation, I wonder?

On another note, my sister has come up with a slogan of sorts for this new year, a new mind set if you will. She told me today, we will use what we have. No buying new, no putting it off, which has been out modus operandi. Do it as best you can with what you have, she says. We will be focusing on debit consolidation and elimination. Gifts will be hand made, projects will be completed with the items we've already bought that are scattered around the house.

Truthfully I have everything I need, and then some. What I really need is to do something with it.