I feel like a blog fraud. I promised, I didn't deliver. And then, due to family drama, gave up writing and crawled under a quilt - literally.

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I'm using advice Madeleine L'Engle gave me. Personally.

You know those battered copies of her books like A WRINKLE IN TIME and/or A RING OF ENDLESS LIGHT that are falling apart and should be replaced? My copies can't be replaced because:


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I just weighed three drafts of my new manuscript.

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Pushing through a first draft to find the ‘shape’ of the story. Here are the recent totals:

1 Feb 3,000+ words
2 Feb 1,651 words
3 Feb 2,400 words
4 Feb 2,066 words
5 Feb 628 words
6 Feb 2,000 words
7 Feb 2,716 words

Right now, the shape looks like this:

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I'm supposed to be outputting brilliant prose, when I get distracted by awesome stuff like the OK Go/Notre Dame Marching Band video ( Read more... )

I've been bad, LJ. I've deserted you for the trendy but tasteful FaceBook and the fast moving shiny enigma we call Twitter. But I turn over a new leaf today. **Ooooo, pretty ( Read more... )

I still lurve you, LiveJournal. It's just Facebook is so vair, vair shiny!

But suddenly, I hear the siren call of the blog. And I read the dead cleverness of LiveJournal Goddesses. And I get verbal slushy snowballs upside the head from my peeps who check my blog and are truly annoyed that I am not working hard to amuse them.

So, here's the promise ( Read more... )

I'm going to a workshop in Madison on Friday. A novel revision workshop. So I'm revising and revising. I took 7,000 words out of a 36,000 word manuscript over two days in an attempt to restructure. Yesterday I wrote a new 1,200 word scene that doesn't totally suck. Last night I tried to do a timeline with the Hero's Journey structure as a guideline ( Read more... )

I don't feel old. Or at least I didn't until my birthday last year when something horrifying happened. AARP cards began to mysteriously appear in my mailbox. WTF?

They offer...I don't know...stuff. Some kind of discounts. Not like I'm opening these things. It's the friggin' AARP. They may as well be posting prunes.

And yet the AARP cards keep piling ( Read more... )

I was at a wicked cool writing retreat in Nebraska over the weekend. So what comes up besides novels in progress, writing routines and wondering if those drunk scrapbookers down the hall are going to rock the monastery until 3 am again?

The fact that:

A. Many of us have Facebook, MySpace, LiveJournal, etc.
B. Our children find A. appalling and won't ( Read more... )