Our new walking trail in Burke, VA.

Now with bridge spam and radioactive creeks! 12 new pics on my Flickr page

Well, that pretty much just says it all. January rocked my socks off! February… not so much.

Between snow days and moving (again), my brain was put on standby and nothing was accomplished. Except for moving. We accomplished that. But no writing. Barely even any worthwhile play writing (and you know, when all else fails my play stories usually still manage to get written). But no, February was almost complete slush there too. The short story was not read and revised. The novel did not grow.

I can’t even remember what DID happen, except for moving. That much I know we did. Everything else blurs.

Well anyway, let’s make March a better one, shall we?…

Oh, wait, are we really already a whole week into March? Damn.

I love this quote from Lorrie Moore’s “How to Become a Writer”:

“Decide that you like college life. In your dorm you meet many nice people. Some are smarter than you. And some, you notice, are dumber than you. You will continue, unfortunately, to view the world in exactly these terms for the rest of your life.”

No, no context, I just like it

progress report:

I finished my short story this week – beginning, middle, end, and done. I’ll probably be nagging people to read it for me some time this week.

Last weekend, I wrote a bunch of stuff for my novel, and it’s currently sitting at a homely but endearing 21,000 words.

I wrote this, which might be a poem, but is probably not… (this is not a poem, I see scrawled in my memory, across my attempts from old college workshops).

I blame it on Courtney, because she wrote a poem this week. Hers is a real, actual poem.

Inexistence

It doesn’t exist. You might think it does. You remember it,
this thing you fashioned with your own mind and hands –
it’s a story, it’s a photograph, it’s an organic hot dog,
nested carefully in its bun and sliced into perfect half moons.

It wasn’t reality, where you placed it, in another
dimension, another consciousness, another lifetime.
Maybe you accidentally left it in that place
with all the lost socks, that damn wine cork,
and the TV remote.

That’s why you’re the only one who can see it.
Because you can see it. Because it is there,
but at the same time, if no one else sees it,
it’s kind of not.

The very month I decide that I’ll post them weekly.

I have been writing though, but just feeling antisocial and a little bit invisible.

I added a works-in-progress page (linked in the about box, currently, on the sidebar). I need to get around to redesigning this thing properly some time soon, so I can have proper page navigation ‘n stuff

My hubby wanted to help me reach 20,000 words on the novel. I’m not sure this one will make the final cut, but it was a nice effort. Thanks honey

An alternate reality Danny and Lexi story, by Jim Amos

Danny raised the chainsaw until it was at head-height – each pneumatic tooth purring like some crazed panther on a hunting high – then swung with all his upper body strength in a downward arc that sprayed Lexi’s arterial plasma like rain from a garden sprinkler. He was sorry that it would come to this, so sorry. He had loved Lexi since that day when they were 9 years old and playing tic-tac-toe inside the tunnel under the old quarry, but a zombie was a zombie and so there could be no other end to their relationship than one of severed flesh and disintegrated bone. Of course he wished he had taken the opportunity to get inside her panties first – but he was beginning to understand that life nearly always held you back from what you really wanted. At least he had escaped having his dick ripped off by this fiend of the undead. There was always that.

So here is where I back up all that nonsense I committed to for this new year. Two of these goals are going to need some pretty hardcore planning, I think.

the ass kicking:

I’m starting Jillian Michaels 30-day Shred, which I’m doing 5 days/week rather than daily, but I’ll do it for 6 weeks rather than 30 days. Anyway, it’s hard, but I guess it doesn’t really feel like enough. Maybe I need to start out on level 2? But the fact of it is, I’m used to exercising for 60-70 minutes per session. The Shred feels like it’ll do an awesome job at sculpting, which is what it’s intended to do, I guess, but I’ll be combining it with a 45-minute yoga/fitness blend on cold days, and on warmer days I’ll do my regular 4 miles outside.

Speaking of the regular 4 miles on ass-kicking hills, I had no idea my calves had been so neglected, because Shred makes them want to cry, lol! I guess hills really don’t do much for calves. My ass though, chubby as I might be otherwise, is pretty damn tight

Honestly, it’s not the working out that I’ve ever had trouble with, but my terrible eating habits. It sounds like it should be so easy, you know, just don’t eat so damn much? I’m going to try to fall back on South Beach Diet again. It’s worked for me in the past, and I am obviously not to be trusted with carbs. I’ve tried to live in harmony with carbs, and it just keeps not working, again and again. I do much, much better when I just cut most of them out.

the novel:

The hardest goal for this year (we will not say the word “impossible”) is going to be the novel. I think an ambition of this magnitude requires a schedule. (Because I’m a Virgo, and super-dorky!) Let’s make a schedule, shall we?

February: finish part 2
March: finish part 3
April: finish part 4, the end
May: pull everything together, polish a bit, and done

June and July: novel sleeps? How long should a finished first draft sleep for? Maybe just one month, since we’re working with the near impossible here

(July?)/August: commence hacking it to pieces.
September/October: out to beta readers.

October/November: get feedback back (lol).

November/December: with feedback, instead of NaNoWriMo, we’ll do a NaNoRevMo, lol! Carry on into December, before Christmas eats us all alive again. 2nd draft done, by the end of the year, and ready to be thrown out into the world first thing 2011 (you know, since we might as well wait until after Christmas is done eating us all alive).

Of course, anyone who’s actually done this process before is welcome to shed some light on how my timeline is destined to fail because of my glorious noob-ness.

And has anyone ever tried a staggered beta-reading process before? I read a novelist blogger (Allison Winn Scotch maybe?) who said she liked to have her first 100 pages read and get feedback, and then she knows if the rest of the novel will work or not. I think I might try something like that. I feel like I need somebody else’s eyes on this mess so that I know it’s headed in the right direction.

So, in that light, I’ll probably be soliciting some beta readers around the end of the month, for my first seven chapters (estimated 70 pages). Ack! I said it out loud, people! We’ll also let this take the place of the promise of my first chapter after the new year. Seven chapters is better than one, right?

progress report for the three weeks I haven’t been blogging:

These past three weeks have probably been just about as productive as everyone’s past three weeks, which would be a big lazy mess of Christmas/New Year. I did actually add maybe 4000 words that I managed to steal from some old notes and drafts (it’s not cheating if you steal from yourself), and the first part is done. Did I say that out loud? Done, ugly, sketchy, but done!

Part two is officially in the works. Part 2 is roughly chapters 8 through 15, I think. Parts of them were very eager to be born last month, but I welcome the rest of them into existence, if they would be so kind to join us

I don’t do New Year’s resolutions (they’re always just begging to be broken), but I do have some goals for 2010. Maybe resolutions and goals are the same thing? For some reason, a goal feels less likely to be broken than a resolution. Who knows… Anyway, I shall put these goals out into the world so that I might be held accountable

health:
- cook more, eat out less, less prepared convenience foods
- exercise 5 days a week (currently doing about 2 or 3)
- more strength training (trying out Jillian Michaels Shred to start!)
- lose 25 lbs before I get knocked up
- 1 glass of wine a day is healthy, 2 or 3 glasses not so much…

hardcore writing goals:
- novel finished, revised, and out to agents by the end of the year! (Whoa, that’s ambitious! Can I get some cheerleaders on this one?)
- get Dylan in preschool/part-time care for daily writing time, so I can accomplish my ambitious goal of finishing my novel by the end of the year
- publish a short story
- keep up with my weekly progress reports
- pre-draft novel #2 during NaNoWriMo 2010

family life:
- get a babysitter and go on regular dates with my hubby again
- as a possible side-product of all those dates, get knocked up… (but no sooner than March/April, so that I can finish my novel by the end of the year)
- save a downpayment to buy a house next year

Good luck on everyone’s goals for 2010! Let’s make it a good one!

not a musician:

Playing this week, “I Will Follow You Into the Dark,” by Death Cab For Cutie. (listen here, good guitar lesson here.) I’m in love with this song this week. It’s quiet and beautiful, and it inspired a heartbreaking little story idea.

not a film critic:

Into the Wild: Very thoughtful, and inspiring. Now I wanna backpack through Alaska. I know, the book is usually better, but my “to-read” list is a mile long already. Hubby read it and enjoyed it, and was able to point out where the differences were. I’m wondering if the film might have better suited the visuals of an adventure anyway?

I expected to be bored by it, but I absolutely wasn’t. I mean, how interesting can one guy be out in the wilderness? But the point is, he spent much of his journey meeting very interesting people, making these fantastic human connections that he outwardly rejected. He seemed to have such an impact on so many people, and came to an unfortunate conclusion in the end.

I make myself a promise though – when my kid(s) is grown and self-sufficient, I’m totally going to climb a mountain!

progress report, week of 12/7:

Not much bulk added to the novel this week (a few random lines, a couple good paragraphs). Christmas is starting to happen in a consuming way, hubby is sick… it’s just that time of year.

I did manage to send a story back out into the world again this week, and I wish it luck. I hope I’ve taught it all it needs to know, so that it might stand on its own little feet and prosper. Again, I subbed it to one of my top favorite magazines, lol! If it doesn’t work there, I might try my hand at simultaneous submissions next time. And maybe I’ll cast a bit more modestly, lol! You know, reaching for the stars and all

This week: whatever I can manage, considering it’s the week before Christmas and all. I still like the goal of having part one entirely first-drafted before the new year. It’s still doable, I think.

I’m going to share my first chapter with you all after the new year. (Eeek! I said it!) So I hope you’ll hold me to that

Oh sheesh, I think I have book #2 brewing in my head! Can I finish book #1 first, please? Take a number, ideas, get in line, single file, and no cutsies!

(I assure myself this time, book #1 will not be abandoned for book #2, no matter how it begs! I am too far emotionally invested in book #1, and it will be my firstborn! It will forever hold that place in my heart!)

But it’s helpful, I think, to see trends starting to take shape in the scope of my stories. I’m starting to notice some similarities, based on what book #1 is about, compared to what book #2 is about – life and death, marriage and relationships, trying not to become your parents…

I still don’t know if I’m writing YA or not. Upper YA maybe. Maybe not. The protags from novel #1 are 20 years old. But I’m thinking the protag for the second novel is going to be about 25.

There are also many strong women’s themes in my writing, so maybe chick lit? Whoa, crap, am I a chick lit writer??? But without the shoes, or publishing jobs in NYC? Is that allowed in chick lit? Midwestern quirky chick lit, with snow boots instead of stilettos? Come to think of it, my website is pink, lol!

I don’t know why I’m so dead-set on finding myself a niche to belong to. My very favorite authors – John Irving, Lorrie Moore, T.C. Boyle – don’t really seem to belong to any niche except just good, engrossing, quirky, literary fiction. Maybe that is a niche itself?

progress report for the week of 11/30:

I’m easing myself out of the turkey coma this week. I accomplished more plotty stuff than actual plumping of word counts (parts 2 and 3 are developing!), but I’ve enjoyed looking over what I have so far. I’ve found that the first part of the novel (chapters 1-7) is pretty much sketched, so now just to plump and polish and move forward. That’s exciting news, for me at least, because the plumping and polishing part is the easiest, for me. Once I have the bones down, and I know what’s happening and who’s saying what, and such, the flesh usually falls right into place (ha, bones and flesh, lol!).

Favorite line of the week, Danny and Hannah’s mom:

“Birds? Your father left you birds? I’m not surprised though. I didn’t know much about your father, and I was married to the man for twelve years.”

Hope everyone’s writing projects are going well!

I’m a sucker for a good love story, whether that be romantic or platonic love. I don’t consider myself a romance writer, but I do write a heck of a lot of stories about love, whatever form it might manifest itself in. (And I have a theory, that on a very basic level, all stories come back to love in some form.) They’re hard to write though, without dissolving into a syrupy mess.

It seems in the past weeks the world has been thinking and reflecting on the topic of love in writing, and I’ve been collecting a few of the links I’ve found.

First, an interview @ Maud Newton w/ Marlon James: about his novel, the Book of Night Women (which sounds fascinating, by the way!), and writing about love.

I remember calling friends shouting, “I just wrote a love scene! All they do is kiss!” to which they would respond, “. . . and are they then dismembered?” and I’d go, “No, after that they dance!” It was hard. I resisted it for as long as I could because I didn’t believe in it at first, and even when I did, I couldn’t figure out how to write it. Not until Irish novelist Colum McCann gave me permission by giving me the best writing advice I’ve ever gotten from a writer: Risk Sentimentality.

There’s a belief that sex is the hardest thing for a literary novelist but I disagree: love is. We’re so scared of descending into mush that I think we end up with a just-as-bad opposite, love stories devoid of any emotional quality. But love can work in so many ways without having to resort to that word. Someone once scared me by saying that love isn’t saying “I love you” but calling to say “did you eat?” (And then proceeded to ask me this for the next 6 months). My point being that, in this novel at least, relationships come not through words, but gestures like the overseer wanting to cuddle. Or rubbing his belly and hollering about her cooking, or teaching her how to dance or ride a horse — things reserved for white women…

…I think, as a writer, the important thing was to layer the relationship with complexity and contradiction. There were situations where I could have left certain storylines one-dimensional and gotten away with it. I think the relationship is gripping not because they love each other, or think they do (or not) but because even with such a horribly skewed dynamic, hearts do what they want. And people don’t always fit in the roles that have been assigned to them. But of course the relationship is doomed; any slavery love writes its end in its very beginning.

On a similar tangent, I certainly don’t consider myself an erotica writer either, but I can’t seem to write a story that doesn’t involve or at least elude to sex in some form.

Here, an article on how writing about sex in fiction is almost never really about the sex.

More on writing sex here, from Storytellers Unplugged.

And finally, a must-see movie – film, I guess, we call them films when they’re artsy and thoughtful Good Dick: I suck at writing reviews, and there are plenty of good ones on IMDB, but really, it’s a hilarious, twisted love-story, but at the same time surprisingly sweet. Emotionally taxing, but so worth it! Movie trailer here. (Oh, rated R and not for the kiddies though!) Enjoy!