Cooking like a madwoman!

In general, I don't cook.  I bake.  I'll make a loaf of bread every day if I have someone to share it with.  I bake cookies in batches of 12 dozen.  But I don't like to cook. This weekend, though, I went shopping and got stuff together to make dinner.  Lots of dinner.

It all started with this post I saw on Pinterest.  It's a woman who did a whole pile of prep work in one two-hour period, and froze everything for a bunch of slow-cooked meals.  I love my Crock Pot.  I love it so much that I have two of them, actually.  I can have a good meal that's ready when I get home from work, and it doesn't heat up the whole kitchen like the oven will.  I used a couple of her recipes, and then went through my three slow-cooker cookbooks and grabbed some more.  In all, I made 9 different meals, which broke down into 17 batches that are now taking up the bottom of my deep freeze.

It was a LOT of food: 18 chicken breasts, 4 lb stewing beef, 2 lb kielbasa, 8 italian sausages, 9 onions, peppers, carrots, celery, potatoes, spices, soups... that shopping trip included more food than I normally buy over the course of a full month!  But I worked it out, and with leftovers, I should have enough for 20-30 meals, maybe more, depending on whether I make rice or pasta or potatoes to go along with the main dish.  So I'm thinking it'll work out well.

Even following the recipes, though, I ended up with some extra food, mostly because of the way it was packaged.  So last night, I made up alfredo noodles with grilled chicken and grilled orange peppers, and tonight was meatballs and bowtie pasta with tomato sauce.  I've got to say, I'm looking forward to just microwaving or slow-cooking my meals for a few weeks...

Also, it took three showers, a gajillion hand washings, and multiple scrubbings with my stainless-steel smell-remover thingy to get the scent of 9 chopped onions out of my hands.  Just saying.

Anyways, my point here is, I'm going to try all these recipes now, and the ones that I really like, I'll be repeating at the end of October, so that when NaNo rolls around, I don't have to worry about cooking.  I can just use my time to write.  Yay!

I'm back!

So it's been almost a month since my last blog post... Oops.

I'm going to be lame and blame it on RL getting in the way.  I've had houseguests since October 3 (and still do).  There was Thanksgiving, and a weekend in Florida for work (which was AWESOME), and now I've done something to bugger up my shoulder (and all the way down my arm to my fingertips), so I really haven't been much for using a computer (typing hurts).

I did, however, discover the voice recognition software built into Windows 7, and I've used it to tweet and to write part of my NaNo novel already.

And yes, I'm doing NaNoWriMo.  With a buggered-up arm.  And a house full of people.

Yes.

I am crazy.

To top it off, I'm going to get back into blogging properly.

And I don't go to the doctor about my arm until tomorrow, so I can't even blame this bad decision on good drugs.  Yeesh.

Expect to see more of me.

Storied-out

Hello, my bloggy friends!

Well, today is November 30th, the last day of National Novel Writing Month.  For the past 30 days, I've been working on a novel.  I've shown you a few excerpts.

Now that it's over, there's a definite sense of relief - while I learned that I can follow an outline, I also learned that sometimes, and idea doesn't fill as much story as I thought it would.  I'm pretty sure that the 50K word novella I wrote this month really should have been a 5K short story.

At least I realize now that, when I edit, I'll be cutting about 90% of November's output, and then I'll work with the other 10%, and I'll probably re-write most of that.  *sigh*

However, now that November is over, and I don't have the pressure to keep on with that project, I'm hoping that I'll end up with some more story ideas, and more to share on Tuesdays.  I plan to have some sort of flash fiction up for you next week!  Yay!

Can't... fiction...

I know, I know, Tuesday is usually fiction day, but I'm totally flaking this week and just babbling instead.

It's been a long week already, and it's only Tuesday.  There's just been so much to do!  I made and delivered a cake for a birthday party tonight (well, I made the cake yesterday, and delivered it tonight), I've been working on Otter's Super Secret Christmas Awesome, I've been working on another SooperSekrit project for Otter and Panda, and I've started working on a Christmas stocking cross-stitch for my mom.

Oh yeah, and I've been doing NaNoWriMo.  You can see my status in the sidebar there -->

And I'm also working full time.

And my puppy has been demanding attention.

So today, I just don't feel like writing.  I did a little bit of NaNo at lunch, but only because I felt like I had to.  I'm not enjoying my story.  I have an outline, and I'm sticking to it (mostly), so I've learned that I can outline and still make a project work.  Unfortunately, I realized after the first two or three chapters that this story just wasn't a very good one.  I sort of like the premise, though, and I think I can take everything I've done for NaNo and condense it into a short story - like 5K instead of 50K.

And that's okay.  I'm still going to finish the story, because you can't edit something that's not there, right?  It's just going to get a MAJOR slash job when I'm done.  And we won't even start on the continuity errors...  Luckily, I realize that NaNoWriMo produces a rough draft ;)

What She Doesn't Know...

Another NaNo excerpt for your reading pleasure!


Jeffrey got out of bed and closed the door, then began rooting through the pile of clothes to find his jeans and t-shirt from earlier in the day.  Once dressed, he took another deep, calming breath before heading out to face his mother.

He found her sitting on the couch, flipping through the channels on the television.

“You know, it’s really a waste to have so many channels," she told him.  “You really only need the basic cable package.  I don’t know why you insist on having all of these extra channels.  I mean, you work all day, so it's not as if you need to have that much variety.”

“I don’t always work during the day,” Jeffrey said.  “Sometimes I work at night, and it’s nice to have options.  Daytime television on basic cable sucks.”

"Still, you could save a lot of money if you just cancelled all of this - Jeffrey!”  His mother dropped the remote, then scrambled to pick it back up.  She frantically pressed buttons until the channel changed, then stood up and glared at her son, hands on her hips.  “Jeffrey Adam Richards!  You have pornography!”

Jeffrey couldn't stop himself.  He laughed.  He laughed so hard that every one of his poor injured muscles started to hurt.

“I don't know what’s so funny, young man!  This is... This is smut!  I raised you better than that, Jeffrey!  I can't believe that you would allow such, such, filth into your apartment!  It's dirty, it's disgusting, it's degrading to women!  You - you - you -” She stammered, lost for words.  Her face was red, as red as the pillows on Jeffrey’s couch, and still, he kept laughing.

“You stop laughing right now, young man!  Stop it!  Stop!  And get rid of that, that, filth!  You should know better!”

“Mother, get over it,” Jeffrey managed to say, pulling himself together a bit.  “It’s just porn.”

“Just porn?  JUST PORN?  Look at the things those poor girls are doing!”

“I did look, and I do look, frequently,” he said, enjoying his mother’s discomfort.

She stammered and stuttered, fuming but unable to form any actual words.

“Did you honestly expect otherwise from me?  I’m twenty-eight years old, as you keep reminding me, with no girlfriend and no prospects for marriage - if I don’t subscribe to the Playboy channel, I’ll just buy the magazine, or worse, download free porn from the internet.  At least this way those ‘poor girls’ are getting paid for what they do,” he said.

His mother just stared at him.

Brilliant idea. Brilliant!

Yeah, deciding to make Sunday my 'book review' day the weekend before wedding-cake-baking-weekend and two weekends before NaNoWriMo was a brilliant plan.  I am a genius.  A total genius.

I have not read anything this week.  I've barely even re-read stuff that I've written.  I certainly haven't picked up a book... I kind of want to read, but I find that when I start reading in the middle of relatively intense writing, two things happen.  First, I start to try to imitate the style of any author that I'm reading.  Second, I decide that I am a total hack and can't write anything at all.  I know that I'm not a hack, but the first draft is always a great, big, steaming pile of crap.  Stinky, smelly crap.  Editing always helps, but still... when I'm in the middle of a first draft, I don't like reading other people's work.

I've got a couple of things on my TBR pile, though.  I started Confessor, the last book in Terry Goodkind's Sword of Truth series.  I really want to finish it, but I don't want to pick it up and feel bad about myself... *sigh*  Also on the pile, Hush Money by Susan Bischoff.  I've been meaning to read it for an awfully long time, and I do need to write a review of it for both Goodreads and Smashwords.  Once I'm done my draft, though, I'll get back to my regularly planned reading.

In the meantime, I've been spending my non-writing time with crafting - it lets me be creative and relax in different ways than writing, plus, it lets me feel productive.  If you're interested in seeing what I've been doing, go check out my craft blog: Confessions of a Yarn Whore.

NaNo - Yes, I'm doing it again

So for the seventh year in a row, I'm doing NaNoWriMo.

I've seen a lot about NaNo online lately, which is not surprising.  People seem to either love it or hate it - there really aren't too many who are lukewarm.  I am (obviously) a fan.  If you read my pre-NaNo post, you can see part of the reason I like it.  I learn something about myself and my writing every time I do NaNo.

I'm well on my way - I passed 11k tonight.  Unfortunately, I'm not really in love with my story.  Actually, that may not be an unfortunate thing.  Because I'm not deeply emotionally attached to the story, I'm much more flexible with it.  I had a brand new character show up, and I didn't have any idea what to do with her.  Now she's sticking around, and she'll provide challenges (physical, mental, and emotional!) to my MC.

Also, I don't hate my MC.  This is actually a bad thing.  He was supposed to be a total douchebag, and he is, but I don't hate him.  I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong... perhaps he's just so inept at what he's trying to do that I'm feeling some sympathy...

In any case, I'm all full of NaNo this week.  Next week, though, I'll try to be less NaNo-filled, since it's ALL OVER THE INTERNET and I'm sure you're bored with reading about it!

A Peek into NaNo

(Yeah, I know, I'm totally taking the cheap way out, but today's fiction is an excerpt from my current NaNo project.  Enjoy!)


“So where am I?”

“You haven't figured that out?” the man said, then laughed.  “You said it yourself - three times.  You're in Hell.”

Jeffrey made the fish-face again.  “Hell?” he repeated.  Well, he supposed that made sense.  Why else would he be surrounded in pink and listening to this sort of ‘music’?

“Hell,” the man confirmed.  “And I’m the one in charge of greeting you.  I’m Phongor.”  He rose and held out his hand.  Jeffrey, out of habit, reached out and shook it.  He immediately yanked his hand back, shaking it.

“Shit! That’s hot!”

Phongor laughed.  “Indeed it is.  Damn, I love that.  You humans fall for it every time.”

Jeffrey opened his mouth to make a smart-ass retort, but closed it, thinking better before he screwed himself even more.

“That fish thing you do, it's rather amusing," Phongor said.
 
Jeffrey just glared at him.  A thought was wiggling around in the back of his head.  The man’s name seemed familar, but he couldn’t figure out where it was from.

“In any case,” Phongor continued, “I’m here to greet you, and honestly, I don’t really like you.  I don’t like you at all.”

“Sorry to make your job suck,” Jeffrey snapped.  He crossed his arms and stood staring at Phongor.

“Yes, well, it’s Hell, so I suppose it's par for the course,” Phongor said, laughing at his own cleverness.  “The point is, though, that I don’t like you.  I don’t want to have to deal with you.”

Always Learning

My, how time flies! November is just around the corner, and each November for the past six years (sheesh, that's a long time!), I have participated in National Novel Writing Month, better known as NaNoWriMo. If you've never heard of it, I strongly recommend that you check them out. The basic goal is to write 50,000 words of new fiction in the month of November. I have met or passed that goal every year, although I did not always finished the story. Each time I have participated, I have learned something important about myself, and about my writing.

My first-ever finished novel came from the draft that I started during NaNoWriMo in 2004, called "It's All About the Shoes". It was utter crap, unfortunately, but that year I learned that I really can finish writing a novel, even if it's not a very good one. Up until that point, I had written a lot, but I had never managed to get to 'The End.' I would get bored, or a shiny new project would come along, and I would abandon my WIP for something else. This first year, I learned that it feels good to finish something. After 30 days and slightly over 50,000 words, I was invested in this piece – I needed to finish it. So I did.

During my second round of NaNoWriMo, I wrote "Fae," an adaptation of the story of Sleeping Beauty. That year, I learned that the best-laid plots can end up resulting in big, steaming piles of poo. I hated every word that I had written. The style was old-fashioned and hard to read. I didn't finish that one. I hit delete and actually got rid of the whole file, I hated it that much.

In 2006, though, I wanted to try it again. I took the same premise that I had used the previous year, but changed everything else – the character's names, the POV, the settings, you name it. That time around, I learned that sometimes, an idea just doesn't work for me. I really, REALLY loved the idea of the story, the idea of taking Sleeping Beauty and making the princess a horrible brat and all of the other bits and pieces that I tried to use. Finally, though, after scrapping the 50,000 words I wrote that year, and scrapping two other false starts in December and January, I gave in. That story was just not meant to come from me.

The next lesson was one that I probably already understood, but had never put into practice on such a large scale. In 2007, I wrote an untitled piece about a young woman in a bad relationship. It was dark – the woman's fiancé was a troubled man, and he took out his issues on her. His family was cruel, her family didn't get it, and on the whole, it was an unhappy piece. I did not write any more of it after November, but I learned that writing can be cathartic. That young woman was me. I had been in a bad place in my life, and in a funk, and I could not find my way out. As I wrote, though, something happened inside of me. I healed. By working out my issues on paper, I worked them out in my heart. I didn't finish that story, but I didn't have to. I felt better by the end of the month, and I was, finally, ready to move on with my life.

After NaNoWriMo 2008, I learned that I can fall in love with something I've written. That year was the year of "Happily Ever After," another princess story. This story, though, did not get trashed after the month was over. It took me several more months to get around to writing 'The End' for the first draft, but I did. I then put it away for a long time – over a year. When I picked it up again, I fell in love with the story. I did not, however, fall in love with my writing. I liked the overall tone and voice that I had managed to create, but a lot of the story felt slow, probably because of the adjective-related padding that tends to show up during NaNoWriMo. Now, "Happily Ever After" is a piece that I consider a WIP, because I am editing it. I am being ruthless, and I LOVE it! For the first time, I feel as if I have written something that (with some work) could be published.

Finally, last year, I learned that I cannot write a mystery, at least not with the writing technique that I prefer to use. In order to write a successful mystery, one must know whodunnit. You have to have a plan. If you don't know who the bad guy is, it's really hard to drop subtle hints. I did have some very impressive red herrings, since I hadn't really chosen the bad guy. I am too much of a 'pantser' to write a mystery right now. An outline is, well, mandatory. I decided, after NaNo, to read more mysteries, to see if I could figure out how to do it successfully. I learned something else – I don't like to read mysteries!

Novemeber is just around the corner... I can't wait to see what I'll learn this year!

Another year over.

Okay, so it's not an official year that's over, just a NaNo year. But tonight, we had our TGIO party, the official wrap-up of NaNoWriMo.

It was a good time, for the most part. We hung out, we ate pizza, we asked ridiculous questions and had equally ridiculous answers - much fun!

There's always a bit of a sense of disappointment, though, when the last person leaves and you finally realize that you probably won't see many of these people again until next year. *sigh*

Thanks, November. It's been a blast. See you next time around.

I did it!

50k! Done! Story! Done!

Much writing!

I've spent the last four hours sitting in a coffee shop with a laptop and a group of people, working on my novel.

I feel like such a writer!

Poor time management skills

So.... I went out tonight. I went to Blake's for dinner, because it's Wednesday night, and that's what we do on Wednesday night. Then we headed to WalMart, to buy supplies, because tomorrow's the Thanksgiving lunch at work, and I'm bringing pumpkin cheesecake. Which is currently baking. However, it's 11:30, there's still and hour and a half of bake time left, and I haven't written a word for NaNo.

Eeep!

I'm off to write while cheesecake bakes, I guess, since I can't really go to bed while it's in the oven!

Plot twisting!

So last night I was lamenting how much I didn't want to write my NaNovel. And today, I've taken Ray's advice and thrown in a bomb. Well, not a real bomb. A tablet of Rohypnol. Boy, that's made things fun! And the one being drugged? An unattractive sixty-something man. Betcha wanna read my story now, dontcha??

In other news, I've been playing with Pandora, and I'm really enjoying it. I've got an 'Old School Boy Band' channel, full of NKOTB and their ilk. Love!

Other stories on my mind

There are days that November just pisses me off.

I have other story ideas in my head right now, but I can't really justify stopping my NaNo story to start on these. *sigh* I want to write about princesses. I want to finish "Happily Ever After." But I also want to finish "Thurman G. Woodfin and the Case of the Missing Toothbrush."

So I'll keep slogging with Thurman. My goal this year is not to reach 50,000. Well, that's not entirely accurate. My goal is not JUST to reach 50,000 words, but also to FINISH the story. That's my downfall. I don't finish things. So I'm going to finish Thurman. And when he's done, I'll finish Happily Ever After.

And then I'll live Happily Ever After. At least until I start editing. *sigh*

Huh? The weekend just started, I swear

NaNo steals my days. Seriously. I'll try to get some excerpts up tomorrow... for now, go visit everyone who's being this crazy at NaNoWriMo.

Party Time!

Had the NaNo MidMonth Gathering tonight, and it went quite well, if I do say so myself! Plus, got some news that will help with pre-planning for next year, so that's good.

However, it's FREAKING LATE, and I'm going to bed. This is the first day that I've written NOTHING for NaNo, and it feels weird... but I'm exhausted, and I am sufficiently far ahead that I'll be okay.

So I'm not a Mystery writer.

It turns out, you need to do a lot more planning than I currently do if you want to write a decent mystery novel. If you just fly by the seat of your pants (as I am attempting to do for NaNo), you end up with thought processes like the following:

OOoo! Thurman totally needs to find a clue now! This would be a really great time for him to get a new bit of information on the dude with amnesia! Except, well, I don't know who the dude with amnesia actually is... So I guess I can put some sort of clue there? And maybe make dude end up doing/being something that fits with the clue? Or something...?


Yeah. So. The mystery novel remains a mystery, even to me!

An unexpected twist

“You said he woke up on the steps of the church this morning?” she asked.

“Yes, ma’am,” Thurman replied.

“Did he say when?”

“Between eight-thirty and nine o’clock,” the investigator replied. “He came to my office almost immediately following that.”

“Odd...” she said.

“What’s odd?” Thurman pressed.

“Well,” she said, “I always come in to work at eight o’clock, and there was no one on the front steps of the church at that time. Unless he fell asleep on the steps very briefly around eight-thirty, that doesn't make any sense.”

“No, it doesn’t,” Thurman agreed, frowning. “None at all. Hmmm... Well, thank you, ma’am, for your assistance. You’ve been helpful. If you can think of anything else, please, don’t hesitate to call me.” He passed her a business card.

“I will, Mr. Woodfin,” she replied, tucking the card into her desk drawer as the investigator left.


**I wrote it, but I totally didn't see it coming!**

Oh, the political incorrectness of it...

“I woke up this morning outside of St. Joseph’s Church. I didn’t remember much of anything... I still don’t think I remember yesterday at all,” he said, frowning.

“Mmm-hmm,” Thurman said, writing something down. “Veryy interesting. Tell me, do you remember anything from the day before yesterday?”

“No. I don't remember anything before waking up this morning,” Mr. Smith told him.

“Did you remember St. Joseph’s Church, or did you have to read it on the sign?” Thurman asked.

“Why does that matter?” Mr. Smith asked.

“Please, just answer the question," Thurman said.

The man sighed and thought about it for a minute. “I remembered it. I don’t think I even looked at the sign. I just recognized the church.”

“Good!” Thurman replied, sounding excited as he made a note on his pad.

“Why is that good?” the man asked.

“It means that you're familiar with the area,” Thurman explained. “You’re either from around Macon, or you spend a lot of time here... Or you’re Catholic. Do you feel Catholic?”

“I don’t know,” Mr. Smith said. “What does a Catholic feel like?”

“Umm... Probably pretty guilty,” Thurman said, “But not as guilty as a Jew listening to his mother.”