I’ve been having the usual beginning of the year thoughts… There was a time management class I took once. One of the first things they had you do was decide what you wanted, and what your priorities were. They said that was a step most people skipped. They asked, “Where were you ten years ago? Where do you want to be in ten years?”
I always wanted to be a writer. And that’s when I realized that if I didn’t start writing, it was never going to happen. Pretty simple epiphany, huh? 
But it got me moving.
So, my question for the year is:
Who do you want to be…
Today? Tomorrow?
In ten years?
And this year, I’m going to work on the baby steps to get there.
Writing
- Write every day (or close to it)
- Finish the rough draft of The Median by the end of the month
- Revise my YA princess story Hyacinth
- Submit to at least 25 agents by the end of the year
- NaNoWriMo in November
Art – I’ve been neglecting this for the writing, lately.
- Organize the studio – I do this every so often, but the piles have overtaken me again. I need a clean work space to get inspired and fill it all up again.
- Sculpt a creature that looks like a cross between a tamarin and an anime character (with the big eyes). I want to write a story about them eventually
- Have fun – grab some clay and just play
Life In General
- Declutter/arrange the house so it’s more relaxing
- Eat better (this is what I need to do to lose weight)
- Increase exercise – there’s a gym at work and I’ve been doing some, but I need to do more
Btw, I did pick a word for the year, but I’m not sure I’m going to post it. It’s the right word, and gets me into the right mindset, but I think it’s going to sound sappy and trite if I try to explain it
I was thinking of this for my word of the year but it’s not quite right… But since I’d already found some links, etc, I thought I’d post this anyway.
Winnow
1. to free (grain) from the lighter particles of chaff, dirt, etc., esp. by throwing it into the air and allowing the wind or a forced current of air to blow away impurities.
4. to subject to some process of separating or distinguishing; analyze critically; sift: to winnow a mass of statements.
6. to pursue (a course) with flapping wings in flying.
When I was a kid my family would go up for a week every summer to visit my grandparents, and while we were there, we’d rake blueberries for the family stand.
Then we’d come back and run them through the winnowing machine. A blueberry rake strips the low bush of berries, but that means you get everything: ripe berries, green berries, a few squashed ones from the metal tines of the rake, plus sticks, leaves, and a few spiders.
The winnowing machine has belts and a fan. The green and squashed berries are carried away by the moving belts. Leaves and sticks are blown up and away by the fan. The heavier ripe berries (which is all you want) roll down the belt to be caught in the green quart baskets. And you can’t beat wild New Hampshire blueberries fresh from the fields for taste. The bland cultivated ones around here are nothing in comparison.
It seems like a good word for a year where I want to declutter the house and a few pounds, finish the rough draft of my NaNoWriMo book, and go back and edit another into a final draft and finally try submitting it to agents. I want to take my life and blow away all the time wasters and things that don’t make me happy, and end up with tangy sweet goodness at the end
Other possibles for word of the year:
Savor Mastery Act Complete Completion Baby-Steps Climb Control Refresh Renew Compose Plan Wu-Wei Dream Adventure Brave Concentrate Breathe Declutter If… Joy Create Commit Grow Soar Coalesce Shine Decide Discover Practice Sift Harvest Gather Emerge Refine
I recently found C.J. Redwine’s blog, The Last Word, which is laugh out loud funny, by the way.
And now I NEED a titanium spork. And it’s all her fault. I never knew they existed before.
Coincidentally, I had already written a spork into the future-earth novel I’m working on. I figure if they’re low on resources, why have both spoons and forks when you can combine ‘em into one uber useful, weird looking utensil.
I wonder if there’s a 12 step program for sudden spork cravings, or if I should just give in and get one.
Make that two – one for me and one for Dave.
Then we could have spork fights.
“My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to get your heart carved out with a spork.”
Yeah, that’s how it should have gone.
Is it octopus, octopuses, or octopi? Whatever the proper plural (the Oxford dictionary suggests octopodes as correct), the intelligence they’ve displayed is fascinating. It makes you wonder whether they would consider that we are intelligent from the evidence they’ve seen.
Isn’t it intelligent to try to escape captivity?
Nakase said that on each of its three escape attempts, the octopus had to climb out of its tank on the second level of a shelving unit and scramble down two shelves to get to the floor. On one occasion the octopus was found next to a drain on the floor, 15 feet from its tank.
Simon said if not detected, the octopus could have successfully escaped from the facility to rejoin its kind in the sea.
“REEF has a flow-through sea water system installed,” Simon said. “If the octopus had found its way into that, it could have easily escaped back into the waters at Campus Point.”
And here’s a recent article on how they can make their own homes out of coconuts. And I can’t help thinking that I really should follow the article’s suggestion and sculpt an octopus purse to start the trend
Next, we’ll find that sea sponges really do live in pineapples. And I’d be fine with that, as long as they don’t have Sponge Bob’s hideously annoying laugh 
Sexism isn’t normally something I’d post about, but this post really caught me. It seems that James of the popular writing blog Men with Pens, is actually a woman.
Reading her story makes me admire her guts, but the fact that she disguised her gender because she made twice as much freelance writing with a male pen name, well– that really makes you think.
I’ve never suffered any obvious discrimination because I’m a woman. If anything it worked in my favor. I was usually the only girl in my college Computer Engineering classes. I did feel a little awkward in a room full of guys when it came time to pick lab partners, but that wasn’t because of anything anybody else did. I feel awkward in a group of strangers anyway…
I’m not a rabid feminist. I’ll stick up for myself and being treated equally, but I don’t think men are evil. If a man wants to hold a door open for me, I’ll say thanks, and do the same for him the next time I reach the door first. I’ve never seen any reason why chivalry can’t work both ways.
I thought we were getting past this sort of thing. Seeing proof that this sort of subtle, unmeasurable, possibly even unconscious, discrimination still exists–based solely on the difference of a name on the internet… it hurts a little.
But I also can’t help thinking that a slightly fictionalized version of this story would make a great movie
I thought this was interesting… Novelist Holly Lisle is writing the first draft of a story, and emailing it out to her fans. She’s also collaborating with her daughter, Rebecca Galardo, who is creating jewelry and artifacts to go along with the story.
I’ve always heard that art sells better with a story behind it, but this is the first time I’ve seen it taken so literally.
You can see the first limited edition up on Etsy. The cool thing (to me) is that the original was made in polymer clay.
Btw, I’d recommend signing up for the story if you like fantasy with a bit of an edge and tiger shape shifters. It’s caught me so far and I can’t wait to see what she writes next.
Supposedly Scrivener is the writing software to use if you’re on a Mac. But I’m not.
I use something called Page Four. I could just use Word, or any text editor but I really like the way I can break my project into chapters and scenes with Page Four. It allows you to add as many folders and pages/files as you want.
I’ve set my novel up so I’ve got one folder for outlines, world building notes, etc, and then a folder for each chapter. If I want to move a scene from one chapter to another, it’s a simple drag and drop – then I just have to do a little editing on the transitions. It’s come in very handy when I want to restructure a story without getting lost.
It’s a fairly simple editor, without too many bells and whistles, but how many times do you use all the crazy stuff Word can do anyway? It saves files in RTF format and they can be exported as one file into Word if you want, when you get to your final draft. It will also archive versions and you can take snapshots if you want.
You can try it out for free (limited by number of pages), and it’s relatively inexpensive. (Note – I have no affiliation. I just bought a copy awhile ago and really like it.)
Page Four - my NaNo novel
I got to my goal for NaNo, but the book isn’t done. It’s been giving me a little trouble actually. I’ve been stuck because I didn’t know what happened next. I’d gone off track – the story veered far enough that it looked like my original ending wasn’t going to work – but I didn’t know what to do instead.
I think I’ve finally figured it out. I had to delete one major scene, and restructure a couple others. I also added a new scene with a grizzly bear and her two cubs. Every futuristic story needs a bear attack, right?
I’m at 58,000+ words right now, although that’s including the deleted scenes – they’re in a cuts folder in case I end up using anything from them. The most important thing is that I’ve been writing again and making progress. It’s back to fun again.
I made it, and a couple days early, thanks to some encouragement from Dave and a 7300 word day yesterday.
I still haven’t finished the first draft of the book though. I need to figure out how my street smart but non-technical heroine is going to conquer the evil bad guy who’s determined to kill off a tenth of the world’s population (for humanity’s greater good, of course) by sending fatal shocks into people’s cranial chip implants through the mesh (future equivalent of the web).
Any suggestions? The wackier the better at this point.
I’m not doing too badly with my wordcount but I have a little catching up to do. There’ve been a few things here and there that slowed me down. (I blame it all on the cats)
I’m off to the library with my laptop to get some progress made. The story itself is going along… The wordcount seems to slow down the most when I don’t know what’s going to happen next.
That shouldn’t be a problem at the moment though. Sec (future cops) were just about to capture the bad guy when he did something horribly dastardly and killed most of ‘em off. Now my main character is all by herself and she’s the one who needs to escape….
