Day 3 of NaNoWriMo & PiBoIdMo

Okay, so I said I wouldn’t be blogging every day about NaNo, and I probably won’t, but tonight I just want to say .. I am actually having fun with this! Who’da thunk? 🙂

As of today’s writing, 13% of my projected goal has been completed, so says my widget. I must admit, I was a little exasperated with myself today, though, when after writing over 1000 words I realized that in so doing I had included a scene/time frame from yesterday’s writing. That isn’t so bad in itself, but I had written the same thing but in an entirely different way and didn’t even realize until one of my characters was about to explain something. Then I go … “huh? oh nooooo!” (haha) So, I just kept on going. In the editing when this is all said and done, one of those has to be cut. But for now the words all count because we are not allowed to go back and edit anything. When you can’t read over what you did earlier, except maybe the last line or two for your starting point the next time, it pays to have a good memory. 🙂 Double the challenge for me!

I know that I accidentally changed (misspelled) my main character’s name in a few places, but that’s okay and easily remedied … later. That’s no worse than calling a young girl by the wrong name on Sunday. Called her Veronica when her name is Victoria. She looked a little puzzled but was polite about it. 🙂

So, having said all that, aren’t you just so eager to read my story when it’s done? (having a good laugh at myself here!) 🙂

Now, another thing I want to share is that for today I made note of an idea for PiBoIdMo (Picture Book Idea Month) from a personal experience. Then later I was watching tweets of persons I follow on Twitter (and making occasional comments) when someone said the funniest and cutest thing. I immediately told my husband and then said, there’s a story in that! So, there are two ideas for PiBoIdMo today. Gotta love that!

By the way: the website, should you be interested in checking out the PiBoIdMo challenge just to see what it’s all about, is: Writing for Kids (While Raising Them) — http://taralazar.wordpress.com/

Are you having fun these days?

Thanks for reading, and … Creative Musings! 🙂

Day 1 of NaNoWriMo & another challenge

Shortly after midnight, not long into November, I began writing. NaNoWriMo has begun! As it was already late and I was tired, I only wrote 120 words and then turned in for the night. At least I got it started.

I had very vague ideas for a story, so when I started writing it was a surprise to me just what might come together, particularly when it is hard to write when you haven’t much to say. My beginning is sort of strange, but that doesn’t bother me. I think it is something that is going to be explained somewhere later in the story. Now two main characters are shaping up and more ideas are unfolding in my mind as I go. There is already a mystery person and my main characters are about to introduce someone else into the mesh.

I’ve read what others have had to say about their experience with NaNoWriMo, and many complain of ‘hitting a wall’ after so many thousand words, or after the first two or three weeks of writing. That is on my mind, and since this is only day one of the 30 day challenge, I somehow have to dismiss that thought. What I don’t need is a barrier in my way from the very beginning, a negative expectation that will put up a block so that I cannot complete this novel challenge.

Well, to add to all this, I learned of another challenge that started today. It is called PiBoIdMo, which stands for Picture Book Idea Month. The challenge is to come up with 30 picture book ideas in 30 days! You don’t have to write full manuscripts for them, you just write something down for in a picture book. It could be a story plot, a character name, a title for your story. Today I thought of an idea – the name of the main character which will likely be the title too, and I made a few notes for the storyline. There is no great pressure for this challenge, which is nice since I am doing NaNoWriMo at the same time. This one is more delightful.

Then I discovered there are great prizes that can be won for PiBoIdMo, but for me just getting down 30 ideas that I can use in a picture book is the reward to myself. Don’t get me wrong .. winning a signed book or having an author critique my story would be fantastic! But, I’m doing this for the inspiration that is already being generated. Woo Hoo! 🙂

So, I’m going to stop writing here and move back to my NaN o writing. Later tonight I will publish my final word count for today, day one. (It is currently over 1000.) And if I can get a word count widget for here from NaNo, then that will make it even easier to keep you posted on my progress. I’m not very good at moving and installing widgets, but I’ll try. 🙂

So, what are you doing to challenge yourself? If you are a writer do you have any goals you are working toward right now?

Thanks for reading, and … Creative Musings! 🙂

NaNoWriMo is almost here! Am I ready?

November 1 is approaching far too quickly for my liking. NaNoWriMo will soon be starting and thousands of us will be lurching out of the starting gate. I for one am excited and nervous about it.

I am looking at this writing challenge as a way of motivating me, of propelling me into ‘real’ writing – meaning committed writing. I know it is not going to happen without work, but it could be a sound beginning for me, a departure from short children’s stories and articles for Valley Sunshine publication.

My problem, as I see it, is that I have nothing to start with, no characters, no plot, no scenes, no genre, no plan. As I said, nothing. Well, okay .. so I have a few ideas floating around in my head but they are just that .. floating, not attached to anything in particular. And I have had a couple of dreams, just strange ones so that I wonder … is that a NaNo clue? I don’t know!

I do know that most people who apply themselves to NaNoWriMo do so with a plan in mind or outlined on paper (or computer). They have an idea of where they are headed. There are some others who don’t, and – like me – are going to be sitting down to write whatever comes to them once they begin.

Thus far, on my NaNo page I have three ‘buddies‘, one is also a first timer. I think for each of us this is going to be a major undertaking because of other time-consuming things, but we are going to make the effort. I’ve signed up for the daily tips and encouragements, hoping that will spur me on and keep me going.

Well, if nothing else, I’m sure to learn a lot about taking on something like this, and about myself. I hope I like what I find out!

I will try to keep an update going on here of my word count and experience as I go along. It might not be pretty, so I apologize now. 🙂

Do you have any tips for me? Any plans for doing NaNo this year yourself? Or have you done the challenge in the past and have a story to tell me about your experience? I would love to hear about it! Please!

Thanks for reading, and … Creative Musings! 🙂

Is the book as we know it disappearing?

I have been observing. There is a lot of discussion in all arenas about the traditional book eventually disappearing from use. This is mainly because of e-books – those online electronic books you can download to read, and whatever else technology will – and has already – come up with to simplify things for us. Just to let you know … I am not educated in that because I love books as they are and have been for centuries! Well, the scroll was a little difficult to handle and pack around, maybe, but .. you get my point.

I am not interested in reading a book on a hand-held device, nor am I excited about sitting at the computer to read one on the screen. I am all for holding a made-from-paper-and-ink writing, turning those pages and flipping back and forth as I need to, underlining or highlighting (did I hear a gasp?) when the occasion calls for it – which is rarely because I also use bookmarks and sticky tabs. I fill my bookcases with old favourites (some saved from my childhood), and soon-to-be-loved stories. I have books all over the place, a few in the living room and our bedroom, many in my publishing room, my ‘computer room’, the main room downstairs, and even packed away in boxes in our storage room. My husband, not a voracious reader, also has a few titles on hand.

Most of my children’s storybooks I have kept, and my grandson now enjoys those. I have books that made me laugh out loud, made me cry (and hide behind), pulled me in so deep I didn’t hear anything going on around me. I have books the Lord used to teach me something important. And there are many volumes in my collection which I have yet to cuddle up with and appreciate their written pages. Somehow, I doubt very much that I could enjoy an electronic book the same way, it would even be annoying to me.

I don’t get to the library much at all anymore. There was a time when I would take my daughters there to pick out books for their extra reading, and that was fun for us. I borrowed several for myself when I was taking a writing course and wanted to read the ones mentioned in it. But I prefer to own the books I read, I like to gather them and add them to my own personal collection. Would I feel the same way about having them filed in a little electronic device? I doubt it! It is NOT the same thing!

So, is the way of the traditional book one of antiquity? Is it disappearing? Will my great-grandchildren not even know what it is to own a printed-on-paper book, to smell its ‘bookness’, to experience the thrill of a page-turning story on paper filled with bright pictures and powerful words?

Now I ask you …. what do you think?

Thanks for reading, and … Creative Musings! 🙂

Do you get your memories out of the trash heap?

I am trying to come up with a topic to write about. Sometimes it is there waiting for me, more often it has gone into hiding. This is the latter.

What, oh what, shall I write about that will be worth sharing? hmmm

When trying to think of something I sift through my day, my week, summer vacation … whatever is filed away in my memory bank that is not under too much thinking and filing and stashing. You know, what we do with our memories … put them on a shelf not too far back to bring out and enjoy later, or file them away for safe keeping for an indefinite length of time, or just toss them onto the heap of regrets and disappointments to dig through when there is more time to do so. There should never be time to dig through the trash heap, unless to learn something, but never enough to wile it away there.

Do you happen to remember a children’s TV program called Fraggle Rock? (It’s still in reruns in some places.) There was the wise Marjory trash heap that would receive the occasional visitor seeking advice. Notice I said occasional. For good reason. Don’t go there. Mostly the trash heap consists of smelly yucky garbage, the mental trash heap being one of embarrassing moments, wrong thoughts, mistakes, regrets, failures, bad stuff … not a nice place to expend one’s brain power.

So, why did I bring that up? Because too often we tend to waste time thinking back over things that cannot be changed, cannot be fixed, cannot be forgotten if we keep digging them out to review again and again. Best to leave them alone to compost into a life lesson.

Our experiences have a way of changing us, affecting how we think or ‘see’ things, bringing us to new understanding, and often it is by the fact of their just being part of our living. Stored away in our memory, and left alone to decay into what comes next … they become a part of what makes us who we are. If not stored away properly they can affect us negatively — through our constant rehashing of them, not allowing ourselves to heal from the memories, instead taking them out for our private pity parties and our public displays of “you don’t know what my life is/was like.” But if not allowing the stench to touch us, not going back and digging it up to agonize over again and again, instead dealing with it in good and healthy ways, we allow ourselves to heal and grow and mature in mind and emotions.

So, what am I writing about? It seems I am saying … stay out of the trash heap, and compost instead. 🙂 Do not allow your past to hold you there, to hinder your walk and progress in life, or to prevent you from believing. Move out of that place of powerlessness, that desert of despair, that tunnel of torment. Walk out! Look up and walk out.

The One who has a plan and a purpose for your life made you to be the creative person you are. Use that gift to its fullest and crawl out of the garbage heap! Aspire. Believe. Create. Dream. Explore. Fly. Grow. Hope. Inspire. Jump in. Keep going – and … LIVE your Life!

What has helped you to keep going, not allowing Marjory the trash heap’s stink to permeate your life?

Thanks for reading, and … Creative Musings! 🙂

Coyotes! So what has awakened you lately?

A few mornings ago I was rudely awakened at 5:00 AM. What yanked me out of a deep sleep was high pitched whiny, shrill screaming, or so it seemed. It took me only milliseconds to realize that what I was hearing was a pack of coyotes. They were so loud that I thought they were right out in the field by our house, but it seems they were a little further away than that. Sure coulda fooled me at the time!

My first concern was for the young calves in the herd out in the pasture, but later I learned that the cattle were content and unconcerned. Perhaps the pack was hunting deer. Then this morning on my walk I discovered hundreds of porcupine quills along both sides of one section of the road. Maybe the older coyotes were teaching their young to hunt. Could that have been the final result of one animal’s life, one conquest of the hunt?

It is always startling to me when coyotes begin their communication so suddenly, increasing in volume as they all chime in … somewhere out there in the night. It sends chills down one’s back to hear them howl, yip, bark, almost scream … a few at a time, then in pleasing unison across the hills to one another. Their voices – young mingling with mature – carry far, filling the darkness with haunting, unnerving song that rises and falls, then just as abruptly — stops. A few final rambunctious young ‘yip yips’, then nothing. Silence.

Amazing, fascinating, alarming. Spooky.

Have you encountered something in your life that has come with just such surprise? Something that has left you quaking in your slippers? Have you been awestruck? Or has it shown you something more amazing, something that you didn’t know about yourself?

Has it inspired you to write, dream, attempt something new, or maybe even change course? Do you feel emboldened?

What has awakened you lately?

Thanks for reading, and … Creative Musings! 🙂

Choices and computers

It has been five weeks since my last post! In April, my computer did the closest thing to a crash without it being a complete one; I’m still getting it back in order. It was disappointing to lose some things, mostly writing contacts and information. The upside of this computer crisis is that having to reload programs has given me the newest updated ones, and introduction to some great new-to-me programs.

Free advice regarding anti-virus programs: First, BUY one! Second, ONLY use a free one to test it using their limited time free trial, then buy it if you like it. I learned the hard way that free ones do not have enough of the necessary ingredients to protect your computer, regardless of what you think.

I had been working on a story I’d written for children, and revising it in preparation for submission to a magazine. With the ‘crash’, once I found my story again it would be a rush job to get it sent by the April 30 deadline. After all that effort I made the decision to set it aside. Maybe one day it will go somewhere and even be accepted. Now, in fact, I am not sure what I am supposed to do about my writing. Does it sound as if some discouragement has sneaked into the picture?

Do you ever get into the place of not being sure what you really are supposed to be doing? I remind myself of Jonah in the Bible. Remember him? God told him what He was to do, Jonah didn’t agree and ran the opposite way, only to be hauled up short. You know the story; he came around eventually. Now, I’m not saying I deliberately said no to God, but I may have wandered off on my own brilliant tangents instead of following closely to His plan. Not that my choices are/were bad ones, they just may not be the right ones or God’s best for me.

My business website is under scrutiny now, too; I’m considering revising my business goals.

Maybe it’s because Spring is here in Nova Scotia – or maybe I am getting wiser?? hmmm

What do you think? What is happening in your life? Do you ever go through this kind of thing, and if so .. what have you learned from it? Tell me about it!

Thanks for reading, and … Creative Musings! 🙂