Thinking notes (Who is she?)

Who is she to everyone else?
Who is she when she is alone?
When she is with him, just the two of them, she is quiet and needy, but to the outside world, she is a determined force in their world.
She is hiding something, but what, and whom from?


These are some of the questions I am trying to answer about my main character. She is an interesting character and only revealing bits and pieces at this point.

A walk in the country

The cool breeze began to drift away as the sun fell below the hills. The sky became a mixed of colors like the oil painting  hanging in the office. At this moment  the beauty of the sunset and the crisp clean smell of the early summer air.


***this was something I started over the summer. If nothing else I like the picture***

Naming my characters

Why is it so hard to come up with names?
I don't want the names to be cliche' but I also don't want the names to seem like they are someone from my real life. Seriously, I'm really struggling here as well as with a previous project on the character names. Usually I do ok with the heroine, but the hero always seems to give me issue.
So between plot mapping and character frustrations, this  year's NaNo is getting off to an interesting start.

Educating Mom

Or  something like that.
I am playing around with an idea.
The premise goes something like this: a frustrated mom struggling to teach her children at home begins to realize she needs educating and it isn't necessarily in teaching skills, but in life, compasion and, loving.

I'm not totally sure where this will lead as the characters are just now being revealed to me. I love this part of the writing process, meeting new characters and seeing where their paths lead.

NaNoWriMo is nearly here, so much to do...

I am crazy stoked!
Actually I am freaking out, I'm not prepared and I still have a bunch of posts to write for my regular blogs before I can go crazy and shut the rest of the world out for NaNoWriMo
If you don't know what NaNo is, well  the cool icon on the top of this post sums it up, for 30 days you write the goal being 50,000 words.
For now, I have 5 character outlines to finish up , although I find my characters tend to show me who they are as I write, I also have to outline or map out the novel on paper , and finally get my notebook and note cards set aside so I have them with me all the time. I tend to write either on my laptop or with pen and paper. I hope to bring together a few ideas I have stirring around in my head and hopefully get a full story done this year.

Author Blog Challenge : Outlining my projects

DAY 7 Prompt: Describe your outline process for your book. What do you do to stay organized?

How do I outline a project?  Honestly I go back to the basic research paper style outline only I tend to center it on a page so I can make a ton of notes in the margins. 

I know when I get a real serious writing bug I tend to online my characters' stories individually and then combine those outlines with abbreviates for the various characters. 

Staying organized in the writing process is hard for me, I use Post-it Flags to mark chapters, issues, and other spots along the way. For projects that have only been online (here on the blog especially) I tend to use the blog labels.) When I print a project I try to put at least a partial copy in my accordion file and save a digital copy to a4GB USB Flash Drive thumb drive as well as an external hard drivePortable Hard Drive , of course several of my projects are old enough they live on a 3 1/4 floppy (am I dating myself with that admission?)

I have learned a hard lesson, don't depend on any one system to stay organized or keep your writing safe. Print copies can be lost, hard drives can crash , online locations can be hacked, etc... So I tend to keep copies in multiple locations and formats to try and keep my projects safe as well as organized in some fashion.

Author Blog Challenge Prompt #6

When did the idea for my first book come to me... that is actually pretty easy, although the book isn't finished my first novella idea stemmed from a One Act play I wrote my senior year of High School as part of my senior project for Theater.  Shortly after the production was complete I felt the script was incomplete somehow and realized it needed to tell a deeper story so I started playing with the story in college. I actually wrote the first two chapters as part of a Creative Writing : Advanced Fiction writing class my third term at the local community college.  I still have the peer review/ professor review copies of that project as well as several others I wrote for the class. While some of the criticism was harsh, it was honest and gave me some really sold things to work on. I have a working copy of that project in my purple accordion file that perhaps I will work on sooner rather than later. I think that was my first novel , however I have several journal and writer's notebooks full of story starts and ideas that go back as far as 8th grade, but my first real seriously focused project was Single Link from High School. 

A long Pause

Somehow June got away from me and I had to push the pause button on my creative writing. I had hoped to spend some quality time this past weekend writing/ blogging but alas that didn't happen.  I did manage to spend the other night going through an accordion file full of notes, story starts, forms (for character analysis and plot mapping). I found several story starts that are screaming to be explored, literally the file is sitting on the floor next to my bed and when I climb into bed I see the bright purple plastic and it seems to be screaming at me to pick it up and explore the trails that I started at various points in my life.  I also pulled together 3 different journals and managed to put the pages in chronological order and read through them, again there are several story trails I want to explore.  My fingers want to type stories or better yet scribble ideas and brainstorm fixes to the stories that are started and never finished. My head is filled with voices of these various characters wanted to visit with me and tell me their stories. I just need to find the balance to create more.  Hopefully I have found some glimpse of balance in today's cleaning activities; I managed to pull a CAT-6 cable from the router in my old office space (soon to be the 9 year old's bedroom) to the living room. This should solve 2 problems. First the need for a line for school activities in the living room (so I can have both boys in the same space while doing school work and not feel like I have to leave one totally unattended to run down the hall and help the other one); the second is the desire to have my laptop available for writing and not hide in the back of the house to write.
I need to talk to my husband again to see if we can come up with a balance, especially after the productive housework day the boys and I had.  Oh the stories I could write just from homeschooling 2 boys and living in a small rural community.  Here I go another tale stirring in my head.
I am going to try and do a daily prompt tomorrow but for today this is where I am and that is really all I can ask for.

Author Blog Challenge Prompt #3

Who are the writers you most admire? Who are your writing mentors?

At this point, I have so many writers I admire. I have read so many great authors over the years and a few have stood out to me. Currently I admire those writers who are also parents and raising their families. As a homeschool Mom of 2 boys I find it hard to balance educating them with housework (which I suck at), and writing. At the end of the day my brain is so wiped out that I will often think about writing and never get any farther than the thinking about  stage. I have come across several authors in the homeschool world that really amaze me. One particular author is actually a married couple Hal and Melanie Young authors of Raising Real Men, they homeschool their boys and write and share their message. While I haven't read Raising Real Men I have read other homeschool products they have written and my family has been blessed by those e-books. 

I truly admire any author that manages to raise their children and write their book while maintaining some sense of reality and sanity. I'm sure that sounds somehow cliche'  but honestly I know I can easily get lost in the stories I write and forget about the real world for a time and while that is a part of the job of being a writer, I still have responsibilities that take priority in my world. 

So , here's to the balance that I hope we all manage to find as we write and raise our children and maybe just maybe instill in them a love of writing or at least reading. 

Classes taken, Classes taught

What kinds of classes, programs, or workshops have you taken to hone your skill as a writer? What sorts of exercises did/do you use to improve your craft? Have you ever taught a writing class or workshop?

I wasn't going to write off the prompts when I started this challenge but this one and the first one seemed like good places to start and get back into the groove of writing.

Classes taken, well I took every Creative Writing Class including Script Writing in college that I could, I also took the basic writing comp series plus retook Writing 122 from a favorite Professor just to get a little extra push (she actually pushed me in the second class as I asked her to take it up a notch for me, she expected more than a WR122 level from me which helped a lot). I also attended local workshops in various genres including Romance, Mystery , True Crime, and Memoir writing, although it has been ages since I was able to take a in person class.

Currently I am participating in as many challenges through blogging as I can to exercise my art and connect with people who will at least read and maybe respond to my ramblings. I have done NaNoWriMo 3 years now and am also working toward Camp NaNo this summer in the hopes of getting my focus back.

I have taught a class. I taught a Creative Writing class, actually 2 classes to our local homeschool co-op. The first class was three years ago to a group of high school kids where I am happy to report 3 of the students made huge strides in their craft. This past year I taught a Creative Writing class to my oldest son's co-op class of 3rd graders and let me tell you that was a serious push to my comfort level.