Night out with Jade

I just spent a wonderful evening with my daughter. This doesn't happen a lot because, #1 she's 12, and #2 we both tend to get on each other's nerves a lot when we're around each other in confined spaces for long periods of time.

Tonight, we went to Hobby Lobby where I spent way too much time looking for things specific to my list (damn not having metal etching solution!) and she only asked for a couple of things and didn't complain about me only getting one of them for her.

Baby steps

My weekend plans, in no particular order:

1. I printed out my "Manuscript: Draft 0" today. Now I have to block some time this weekend to go through it and start my time line. Would probably be a good idea to figure out how to write up the synopsis, but I will probably have a better idea on how that works once I know what I wrote. ;)
2. Painting. Yay! Primer on the new doorways and maybe more...
3. Making my Secret Santa gift. I have a great idea, but I need to figure out what I need, see if I actually have anything already, and then make it.
4. Go clothes shopping with my daughter because she just keeps growing.

Nano Revisited

So, it's been a week and my recap blog post is just now surfacing for my NaNoWriMo experience. I'm sure if I tried, I could give many, many excuses, but you don't want that. What you really want is the nitty-gritty of the past month and a half.

First off, I thought I was completely crazy when I thought about signing up in the middle of October. I had one week to plan before my best friend showed up to help me finish up my wedding reception plans (which you can see a lot of around here). Only one week to take a hazy idea for a story and try to turn it into something worth writing about.

Then there was the week of fun with my friend, our reception. And suddenly, November 1 was upon me.

I had a half-formed idea and a couple of character sheets. So, I started writing.

Now, something you should know about me is that I can be a little stubborn. The challenge was to write 50,000 words in 30 days. I wasn't about to let a silly challenge like this beat me.

I knew the week of my reception that I was starting to feel a little under the weather, but I wasn't about to let it hit until after the party. So, I pushed it off, and ignored it, pretending like the weather wasn't changing and I wasn't getting my traditional change of the season cold.

And of course it hit the first week of NaNo. I started off strong, for at least the first few days. And then BAM! Head cold! I had a few slow days after that, obviously.

The next two weeks I spent constantly trying to play catch up. I'd get close, but never close enough.

Not until the Thanksgiving holiday. I was lucky enough to only have a couple of places to go for the holiday which meant I had a lot of time to write.

I caught up and won on the 29th! 50,015 words written in 29 days. Yay!

When the 30th came around, I went to work, said yay a few more times and then when I came home, I sat down at my desk and just kind of went "uh..." because I didn't know what I should do! My brain had turned into mush. Veritable mush, as evidenced by the fact that about ever other sentence that came out of my mouth or was typed out on the computer had typos, mixed up words, gibberish. I decided that I ran out of words, used 'em all up during November.

Now I sit here without words, looking at my, now 41,000 words (I deleted all the crap I'd left in while I was trying to get to 50,000) written of a still half-formed story with so many inconsistencies and plot holes and I wonder, can I turn it into something actually worth reading?

My next steps involve actually going through what I've got and I think I actually have to use sticky notes or something to outline the plot (see, I'm very visual, if you hadn't noticed *glances around the website), and see what I've got.

I'm tempted to outline, just for my own sake, a couple of books from my favorite authors, just to see if I can figure out the story structure. That would be hard though because it's so easy to get sucked into the story that I'd forget what I was doing. ;)

So, I've removed the rubbish, need to re-plot, and then maybe write some more. I think I have a decent idea for a story and I'm interesting in seeing where I can take it.

Day 28 - Almost done, but not really!

Still ahead! :D

Today's total: 1972

Total: 47275

Left: 2725

Coming up with a favorite sentence is kind of hard tonight. I had the scene written. It was maybe about 1000ish words. And when I looked back at the beginning, I realized I was missing a huge opportunity. Kassia is running away from a fight gone bad and found a motel to hole up in for the night. My intro basically went like this: she found the hotel, got the key and then went inside. Once inside is where I found that first 1000 words of the night.

But the opportunity staring me in the face when I looked back to figure out how to make the scene longer and more interesting to the reader was when she arrived at the motel. I mean, surely I could come up with something interesting, but not necessarily life-threatening, to happen, right?!

NaNo Quickie! Day 18.. er 19

Ok - it's after midnight, so this should be short and sweet.

My night started off with:

1. Burnt pizza
2. Broken pot lid when I slammed the oven door after said burnt pizza
3. Tried 2nd pizza. Cooked it on preheat for longer than the time it was supposed to cook on bake. It was over done on the edges, under done in the middle. Ate it anyway.
4. Spilled pizza sauce on my sweater after taking a bite of pizza.
5. Decided 500 words made a good time for a break, so I played Rock Band 3 to get out of bad luck streak.
6. Much better mood. Wrote a lot.

I think I have a tendency to be visually distracted. Even a few times in conversation, I've had SQUIRREL!! moments. So, I've been testing some theories.

Surprisingly, in a way I guess, I can type better with my eyes closed. Or at least I can get the story down with my eyes closed. I'll fix the typos later. I got 600 words in 45 minutes at one point. Of course I can't keep my eyes closed that entire time, but it's better to close them for short bursts, get words down, give myself a few minutes of distraction and then close my eyes again. Worked so much better than the past few days where I sit and stare at the screen until I get pissed off because I have no words. :p

Today's total was 2090.

Favorite part:

“Kassia,” Maddox’s voice was right next to my ear. I froze, just wanting to hear him speak to me again. It was so soft, that when he spoke again, I almost couldn’t hear it over the rush of energy. “I lo—”

Pain shot through, replacing all of the pleasure I’d been feeling. I screamed out, and shot up - or tried to. Maddox held my shoulders down. “For the love of hell, Tehanier!!” And then it was all gone, pain and pleasure. “What did you do to me?”

Day 14 - almost halfway there!

I'm not really sure if this is a glass half full or half empty sort of thing.

I spent a lot of last week fighting a sinus cold that only now seems to be going away. Unfortunately, that means that I fell a little behind in my writing. I'm starting to catch up, but the catch up is super exhausting.

So far, I've learned that characters seem to have a mind of their own sometimes and come up with things that I didn't think of first (at least it feels that way), and sometimes the characters seem to echo my feelings and thoughts exactly. Especially when I'm kind of blundering. Take a bit of tonight's writing:

#1

Ace was laughing quietly after he placed his hand on the back window. “You have no idea, Kas. None at all.”

I actually had no idea what he was talking about.

#2

I held my swords nervously, palms sweating, hands shaking. I literally had no idea what I was going to do next.

You guessed it. I had no idea what I needed to do next for the fight about to take place. So, after slogging through the haze over the future of my character, I finally made it to my daily goal for today: 2000 words.

Here are my totals:

Total today: 2166

Total: 22342

Favorite sentence(s):

Then I realized what he thought he was going to do. “Oh, hell no! You put me down right now. You are not going to fly me around like Lois Lane.”

Maddox grinned at me. “Hold on,” he repeated and then pushed off the ground.

Day 9...

Ok. I know it's stupid and for this doesn't matter because all we're supposed to be doing is writing down the ideas, get it out there, get to 50,000 and worry about clean up later.

But I'm seriously feeling like an anxiety attack is hitting. Not because I don't think I can ultimately meet that goal, but because the scene I'm trying to write now is supposed to be epic.

Seriously epic. Epic with a capital E.

My Ambitious November

As I posted earlier, I've signed up to participate in NaNoWriMo this year. The goal is to write Draft 0 (meaning unedited/unrevised/gibberish) of a novel. This draft is supposed to be at least 50,000 words long by the end of November. But, according to published authors and publishers, actual printed novels are between 75,000-100,000 words. So, this won't be a real novel, but more of an exercise to get me writing and on some sort of schedule.

I decided to do this because, #1 - I'm crazy, and #2 - I wrote a 10,000 word short story a few years ago and my husband has periodically told me that I should do it again. The biggest difference between the short story I wrote (besides the number of words) is that it took me a year to write those words, though that time frame does include re-write, editing and formatting. But still, 10,000 words in a year compared to 50,000 words in a month is kind of crazy.

A week of planning and ceiling messes and surprises!

Last week was probably one of the busiest and funnest (yes, I said funnest) week I've had in a really long time. I was lucky to have my best friend visiting to keep me on my toes and moving towards what needs done. :)

Beginning
Airport and driving. Exhaustion hit both of us before we even got started! Nap time! But after that, it was video games and a bit of Masquerade Ball planning. Oh, and more games - yay for Lego Pirates of the Carribean!

Middle

We've been busy! Lots of last minute stuff needed done. Some of the things we worked on were cards, pens and a basket. Of course, this is involving cutters, sticky tape and feathers. Love crafting - and Anna has the best ideas!

That's it...

... I've gone a little off the deep end.

So, in another "brain's taken a mysterious leave of absence" moment, I have signed up for the National Novel Writing Month competition.

Yeah. The woman who can't find the time to write simple posts with friends has decided to try to slap together a 50,000 word "novel" in a month.

Seriously. What is wrong with me? *passes out*

Well, my husband is proud of me for doing it and thinks I can do this.

I still think I'm crazy.

So there you have it.

My sister's getting married!

Well, technically, she is married, but her ceremony and the fun party afterwards is this weekend.

My sister and I are ten years apart, with me being the oldest. But, really, it never feels like ten years when we're together. Usually, you hear about how the younger children look up to their older siblings, and while I can't speak for Jenny, it feels quite the opposite for me.

You and the Celebrity

About a month ago, my husband complimented me on a short piece of writing I did, comparing my style with one of our favorite authors, Jennifer Rardin. Of course, as any compliment would do, I was grinning because it was sweet and it's really cool to be compared to someone you admire.

Dreams of a spirit guide

Last night, I had one of the coolest dreams.

I was preparing for my Masquerade Ball out at the lake. There were other people around, but I don't remember who they were. Everyone was fuzzy.

I decided to take a break so I went to sit outside when I saw this beautiful wolf walking slowly. She was colored a soft gray that deepened toward the scruff of her neck and was almost charcoal around her forehead and eyes. Once I noticed her, she became the only thing in focus.

The wolf was a little distance off on the other side of a small stream. Her path took her behind a few of the people between us and when she reappeared, she was a woman. A wolf-pelt sat on her head and hung down her back with the same colorings. She had a charcoal colored stripe across her eyes. And she was beautiful.

Tonight's adventures

I recently decided to watch the last few seasons of Buffy: the Vampire Slayer in preparation of checking out the graphic novels that continue on after the series end. And while I'm watching, I've spent some time writing (yay!). And finally - the invitations. I have wording planned, but have to do the designing still. My idea is super fun and I can't wait to see the finished printed pieces. What if I can't actually mail them out because I like them too much‽‽‽‽ (and, yes, I just used a bunch of question-points).

Anyway... off to work on my stuff. ^_^

Random thoughts and musings

If there's one thing that's constant about me, it's that (for the most part) I like change. Sometimes, it takes me a few days to become comfortable with the idea if it wasn't mine to begin with, but I usually come around. :-)

One of the ways I like to add variety to my life is by updating my website (even if nobody really visits it). By update, I don't mean adding new content or stuff like that, but refreshing the look. And I've gone and done it again.

I thought my idea of writing about design in general, how I saw it shape things or influence people, was a great idea, but then I realized it was a little too confining. I wanted to share about my love of design, but I wanted to share about my life, too. It took an article I'd read about how life is design to realize how small the box I'd built was.

And so, I introduce Random Thoughts and Musings: a collection of whatever I feel like sharing. :-)

Richard Castle: Fictional Character or Real Person?

First off, if you don’t watch Castle, shame on you! But I’m not here to discuss the virtues of this show or how ruggedly handsome Nathan Fillion is.

I want to talk about what an absolutely wonderful I think ABC has done marketing this show. Three years ago, someone in their marketing department had the brilliant idea to start using social media to gain followers of the show (and boost ratings). Instead of the marketing department marketing the show and saying “Watch Our Show!”, they turned Richard Castle into a “real person” rather than just a TV character.

I might be in love...

I love Illustrator. It's probably my favorite design related program. Sure, Photoshop is great for photo clean up or manipulation (and I know that there are others out there who can do wonderful things with Photoshop, but not me...) and InDesign is perfect when laying out things like posters, business cards, or other printed materials. But Illustrator... You can create something small in Illustrator, but maybe when you need it, you need it larger. Maybe a lot larger.

And you can do it in Illustrator.

My brother, the photographer

My brother hasn't taken many photographs recently, but I want to take just a moment to show some of the really good ones he's taken of our mom's cat.  I might go through some more of his pictures I have somewhere and show them off later :)

 

Cooking is an art

At least that’s what they say.

I don’t usually cook… large or small meals. It's not really my thing. But there are a few meals and desserts that I love to cook and think turn out really well. At least that’s the feedback I get from my family and friends. :p

The dinner I’m making tonight is Tortellini and Three Pepper topping. Now, I can’t claim credit for this particular meal. I found it on allrecipies.com a few years ago, but I love cooking it and I absolutely love eating it! I’ll add the full recipe as I made it tonight at the bottom. :)

Sometimes everyone needs a peptalk

Designers, just like everyone else, get down. But, when that happens, we need to remind ourselves of a few key things.

As a designer, we will often feel like our decisions to do things a certain way or when giving our ideas and suggestions about a project are correct. This usually stems from either knowledge gained through study in the field of design or maybe even a bit of innate instinct and we can't find the words to express why we feel that way. Unfortunately, unless you are the head designer of your own company and have the final say in every project you work on, I don’t think it matters how much we study our field or grow in our knowledge, because we will always be working for someone, and that someone will likely think they know more or understand it better. And if that someone is paying us, whether a side project or a full-time job, we sometimes have to bite our tongue and go along with the idea that may sit funny in our stomach or make us cringe.

Holy crap!! I won!

On Tuesday evening (Feb. 8), sometime after 8 p.m., I received an email about the contest I entered in December. You know, this one.

I read the subject line: “City of Heroes Billboard Contest – Results” (No way!) and the first few words “I am pleased to inform you…” (Holy crap!!) I didn’t make it any further than that before I squealed with excitement and jumped out of my chair. My boyfriend was in the hall and saw my eyes filling with tears and thought I’d hurt myself. It took me a few minutes to get to the point where I could tell him that I was a winner in the contest. I didn’t even know at this point what I won, I was that freaking excited!

Kindness

kindness [ˈkaɪndnɪs]

n

1. the practice or quality of being kind
2. a kind, considerate, or helpful act

“Too often we underestimate the power of a touch, a smile, a kind word, a listening ear, an honest compliment, or the smallest act of caring, all of which have the potential to turn a life around.” ~Leo Buscaglia

If you want others to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy, practice compassion. ~Dalai Lama

Contest!!

This is very spur of the moment... but I entered a contest about a month ago for my favorite game, City of Heroes. It was to design a billboard related to the game somehow. I, of course, have no idea what other's entries were, but with some inspiration from some friends and family, I decided to enter it.

I'm not normally a big contest entry-person. I can't stand the not knowing or the anxiety of wondering if what you submitted is even any good, but I did it anyway. I wanted to do something that wasn't as hero-centric. Something that could show a bit of the mundane in this city of heroes, so I chose one of my characters whose secret identity is that of a weather forecaster.

Get what you deserve?

One of the things my parents taught me, though it took me a bit out of the teen years to actually figure it out, was that the things you want in life don’t come easy, you have to work for them. And I whole-heartedly agree.

But there comes a point where you sit and wonder. Why does it seem like sometimes, no matter how hard you try, how hard you work, you just can’t come out on top?

Intelligent Conversations

Recently, I’ve been craving intelligent conversations. Thought-provoking, insightful conversations.

Last weekend, I tried to have one with my daughter (who is 11, so probably not quite ready for those types of conversations) about why I really liked the Tron: Legacy soundtrack. She just kept asking me what my favorite part of the movie was or who was my favorite character. >.>

Calendar Project

Back in August 2010, one of my class assignments was to design a calendar. We only had to pick two months and do a cover if we felt it would be good for the project.

I chose Steampunk as my theme. Found some really great pictures to use that, with only a little touch-up, fit perfectly into the genre. Adding in some typography that was reminiscent of old Victorian styles, and of course the calendar, and the project was complete. Though only for the homework. ;)

First blogginess of the day…

So, this is all new to me, and as you can see, Gavin doesn't much care.

He's not exactly laying in this position right now, it's more of an "across the arms" type pose. Which is his way of saying "GO TO BED!" And so, having changed up the background colors to what I want and figuring out my logo, I am calling it a night. :)