Reluctant Blogcation

I hadn't intended to take time off from all you fun folks, but working ten hour days, including weekends, has slaughtered my free time like a chainsaw dual in a defunct summercamp filled with half-naked, beer-drinking teens.

While I love paying my bills, I miss my writing time and wandering around on the internet. My back would prefer me sitting on the couch rather than running up and ladders and lifting heavy things. The rest of me would like that too.

I hope to be back soon!

Fill in the blank fun

I'd love to say that writing is going along as wonderfully as previously reported, but I hit a wall a week ago and am back in idea percolation mode. This mad lib, supplied by the ever lovely and talented Elena Solodow conveys my issues pretty darn well. But no, really, my MC doesn't die. Honest.

If you'd like to participate in the mad lib fun head over to her blog right now. Maybe not right now, but in a few minutes.

Dear Main Character,

Just writing to tell you how much I appreciate what you do. I know it was tough getting past that total chapter rewrite #402 last week, but you made it through.

(Just to let you know, there's another one at the climax of the novel. Hope that's all right.)

I know you said you’re really sick of me rewriting your scenes, especially when I replace the ones where you had a good time with Ms. MC and I appreciate your feedback. It's always good to hear from your characters, but I really feel that you’re stronger with these new scenes that are rife with conflict and showcase your strengths, okay?

This novel is about you defying ‘the man’ and getting the girl, plain and simple. If you feel it's not right for you, we can part ways now. I know there's a couple secondary characters who would love a promotion.

So for tomorrow's writing session, let's focus on getting past this chaos of plotpoints I’ve written us into and figure a way to bring them all together to a resounding climax. I really love the way you have an attitude with the bad guys, but make sure you don’t start that with me this time, otherwise you might get killed off a little earlier than expected.

(Oh, no. You don't die in this book. Don't worry.)

(Really, would I lie to you?)

Anyway, MC, thanks again. Always know I'm here for you, except when I have my "sudden inspirations".

Yours always,
Jean

Six Sentence Sunday: Not Another Bard's Tale 5

In this last excerpt from Not Another Bard's Tale, Ed, the Evil Overlord in disguise, has infiltrated the motley band of heros as they travel to his keep in the hopes of defeating him. Harold, the bard, has just finished a rather disparaging song about evil overlords getting killed by heros which Ed took a bit of offense to.

Harold said, "Usually the ones not loved by their mommies, some deep emotional childhood scar that twists them, bad grades in school and hanging out with the wrong crowd, that sort of thing.”

Ed’s mouth hung open and when he finally gathered the wherewithal to close it, he sputtered, “That’s not how it is at all, I’ll have you know.”

Bruce gave him an odd look. “You some sort of expert on evil overlords, Ed?”

Ed gritted his teeth and continued on his way. “Just seems like with a man so evil as Darkious Maximus, Evil Overlord Extraordinaire and Master of the Nine Darknesses, would be carved of deeper stuff than your typical evil overlord material.”

If you've enjoyed Not Another Bard's Tale, you might also enjoy my short story, The Employer, which is available in the The First Line.

Check out other fabulous SSS excerpts here.

My weekend back to nature adventure

Is it just me or does that look like a mob of Ents?

Being overwhelmed with work as I have been lately, I needed a little break from home, laundry, all those little things you see around the house that need doing when you have a spare moment and even my laptop. Actually, everyone needed a break from their computers. So, this weekend we set off on our first family camping experience.

I grew up camping. It's what we did two or sometimes three weeks out of the summer. We landed somewhere new, wandered off, made friends, stood barefoot in snake infested swamps to catch turtles, went swimming, got rained on and didn't care, built rambing sand castles for hours, and slept like the dead. Somewhere in my later teen years the camping bug was lost and road trip vacations took over.

When I had kids, we started off with the road trips. Fun getaways, but expensive. I was looking for a change, and so this year, Santa brought us camping gear. Yay Santa! I spent most of my free time last week digging through memories of what supplies we had with us when I was a kid and more than a few hours running from store to store to find the best prices on those items. Fully outfitted (I hoped), we set off for a one night dry run (close to home and a store) at our property.

We set up the tent in no time. This huge, 3 room tent gave everyone the privacy they wanted and offered plenty of room to store our stuff inside. It might not look very big here, but its 10' x 18'. That's a tent!

I did a quick check of my flower garden (filled with a the overflow from home) and found it flourishing. The Japanese iris are four feet tall!

The creek has become quite overgrown, but we did get to wake to frogs croaking, ducks quacking and what sounded like an entire aviary of birds singing. A wonderful sound to tell about later, but not so appreciated at 6am.

Breakfast over the fire. Yum!

When we weren't getting eaten alive by the rabid mosquitos, we explored. The bark had fallen off this tree to reveal generations of insect artwork.

Sadly, the trip had some work involved. The grass hadn't been mowed since last fall (my husband's job) and our stick pile had grown into a mountain thanks to multiple wind storms last year. My task was to make a dent in this:

Which I did, but only a small dent. That mountain is huge. The big logs were saved for future camping trips, but the sticks went into the fire. I might have been away from my laptop, but you know what my mind was doing while my body was chucking wood into the fire? Working through upcoming scenes. Even without my laptop, it seems I can't go a day without writing in some form or another.

The kids had fun and we accomplished a good amount of work. We had everything we needed except a bug bomb for all the mosquitos. I'll call the trip a sucess and am ready to head out for a longer trip next time. But, after all that packing, setting up, hauling sticks, breaking camp, and unpacking, I'm going to do this:

Need a warm up to start your writing day?

There's no right or wrong really and you have one word and a minute to type away. Try oneword.com and let the creativity flow.

My only wish (Who is so boring that they truly only have one wish? Really? Come on.) is that it would cut off after one minute. Like NaNo word wars, I get so busy typing that I don't notice the little message at the bottom of the screen telling me that time is up. I need constant prodding like write or die so that I pay attention. However, I do like the word prompt and the idea of the quick warm up. Stopping to read the other entries on the same word prompt just opens up a whole new distraction -- which my writing day really doesn't need. At all. No sir.

It is a neat idea though and did spark some interesting thoughts. Just don't come back and complain that I offered a new outlet for procrastination. Ignore the other responses and be productive!