Book Rec Monday

So, whoever said learning something new was hard knew what they were talking about (What you talking about, Willis?)

They say it takes 10,000 hours of study and practice to become a master. And I believe it. I've now spent a week in my new "fiction craft" school and have learned so much, but know I have a ton more to learn. I realized I needed to read more widely in my chosen genre (YA) and so headed to B&N with my birthday gift card to do some damage. But the YA aisle bewildered me. What was good? I knew a lot of the names, but not enough.

That's where Nancy Pearl, former Seattle librarian, saved the day. Her books,

Book Lust



More Book Lust



and Book Crush



are the most inspiring, interesting, intriguing, and helpful books for die-hard book buyers and readers today. I didn't have my copy of Book Crush with me, but quickly found a copy at B&N and used it to traverse my way through the YA aisle. It worked! I came home with a bag full of the type of YA I'm writing (the best of the best) and a list of books to find online that my local brick and mortar B&N didn't carry.

It you're frustrated by trips to the bookstore and want some great recs to read, check out Pearl's recommendations.

So this week, I'm studying craft and studying my chosen genre. I am definitely on the right track!

Keep moving forward!

Friday Fiver.

1. Interstate 5 northbound in Seattle will be reduced to one lane effective today through August 29. It is recommended that you avoid I-5 north before Tacoma as the traffic jam will be extreme (if drivers don't get off the freeway during this time). You've been duly warned.

2. We're waiting on a job opp in Boise, and looking at job opps in Oregon as well (Beaverton). Thus the house sell prep continues this weekend and next week (Todd has vacation for 10 days). We may not know anything for a few months yet. We're cutting it close!

3. Job is becoming much more interactive with the London colleagues (I love this!). The Department of Corrections (as we call ourselves in production) is a great group of people. I'm honored to be part of the team.

4. Writing is full steam ahead. Lots of thinking and writing work done this week and more to go. Working on a creating a writing life, which means putting up strict boundaries around my writing and what I'm interested in.

5. Thinking about our next house: do we want town or country? Must think more on that.

Resistance Again

Resistance has reared its ugly head.

Today I name "Anti-Resistance" Thursday. It will be a weekly item.
So even if you find this blog only once a week, try to get here on Thursday, okay?
From War of Art by Steven Pressfield

Resistance Is Infallible

Like a magnetized needle floating on a surface of oil, Resistance will unfailingly point to true North--meaning that calling or action it most wants to stop us from doing.
We can use this. We can use it as a compass. We can navigate by Resistance, letting it guide us to that calling or action we must follow before all others.
Rule of thumb: The more important a call or action is to our soul's evolution, the more Resistance we will feel toward pursuing it.

Keep moving forward. Face your resistance head on.

Lower Your Threshold

I'm very tough on myself. I have extremely high expectations of what I can accomplish in a week's time, even in a day's time. Last night, I realized that I need to lower my threshold and give myself some breathing time. When I write out a task list for my writing or studying, I need to take it down a notch, usually by a third, or sometimes a half. There is just no excuse for me to try and keep up with the fastest producers in literature. Sure Anthony Trollope could write a legible 250 words in 15 minutes, but that may not work for me right now.

I'm learning to slow down and focus on the scene at hand in my novel. To really discover the one event in each scene that gives the writing a pulse, a rhythm, that basically makes it come to life.

I realized this week that my writing is a lot of events tumbling around together, but there is no coherent event that gives it a pulse.

Thus, I've got to slow it down, get the pulse, and move on from there.

Must get to the day job. Lots going on this week.

Keep moving forward.

The Writing Life

All I did was glance out the window yesterday afternoon and saw two people talking on the sidewalk. It prompted an entire short story!

That's the kind of inspiration Sandra Scofield's nifty little tome, The Scene Book, has provided to me. I'm realizing that the building blocks of good writing are one part inspiration, two parts craft. After receiving such helpful feedback from my critique group, I have decided my craft is sorely lacking. Scofield pushes craft in her book, and it's not easy by any means. However, it is inspiring and I am determined to push myself to become better.

And who knows, some short stories may just be submitted to publishers first!

Keeping moving forward.

Cancel Texas

Yep, we are not moving to Texas. I'm so relieved you cannot even begin to know. I'm bummed for hubby, but so so so so so happy that I don't have to move there. No offense to Texans, but I just don't like your state. Been there, visited, and that's enough for me. I was born and raised in the Pacific Northwest, where it's green and rainy, and the ocean is just over there and yes we get slugs and lots of weeds, but this is home. (I know many Texans can't stand the PNW; so we're even now.)

Now we have no idea where we may have to move. But the relief is palpable even now as I think about it and I am happy to go to Portland or Colorado or somewhere farther north in Washington. No worries now.

Buh-bye, Texas. Hasta la vista, Dallas.

Had a great weekend away. I turned another year older while sitting on the beach soaking up the rays. Wonderful! I also ate too much incredible food and laughed and talked and laughed some more. My baby niece is so adorable and she likes to laugh too. So we got along splendidly.

In freelance news: Writing like a fiend. Studying fiction craft and writing short stories constantly in between reading Chekhov's short story collection (it is the abridged volume, yes). Also have a stack of movies to watch in order to "novelize" scenes: a great craft builder. Getting ready to dive into Steven Pressfield's novels on Greece and Rome (have them on hold at the library). Have a few job offers to respond to and a lot of style guide work for my job, plus copyediting work headed to me this week as well. Lots to do and ready to go!

Still learning about resistance and how to say "no" when under too much pressure. This is vital to learn. If you haven't read Steven Pressfield's War of Art, please get it and read it. An amazing (very short) read full of incredible truth.

Onward forward.

Go Back To the Book

I confess, I've been chased around this week by the big R word: resistance. (If you've read any of the blog in the past six months, you'll know that I'm a rabid fan of Steven Pressfield's War of Art, which deals with the resistance you feel when aspiring to higher callings, i.e., writing or artistic endeavors.)

So guess what has been carried around with me all week long? Yep, Pressfield has been regular company in those darkest of moments. I know why I'm letting resistance chase me; it's a big week for hubby and me. We will find out how the next 15 months will shake out; one way or the other.

So, I tend to bury my head into style guide issues and freelance work and after dinner, I lapse into fiction land. It may be "sticking my head in the sand," but it sure works. I'm staying sane and Pressfield reminds me daily that this resistance thing can be conquered, if you truly desire to break through.

And I do.

Up to 14k on the fiction and we're headed out tomorrow for the weekend, but I will still be writing. Have no fear.

And remember, resistance is your true north. Whatever you're getting the most flack for, that is probably what you're supposed to be doing.

Keep moving forward.

And The Curtain Falls On July

Can you believe it?

Not me. I'm still blissfully in denial. I have another month of summer before August gets here. Wake me up when it's September, okay?

On a more serious note, I wrote 2,000 more words on my novel last night. So we're at 12,000 words (yes, I keep going backward, because I'm tossing out sections along the way). No more tossing sections from here on though. Need to just finish a draft and then we can edit.

Lots of style guide work to do today on the job and then some freelance stuff that I need to finish before I head out Thursday/Friday.

I can't wait!

Have a great Tuesday!

Monday Again

Great weekend! Hope everyone had a great one as well. I've been so MIA lately on this blog. I will try and interact better in August.

First thing: short week due to vacation; only Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday posts.

Then, it's Shark Week on the Discovery Channel; don't forget.

As for me, we still are in limbo on the move/job for hubby sitch. I am hanging in there and feel great after we accomplished so much this weekend in the yard and house. Pulled out a dead tree and cleared out some dead plants (our winter killed off a lot of our growth) and we made the rounds at the nurseries to choose new ones, plus we decided on our plan to redo the side yard. Should work! If we sell, we'll be ready; plus if we don't sell, it will look great! I decluttered more too. A big help for a home sale is decluttering. Even though we might be completely moved out by the time we put this house on the market.

Writing is going great. This week is another 10k week on the novel WIP. I may not have time for crits, so still waiting on that until later today. Started reading a collection of Anton Chekhov's short stories. Fabulous. You haven't lived until you've read some of those.

Also found a great link to some great short stories out there:

Short Story Vault

Onward forward!

Friday Fiver.

1. Sunshine is out today. Gorgeous. This is the PNW at its best.

2. We are waiting to hear on several job opps for hubby. I am beyond worrying; it's more like an out-of-body experience now. Whatever happens will just happen.

3. Lots of job-job work to do. Love it. Lots of freelance work too. I'm not sure how that happened. Luckily, it's all my fav clients and the best projects I could hope for. Makes summer evenings delightful.

4. Victoria Beckham is my new celebrity crush. "That's so major" is my new saying, and I hope I don't bug my British coworkers too much by saying it.

5. Yard work weekend. My Mom gave me some great tips on making it quick and easy. I'm so stoked (word of the day, sorry).

Hope your Friday is going well. Enjoy the weekend!

Onward forward.

Upgrading Firefox.

If you haven't taken time to download Mozilla Firefox, you are missing out. And if you haven't looked at the add-ons available for Firefox, get over there NOW.

Mozilla Firefox

Del.icio.us
Twitter
FoxyTunes

Seriously, people, it will change your life.

ETA: Just got an email from a headhunter. Nordstrom needs a full-time contract fill-in copyeditor to cover a maternity leave in Seattle. Anyone interested? It's a great position.

In Praise of Editors.

Going along with this Salon piece, I have a few words to add.

I am gratified by the editing I've received this week by several people. First up, my editor for these two articles I just turned in. I felt buoyed, not sunk; inspired, not chastised. I have a few rewrite issues to deal with but what a great experience! Kamiya, the author of the Salon piece, is right when he says,

"Good editors work with and not against a writer. They calibrate how aggressively they edit according to how good the writer is, how good the piece is, the type of piece it is, the kind of relationship they have with the writer, how tight the deadline is, and what mood they're in. But an editor's primary responsibility is not to the writer but to the reader. He or she must be ruthlessly dedicated to making the piece stronger. Since this is ultimately a subjective judgment, and quite a tricky one, a good editor needs to be as self-confident as a writer."

And the second set of editors is my critique group (I know, they don't think of themselves as editors, just as crit buddies, but they were so helpful; I'm not sure they really know how much) who took the first 2000 words of my fledgling novel and went through it line by line.

Seriously, I think heaven opened up and I saw the light. Not that I know exactly how to fix it, but I know that it's fixable and that's half the battle.

So, cheers to editors, crit groups, and to editors again.

It is the most fun to be edited when you are in fact an editor, I think. I've spent too many years editing everyone else without even knowing how good it feels and how cathartic it can be.

Try it! Send your work out there. It's so worth it!

Onward, forward!

Theme statements

Jack Hart's book, Writer's Coach, had a great tip on approaching writing assignments.

Write a theme statement.

Hart says,

"I always start every piece of writing I do by thinking about what is the core thing that I really want to say. And the first thing that I always write is theme -- the word theme, t-h-e-m-e, colon -- and then try to come up with a theme statement that is a simple subject-predicate-object sentence that is my core idea."

Great idea, right?

It works! Try it.

Onward, forward.

Monday Fiver.

1. Yes, I read HP7. Took me less than 7 hours on Saturday and it was good. Very good. No more info in case readers have not finished (like my hubby and friend, J).

2. We started packing and cleaning in preparation to sell. Heard from our realtor on Saturday and all that matters now is Todd's interviews. Send him good vibes, please.

3. Still raining up here. Makes it easier to weed, but harder to clean pine needles from our back yard. This will be fun.

4. Two articles are done and going in today. 2000-word section of WIP has been posted to crit group (finally, I am so slow doing this; forgive me crit group friends)

5. Packing up my office first; something slightly freeing about making my focus solely fiction for the next 15 months. I will sell a novel in 2008 with my writing goal buddy, Jen. We will! She's way ahead of me though, so I am striving to catch up!

My entire family is now home safe from Afghanistan and Iraq and no one else will be going over. You have no idea the relief it is to post this. Prayers for those who are still serving. We love and miss you.

Onward, forward.

Harry Potter Eve.

No Friday Fiver today, we'll do that Monday in honor of this momentous occasion. It's not everyday the final installment of HP comes out.

Yes, I'm getting caught up in the HP frenzy. I'm so sorry. I read Michiko Kukatani's review featured in yesterday's Publisher's Lunch Daily and can't wait to get my hands on that book.

In the meantime, I loaded up on books by the historian Thomas Cahill from my friendly local library, saving 80 bucks, which is already in savings. (I read that if you save 80 bucks by not buying books, add 20 bucks to it and save that each month for 40 years you will have half a million dollars?) Yes, I'm strange, get used to it. Not that I'm a money freak, but I already pay taxes for the library here and it seems silly to continue buying every book. That said, I have already decided that a few of these books should probably be on my bookshelf permanently, but it can wait until we're settled in another house elsewhere (yes, we are still thinking of moving).

So yesterday afternoon after work, I was working on my two articles that are due Monday and reading Jack Hart's book on writing and was making some serious progress, when it struck me.

I'm a writer.

Not just in spirit only or because I have a writing assignment. These assignments are the first of many and that officially makes me a writer.

It was a great feeling. And I have to say it sure helps when editing for my job. I have such empathy for the authors of these monographs that we're working on. I don't want to hurt their words, which has always been the case, I so want to make them better.

My job and freelance work dovetail beautifully. It's a good thing.

Happy Friday! Long live the Order of the Phoenix.

Fedex Woes.

Spent the morning chasing a Fedex package around. Not happy with Kinko's employees who so casually let me do so.

All is well now.

Lots of writing to do today. Working on an article and hoping to get through a phone interview without draining my recorder batteries again.

Met good friends, S and G, who are visiting Seattle from Tampa, last night for a lovely dinner at Cafe Champagne off Alaskan Way. Thank goodness S is a native French speaker so she could translate the menu for us. Delicious food all-around, right up to the chocolate-hazelnut mousse with fresh strawberries for dessert. I want to go back soon!

Weather is improving; not raining today at least. (Good for S who is wandering around the arboretum and conservatory outdoors today; wish I could join you, S! Enjoy!)

I love summer in Seattle. Nippy enough for a light sweater and city jeans, but warm enough that the rain feels so good. :)

Keep moving forward.

Jack Hart Is A Genius

Reading the first of my library books (see library widget post of last week) that I picked up without ever talking to a human! King County is very automated.

Jack Hart, editor at the Oregonian in Portland, Oregon wrote A Writer's Coach, which is a fantastic book.

Some great tips on writing and writer's block and beginning a writing project (any writing project, for that matter).

I am really enjoying it and delighted that once I'm done with it I don't have to find a place for it on my overcrowded bookshelves!

It's still raining here. I'm in today finishing a glossary, starting a new project, and writing a first draft on an article that's due Monday.

Onward!

Rain, Rain Go Away

What is it with July in the PNW? Yes, folks, it rains year-round in Seattle. It's very gray and overcast out there today; almost chilly.

A great day to polish off a few projects and make some progress on my to-do list.

In writing news: I'm feeling a need to just keep writing and deal with it later. Must be my mood. I did find top-notch editorial coaches last night, so now to get ready for them. Need to just write today and let it be.

My mood matches the weather. I am off to rectify that right now.

Keep moving forward.

Still Flying

Spent the weekend with family and it was great fun. Picking blueberries at Roman's with baby niece, bbq with family, relaxed meandering walk in the evening cool, then church out under the oak trees at my folks' church (Calvary Chapel Corvallis). Lunch at the Mexican joint and then everyone tore off to their own separate agendas: naps, paperwork, driving north on 1-5 back home.

But the biggest development is my successful meeting late Friday afternoon with my new fiction writing buddy. I came away so inspired I missed my exit on 167 south and had to double back. We are planning to sell our novels in 2008 together. I have to catch up quite a bit with Jen, but it can be done. I have decided which manuscript I'm focusing on and now will find a fiction coach to help me rework my story. This will keep me on track and focused and I'm so excited!

It is the most incredible experience to meet a fellow fiction writer to bounce ideas and goals off of. Writing is such a solitary experience that I had long despaired of finding such a person locally. Well, local or not, Jen has inspired me more than I can even write on this blog.

You know what I'll be doing in my free-time hours!

Must dash to finish the work so I can write!

Friday Fiver.

1. Still thinking about Harry Potter (saw the movie on opening night) and surmising how book 7 will turn out. It's so much fun!

2. Wiped out by last night at 7 pm. Too many early morning/late night combos and a lot of being put on the spot with work. I feel great today.

3. We're headed to see the baby niece tonight. Can't wait. She's so cute.

4. Major query team rally this weekend (I will be sending out a lot of queries and LOIs today/Monday). Time to step it up.

5. Big project just about outta here. Majority of it is done, just the glossary left, and a missing appendix file. The next one is here now and due shortly, so here we go.

Have a great weekend! Happy writing!