Slush in Laptop-land

Process is a strange thing.  How we get things done…

Sunlight (Photo credit: zenera)

Do you wake up in the morning and pour your coffee before you can even think of opening your eyes?  Or are you one who needs to see the sun shine in your window at noon to know that it’s time to get moving on your day?

I’ve been slave to caffeine and the solar-powered alarm at various times in my life.  I’ve even had runs of being able to wake up in the dark of wintry pre-dawn and be able to just get about my day without any prodding from beyond.

I’ve never been one for consistency in my day-to-day schedule or habits, unless one wishes to call my inconsistency my habit.

For writing, however,  I am as close to being trapped in the process as any addict ever there was.  After years of playing tag, of cajoling the words on the page, throwing away more than 90% of what I did manage to get down, I discovered that one thing made it easier.  My process…

For me, everything starts with a notebook.  It must be spiral bound; I’ve never found myself able to compose in a so-called “Composition Notebook“.

It involves black ink pens.  My current favorites are Zebra brand 301(A and F) ball points.  I’ve had horrid luck with gel pens, and almost always end up tossing them out barely used.  A pity, because I love the colors.

The next part of the process moves my desktop computer where I will type in and expound on pretty much everything I wrote by hand.  It’s a matter of keyboard-love here.  The click of the keys, the shape and curve of them…  even the non-ergonomic height at which it sits upon my old-fashioned desk all work together to make things feel right for creating that perfect Draft1.5.

Next thing I have to do is give our laser printer a workout.  I can edit some on screen, but for the serious hacking and slashing involved in getting my WiPs in any sense of order, I need to hold papers in my hand and not be lured into any viable distractions such as solitaire or Facebook…  or pictures from one of the Safe For Work Porn reddits.

Then, after much defacing of pages and many scrawled epitaphs later, I head off with my laptop to type in the changes (the exception here is if I have a lot of typing to do, as in new scenes or chapters, in which case I write those in another spiral notebook and type them in on my Desktop PC).  I love my laptop, but I hate most any touch pad “mouse”, and the keyboard layout is, well, cramped.  But its flaws actually allow me more time to focus on the changes I am making…

My laptop isn’t the end of the process–usually it’s just the beginning.  The average cycle usually follows this pattern: Steps 1, 2, 3, 4, 3, 4, 3, 1, 2, 1, 3, 4, 3, 4, and so on.

It works, for the most part.

Which, leads me to where I am in my ROW80 progress:

Things are actually going quite well.  I’ve swum in my slush for a bit lately, trying to recover a sense of direction.  And in doing so, I’ve found myself able to focus more and more of my attention on Release.

I’ve finished reading another book for my Goodreads Challenge.  I’m glad I read the book, although I’m not delighted that dreams about the characters helped keep me up last night as my brain tried to “fan fiction” a happier ending fr the characters.  I guess I’m a sucker for the “Happily Ever After”.

Strange that, since one of the things I’ve been working on carefully is “killing my darlings” in my editing periods.  I know I probably have a long way to go, but I am working it.  Tightening up my writing would be a good thing.

Anyway, I think I’ve made excellent progress since my last check-in.  I could have written more new writing, but then I always could have.  Life intervened, and I still got plenty done.

It was a good week.

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Check out other ROW80 people here: at the linky

I must have blinked…

2012 is gone; I knew this was coming, but…  I must have blinked.  It’s already almost a week into 2013.

I must have blinked.

No Weeping Angels for me

Well, no Weeping Angels for me–I prefer the idea of approaching this new year with new challenges and a new perspective… and more dancing.  Even my lonely assassin is looking on with joy.

New years bring about one other thing–resolutions.  Usually there is an assessment of the “successes and failures” of the previous year to compare to and lots of “I intend to do better at…  X,Y, and Z” or “This is the year that I will do it”… whatever it is.

I think I’ll pass.  It’s not about success or failure anymore.  It’s about focus and direction, and it’s also about not apologizing for my humanity or feeling guilty about things I cannot change.

So…  I have no resolutions.  I simply intend to keep living my life as before, doing as best I can from moment to moment.

This isn’t to say I don’t have goals and plans  for the year.   I do.  Not just for today, not just for this year even.  I have my goals, my hopes and dreams that I intend to work on to make into realities (at least for now, while they still draw me with the same intensity and power they do at the present).

So here is how I intend to achieve my goals:

• I intend to keep writing and working on my stories, polishing them, adding to them, deleting from them, tweaking them…
• New writing I intend to be on the average of 1500 words a week (for the moment).  It’s a modest goal that I intend to build as I regain use of my left hand.
• Stair walking and lots of flexibility exercises…  I miss really hiking and seeing mountains and waterfalls the way I used to before I became a mom.   And I want to share the joy I found in those moments with my Boodle…
• The ROW80 challenge ROWnd 1 (writing goals) and the 2013 Goodreads Challenge (reading goals)

That’s it.  Hope to share the journey with you, and when this time comes around next year, we’ll have had a super time.

Did You Ever… ROW80?

Almost two months ago I posted the first of what was supposed to be three posts for the Versatile Blogger Award I’d been given by the darling Natasha Guadalupe (who could not join us this ROWnd, but says she’d love to get some more writing in)…..

That first post went something like this:

Did you ever feel that the Universe was reading your mind?

It’s been one of those days–one of those glorious weeks actually when every thing I do or see somehow has a deeper connection to the mental stew I’ve been brewing.  Right now the dish I’m trying to serve up is a bit odd to say the least.  The flavor certainly isn’t right, odd textures, and a lot of it is just water and some bouillon cubes.  Yes, I should have made stock, but I was in a hurry to start some things cooking.  People wanted to eat, and I felt like a truck had dragged me down the Thruway behind it.

But the stuff I saw along the way….  Wow!

It seems almost comical to read those words now.  Not that things are any harder or more challenging or that I seen newer and brighter things that put my naivete of that post to shame….  I mean, in a sense, they are, they keep getting that way, and I have…but I have come to understand that is part of the beauty and magic that comes for being involved with challenges like the ROW80 and the A-to-Z blogging challenge (though yet again I did not join in the fun choosing instead the once a year Story A Day challenge to fill my May play book).  It is also why groups the WANAs and even the classic discussion lists of SFF.net and Usenet have built the followings they have.

Because there connection is magic.  Connection is love and beauty.

It’s not hard to figure out how one of the most powerful human abilities became nearly synonymous with that universal act of sex and reproduction.  There is a kind of magic there, of making something new, of giving life and new voice existence, and for many lucky species on this planet….connection.  Euphoria, empowerment (along with some fear and hurt, yes), passion, intensity and love…  The creative act is an act of connection, be it with a higher power or with one’s own true self.

Just imagine what can happen when that act of connection is shared among so many many….

Did you ever ROW80?  I have.  MMmm….