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Week Review Finally Sees Rain
Feb. 8th, 2014 08:56 amSo yes, it looks like I'm going to be doing a weekly review here on the good ol' LJ, so I should probably mix up the subject lines now and again, shouldn't I? :)
February started off much better than January's finish. After a great start last month only to be derailed halfway through due to work issues, I figured it was a good a time as any to climb back on the horse and continue where I left off. I was able to find some spare minutes during the day where I can pick up my journal notebook to write what's on my mind. The 750 is working out well too--more on that in a moment--and though I'm still slogging through Chapter 2 of The Process of Belief, it is getting there.
We're also FINALLY getting rain here in these parts! So while that's a really good thing for California (we're in drought status at the moment), it's doing a number on my sinuses, and it seems to also be sending ants into various parts of our apartment. Neither are a high-level concern, more of an irritation and a fixable one at that. Unfortunately it's also turning us into hermits who don't want to venture outside lest we melt...that's our northern California winter, I guess.
So! What's been going on with the writing? An interesting and unexpected new idea came to me in the form of a random picture I saw on Facebook. It was of a woman who looked like a typical townie from the Pioneer Valley (that's midwestern Massachusetts following the Connecticut River, for those of you unfamiliar with that term). She reminded me of some of the women I used to work with at Yankee, and started thinking about what her untold story might be. For my daily 750 Words I started riffing on her backstory--who was she, really? She was a waitress at a restaurant and was seeing a truck driver, for starters, but there's MUCH more to her than people expect. She has a business degree and owns half of the restaurant, is a strong musician that makes extra money writing and selling songs, and is totally fine with not being a be-suited business careerist. She's someone who does her own thing, regardless of others' expectations. But she's still hiding something--she and her two older siblings share a secret she's been hinting at but won't reveal. I haven't quite decided what that secret might be yet, but it'll be the catalyst for whatever story comes out of this. I'm as curious as you are, believe me.
In other writing news...as said, slogging through Chapter 2 of The Process of Belief. My worries were well-founded here: plotwise everything seems to be working okay...but the prose is absolute CRAP. Good lord, what was I thinking here? I think my downfall on that book was that I was focusing too much on achieving word count and getting the project done in a year, that the prose suffered from weak word choice and too much stage direction. I've been tidying up and revising where necessary, but like the first book, I'm pretty sure I'll need to do a bit more tightening on another go-round. Ah well, the price of being a writer...
Last weekend I also FINALLY updated the next-to-last Blogging the Beatles entry in the series, so that gives me one more to go. I'm hoping I can get it done this weekend, and of course will update everyone once it's finally up.
OH! And I wrote a guest music blog post for one of my online friends--you can find it here. Just a short and fun post about bass playing. :)
Other than that, it's been a busy but productive week with other personal and entertaining things going on, so I'm happy about that. Onward and upward!
February started off much better than January's finish. After a great start last month only to be derailed halfway through due to work issues, I figured it was a good a time as any to climb back on the horse and continue where I left off. I was able to find some spare minutes during the day where I can pick up my journal notebook to write what's on my mind. The 750 is working out well too--more on that in a moment--and though I'm still slogging through Chapter 2 of The Process of Belief, it is getting there.
We're also FINALLY getting rain here in these parts! So while that's a really good thing for California (we're in drought status at the moment), it's doing a number on my sinuses, and it seems to also be sending ants into various parts of our apartment. Neither are a high-level concern, more of an irritation and a fixable one at that. Unfortunately it's also turning us into hermits who don't want to venture outside lest we melt...that's our northern California winter, I guess.
So! What's been going on with the writing? An interesting and unexpected new idea came to me in the form of a random picture I saw on Facebook. It was of a woman who looked like a typical townie from the Pioneer Valley (that's midwestern Massachusetts following the Connecticut River, for those of you unfamiliar with that term). She reminded me of some of the women I used to work with at Yankee, and started thinking about what her untold story might be. For my daily 750 Words I started riffing on her backstory--who was she, really? She was a waitress at a restaurant and was seeing a truck driver, for starters, but there's MUCH more to her than people expect. She has a business degree and owns half of the restaurant, is a strong musician that makes extra money writing and selling songs, and is totally fine with not being a be-suited business careerist. She's someone who does her own thing, regardless of others' expectations. But she's still hiding something--she and her two older siblings share a secret she's been hinting at but won't reveal. I haven't quite decided what that secret might be yet, but it'll be the catalyst for whatever story comes out of this. I'm as curious as you are, believe me.
In other writing news...as said, slogging through Chapter 2 of The Process of Belief. My worries were well-founded here: plotwise everything seems to be working okay...but the prose is absolute CRAP. Good lord, what was I thinking here? I think my downfall on that book was that I was focusing too much on achieving word count and getting the project done in a year, that the prose suffered from weak word choice and too much stage direction. I've been tidying up and revising where necessary, but like the first book, I'm pretty sure I'll need to do a bit more tightening on another go-round. Ah well, the price of being a writer...
Last weekend I also FINALLY updated the next-to-last Blogging the Beatles entry in the series, so that gives me one more to go. I'm hoping I can get it done this weekend, and of course will update everyone once it's finally up.
OH! And I wrote a guest music blog post for one of my online friends--you can find it here. Just a short and fun post about bass playing. :)
Other than that, it's been a busy but productive week with other personal and entertaining things going on, so I'm happy about that. Onward and upward!
