Friday, May 28, 2010

Friday Fun Words

Yvie's back babies!

That's right, I've returned from my absence to once again give you definitions to new words to add to your lexicon.

One of the best things about summer is the hose gets taken out.
The hose is awesome purely because it spits out water, which I then get to bite. But the hose cheats because no matter how much I bite that water, it just keeps coming.



Tula has recently decided that she likes to bite the water too. She's also started playing in her swimming pool which is just ridiculous. Who wants water on them?

Crazy people and crazy dogs. That's who.


Onto the words!

Unwin - when you lose after you've already won. Wrap your minds around that!

Crant - a crabby ant. Don't give them weapons. Ants, especially crabby ones, would destroy you if given the chance


worst. tattoo. ever.



Mykrull - my copy of Krull.



Oddcu - a strange coup

Sillyi - when "I" decide to be "silly"



Lessins - lessons in sinning.



Have a nice long weekend for those of you in the states and who don't have to work!

Thursday, May 27, 2010

In Which I Provide An Update

I'm going to try and post more WIP updates to try and keep me more accountable. Which is one of the many things I love about blogging, the accountability. It's harder to call yourself a writer and have nothing to show for it if you have blogging buddies.

Or at least that's what I tell myself.

So I'm still working on first line edits, just trying to clean things up before I work an any more re-writes or adding in themes etc.

I've gone through about 50 pages, though to be fair I've done about two sets of line edits on chapter one so it may be closer to about 65 pages line edited. I've really hit a stride this week and am hoping to get through at least a third of it before the weekend.

Then I can begin some rewrites and correcting things that need to be changed - (both the first two scenes in chapter one need a mild re-write and scene 3 needs to be moved to chapter 2 or 3)
I've already cut about 4,000 words and I know there will be plenty more cut before I'm done. I hope it doesn't get too short. I don't want it to wind up as a novella. And I certainly don't want to be forced to beef anything up based on word count alone.

Still, taking a week off seems to have regenerated me.


Question:

For those of you who have business cards (and I mean writerly business cards) - when did you decide to make them? When you started to go to conferences? When you had shorts published? When you got an agent?

I just wonder. I think it's a genius idea and though I think it's too soon for me, I just wonder when those of you who have them made the decision to print some off.

Yay! We're one day closer to the weekend! And a holiday weekend at that - I hope the weather is nice on Monday so my fam and I can play badminton and grill. If it rains we will play board games.
But still grill.

Also, now that I think about it, I can't guarantee I'll have a post for Monday. I'll have to wait and see.

LOL CAT FUN!


Wednesday, May 26, 2010

In Which I Discuss Poll Results

I want to thank everyone who took the time to vote on my polls last week.

Here are the results and a little history on each question.


If you were to cross a Tyrannosaurus Rex with the Incredible Hulk, would you get a:

32 of you voted on this one and the results were:

25% Tyrannosaurus Hulk
75% Hulkasaurus Rex.

This we a bit of an inside fight between myself and Twin, and Brother. We had been driving together and somehow got on the discussion of mixing the Incredible Hulk and a Tyrannosaurus Rex (this is actually indicative of the discussions we have on a daily basis).

Brother immediately said this would be known as a Tyrannosaurus Hulk. After pondering for a moment I stated that I believed a better name would be Hulkasaurus Rex. Twin agreed. Brother did not. Calls to the family and Brother's friends confirmed that he was in the minority. A minority of one.
Not one to let things go I posted a poll and most of you, gentle readers, sided with me.




See this picture above? What is this game called?

out of 31 votes:

80.6% of you said miniature golf
19.4% of you said goofy golf.

For pretty much all our lives my family has called this game Goofy Golf. Recently, when Brother called it by said name to one of his friends, she thought he was a loon. He did a quick poll of his friends. Could Goofy Golf really be just a familial term?
It turns out that yes. It is.


Scenario: you were eating at a Mongolian BBQ restaurant and the cook added peanuts to your meal, which you most definitely did not want, nor ask for, resulting in a catastrophe of peanut proportions. Better known as:

out of 29 votes:

24.1% said catastronut
75.9 said peanastrophe

This was just another discussion between myself, Twin and Brother. We had no feelings one way or another regarding what the term should be and just wanted honest opinions (though a few of you chose peanastrophe for less "clean" reasons. You dirty birdies)


One of the things that struck me regarding these polls is that quite a few of you found the made up words comical. It's never before occurred to me that perhaps other people don't make up words as often as we do in my house. I just assumed that people make up terms such as peanastrophe like we do.

Clearly this is another familial pattern like goofy golf.
Who knew?

Thanks again to everyone who participated!

Tuesday, May 25, 2010

In Which We Garden

One of the things Twin and I were most looking forward to when we bought our house almost three years ago was the gardening we'd be able to do.
Twin always has a few guinea pigs running around (not counting the multitude of foster pigs we take in for the shelter) so fresh veggies was something we thought would be fun to grow. Anything we didn't eat could go to the pigs and, to a lesser extent, the dogs

Last year the garden went really well. We had far far more Roma tomatoes than we could ever use and cooked up our peas in a stir fry.
Normally I don't like carrots but the ones we pulled out tasted so good I felt bad about saying mean things about carrots in the past.

This year we wanted to make the veggie garden bigger so we could plant a larger variety of veggies.

Here's the before pic of the veggie garden, along with the kale that survived the MN winter.





The kale actually did so well it went out to seed, sending up pretty yellow flowers that reached over four feet in height before we had to take it out. The dogs enjoyed playing with the stalks.

Here's the new garden.




We replaced the wood borders (which we had originally recycled from our flower garden) and added bricks. We also made it twice as long.

Here's a breakdown of what's planted:

on the left we have asparagus, which is a two year crop so no harvesting until next fall. Then we have spinach and scallions. Beans begin right where the netting starts and runs into the next picture and the two seedlings are grape and Roma tomatoes.



Here we have the beans along the fence until the netting is bunched on the bricks. That's where the peas start. In front we have a golden bell pepper and a lilac bell pepper



The peas continue until the A frame where cucumber and zucchini are planted (the A frame is awesome. The plant will grow up the netting and the veggies will hang down, preventing them from yellowing or molding on the ground)
The seedling on the left is cantaloupe and we also have lettuce and carrots planted in the front under the A frame.

We will be planting red potatoes but the cut seed potatoes need a few more days to dry and callus before planting.

Also Twin and our mom want to plant some giant pumpkin seeds to try and grow a massive pumpkin, something a cousin of ours is really into. I'm not really against the idea, per se, I just worry that if we get a massive, state fair worthy pumpkin, it won't be as fun to deal with or move as they think.

We planted herbs in containers:


From the top, clockwise, rosemary, thyme, parsley and basil. We use these a lot in cooking. Except basil. We rarely use that (except on margherita pizza) but just really like the smell.

We lost a few houseplants over the winter (a few are still struggling) so I got a 3 more when we went to Ikea for a new bookshelf.




Also I planted the wildflower seeds I got from Summer from her contest.



I was really excited about these but that night something (most likely a squirrel) for whatever reason dug a huge hole in the dirt so I'm not sure how many will end up growing. sadface.

Then we moved onto trying to zazz up our main flower garden.



For some reason whoever planted this garden was crazy. As you can see from the front picture it looks OK, well filled out (the top tier hasn't been weeded yet). But the whole back side of the garden is empty. Nothing planted at all.

So last year we added some mat plants to try and fill it up a bit and this year we're going to try and give it some symmetry. I'm sure we'll need to add some more plants next year as well. Some day the garden will be filled with perennials and then we can add some mulch to make it look even prettier.

Mostly we added some lilies to even it out (which twin really likes) and some purple flowers (of which I can't remember the name right now) which I fancy. We're planning on hopefully adding a few more lilies this year (it was really windy when I took these pictures...)






After all of that we bought a few vine and creeper plants to grow along our fence.

Here's a clematis we got that has already bloomed along with a trumpet creeper.






We also planted a new lilac. We had planted 4 last year but one of them didn't make it through the winter.



And by "didn't make it through the winter" I mean "didn't make it through a certain someone who has a fondness for sticks and stick like bushes".

Monday, May 24, 2010

In Which I Return

Hi everyone! I'm back from my small blogging hiatus.

How has everyone been? Anyone get an offer of representation or a book deal? (besides Elana I mean. And how awesome is that?!)

I had an enjoyable week off from work and it went too fast as usual. But now things should return to normal and since I tend to be a person of patterns that's a good thing. Especially since I got absolutely no revising done on Foxfire while I was mucking about.

But that's OK. Sometimes you need a little break to build the excitement for it again. It's a bit like a re-boot.

Also I have my writing group tonight with Palindrome and Teebore so I'm sure that will get me all jonesed to get home and get to work again.

Twin and I did a lot of gardening last week so I'll post some pics tomorrow for those of you interested in that kind of stuff (I know I am and was so jealous when I saw everyone who lives in a warmer climate gardening months before we could...)

Anyway I will be systematically working my way through everyone's blogs, catching up anything I may have missed while I was away from the interwebs.

Glad to be back!

Thursday, May 20, 2010

In Which I Am Unplugged

Hi all.
Just wanted to pop in and let you know that I didn't get a blog post written for today. I was gone all day with gardening and buying dirt etc that I didn't have any interwebs time.

Also, Yvie may not have time to do her usual Friday Fun Words just because a friend is in town and she'll be trying to get as much attention as possible.

BUT, things should return to normal on Monday.

Thanks so much for sticking around!


Wednesday, May 19, 2010

In Which We Hit The MOA

And by hit I of course mean visit.



MOA = Mall of America and we travelled there to see a free advanced screening of Shrek Forever After.






The movie was OK. I would put it on par with the 3rd Shrek movie. The biggest flaw in the third one, to me, was that they tried too hard to make it funny, so then it just sort of fell flat.

In this one, there wasn't really any "trying too hard" humor, but in general it wasn't as funny as 1 or 2 (though there were definitely a few hilarious moments). Many of the scenes that could have been comical (fat Puss, etc) had already been spoiled in the previews. It also wasn't as action packed as 2 so we're left with a movie that was just OK.

Though it seemed like the kids in the theater really loved it, so feel free to bring the kiddies.

Overall I'd give it a C+. OK, not great.

But for free? it was awesome.
Also we were forced to watch it in 3D (the MOA theater 3D glasses are terrible, btw. I felt like Harry Potter and the lenses had streaks on them), but it turns out the 3D was mostly just used to add depth.


Once done with the movie we went to eat some lunch. Normally when at the MOA we hit a whole bunch of little food stands or browse the food courts (of which there are two) but we decided to eat at Bubba Gump shrimp instead since Twin and I had only eaten there once before.



It was OK. The shrimp was good, but for most of us we could name another restaurant that had better food.

In honor of Forest Gump, here are the types of shrimp we ate:

fried shrimp
coconut shrimp
stuffed shrimp
chilli shrimp
tempura shrimp
shrimp gumbo
shrimp cocktail


Then we putzed around a bit and hit a few shops we wanted to check out.

Here's some examples of the weird things you can find at the MOA:

Battle Bots



We were so excited to watch this match, but the one bots crapped out so the other bot won by default. BORING. I wanted to see the winner bot shred the other one with its red spinning blade of death.
Real battle bots I guess is much more slow and prone to technical errors.


Wiggies



I don't know what the heck this is. They were advertising these chicks on all the video kiosks so once one o'clock came around we made sure we were above the rotunda to see what the heck the deal was.
Turns out it was pretty much what the advertisements said, chicks in wigs, singing and dancing. And by singing, I mean lip syncing. Poorly.

Also the MOA has a Legoland, which is pretty cool as a kid, but would be much cooler if you could afford to buy the expensive Legos...




Then Twin and I got a Godiva chocolate drink.



DELICIOUS!

We took some pics of what used to be Camp Snoopy and is now Nickelodeon Universe so you can see the awesomeness that is at the center of the MOA. And then we decided to head home. We spent the evening playing Halo. All in all, a pretty awesome Saturday






Tuesday, May 18, 2010

Let's Talk Blogfest

Yay! A Blogfest I'm actually participating in!
It's been awhile for me, but when Roni suggested a "Let's Talk" Blogfest I couldn't turn it down.
I love to write dialogue. I find it easy and fun and it's one of my strengths.

Here's the definition of the Blogfest:


On Tuesday May 18, post a short excerpt on your blog of your most sparkly dialogue scene (no, I'm not talking about Edward Cullen). It can be anything dialogue-heavy--a laid-back chat, an all out argument, a flirty conversation, two friends ribbing each other--whatever. The options are endless.


I was originally going to post a scene from a short story I wrote about 8 years ago. BUT when I re-read that scene it wasn't very strong and I didn't want to spend the time fixing it up.

So instead here's another bit from a story I never finished. I don't even know where the story was heading and I only got about 4k into it before I stopped for whatever reason.

I think the scene is pretty self explanatory since it takes place so early in the story. The characters are a brother and sister, Sora and Yukiko who are Japanese Americans and attending a boarding school. The genre is paranormalish and leans towards YA.

Also, I apologize for the crazy blogger formatting.

Also, there is some language in this scene.

Here we go!

***


Yukiko and Lisa changed back into their uniforms and left the gym, surprised to see that it was already dark outside and that the weather had turned cool and breezy.

“Well, I guess that’s the end of summer,” Lisa rubbed her arms. “I would’ve brought a jacket had I known it was going to be so cold.”

“It’s not that bad,” Yukiko replied. They cut across the school lawns to make better time to their dorm. “And besides it's just a few blocks.”

“You think they could at least put some lights out here or something,”

“Why, are you scared?”

“Of course not!” Lisa said.

The quickness of her reply led Yukiko to believe otherwise.

Yuki didn’t feel nervous in the least. She felt comfortable under the large oak trees, regrdless of how dark it was.

“Lisa, we’re on school grounds, a hundred feet from our dorm. Nothing’s going to happen to us, so there no reason to be scared.”

“I’m not scared!”

“Sure.”

They walked through the trees. Yuki enjoyed the sounds of the crickets and the cold breeze against her shower damp body.
When they were almost out of the grove three figures leapt at them from behind a tree.

At the sight of their raised arms and loud voices Lisa shrieked and ran screaming back the way they had come.

One of their attackers stepped near to Yuki and she swung out a fist, gratified when her hand connected with flesh and bone.

“Ow! Fuck man,” the figure moaned and backed away. “Your sister hit me in the face!”

“Well what the hell do you expect Brandon!” Yuki yelled. “You jumped out at us and scared the shit out of Lisa. One of you had better go get her before she alerts teachers.” She glared at her brother and his other friend James. James rolled his eyes before he jogged down the path to catch Lisa.

“I think you broke my nose!” Brandon said, his hands covered in blood. Yuki ignored him and turned to her brother who was laughing at both his sister’s and friend’s discomfort.

“That’s just great Sora!” She slapped his arm.

“Ow!” He pulled away.

“Don’t give me that shit. It’s going to take Lisa weeks to get over this.”

“Yeah.” He smiled. “You should have seen the look on her face.”

“What the hell are you doing out here anyway?” He showed her a bag of liquor. “Christ, you’re all going to get expelled!” she snatched at the bag.

“Nah, we’ve been doing this for years. Brandon’s window in his room has ivy and a trellis going to it. Just have to wait until after midnight to climb back in. Never been caught before.”

“Well how are you going to explain Brandon’s nose?”

“He was sleepwalking.” Sora shrugged. “Ran into a bed post.” He glanced at Brandon.

“I thought you were too smart to do something this stupid. Especially bringing me and Lisa into it.”

“What are you gonna do? Tattle on us?”

She glared at him a moment, her teeth clenched before she trusted herself to speak again. “Yeah, that’s right Sora, tattle on you!” She pushed past him and Brandon. “You had better hope James found Lisa, because I’m not responsible for what she says to anyone.”

As she walked out of the grove she could hear Brandon talking to Sora, his voice muffled behind his hands.

“Fuck man, your sister’s a bitch.”

“Nah, she’s all right.”

“She broke my nose!”

“Whatever. You just shouldn’t have gotten so close.”

“Think she’ll tell on us?”

“Nah. Come on, let’s go wait for James.”



When the knocks at their door woke her from a dreamless sleep Yuki knew it was Sora. She climbed out of her bed when Lisa spoke up.

“Don’t let him in!”

“He’s my brother.”

“He’s an ass! He made us both look stupid tonight. Let him wait until morning to apologize.”

Yuki sighed and considered Lisa’s point. She was still angry at him but had a feeling he came, not to apologize, but to seek comfort. She unlocked the door.

“Yuki!” Lisa whispered.

“I’m sorry, but what if something’s wrong? I can’t just leave him out there.”

“Fine. Do what you want since you obviously don’t care about me.” Lisa covered her head with her comforter and pretended to sleep. Yuki opened the door a crack and found Sora out of breath.

“What?”

“Let me in,” he whispered.

“Why should I do that?”

“Because I need to talk to you!”

She sighed and let him in. As he glided past she caught a whiff of alcohol and smoke.

“Have you been smoking?”

“No!” he replied, but at her firm gaze, relented. “Well yes, but only one, and that’s not the point!” he sat down on her bed.

“What is the point Sora?” She rubbed her temples. “Why did you come here?”

Sora glanced at Lisa and chose to speak in Japanese.

“Something happened tonight, in the grove. All of the guys said I just passed out but that’s bullshit. I mean I know what I saw and it was no fainting dream or whatever.”

“Sora you’re not making any sense. If you want me to listen, fine. But if you want me to comprehend, please speak in intelligible sentences.”

Sora rubbed face and started again. “I was laying on my back looking at the stars when I saw a comet over in the western part of the sky. I was curious because there shouldn’t have been any comets, and then it turned and started heading towards the grove.”

“It turned?” Yuki snorted.

“Yes it turned. I don’t know why, and I don’t know how, and now that I think about it I don’t even think it was a comet, but maybe just like a shaft of energy or something. But the closer it got, the brighter it became and I could actually hear it as it came upon us.”

“What did it sound like?”

He looked sheepish before answering. “A jet. But it wasn’t a jet because no one else saw it." he paused, lost in his thoughts.

“Then what happened?”

“I don’t really know… The energy hit me, right in the chest,” he accompanied this statement with a raised hand placed just below the solar plexus. “And then, I was flying…but not like a bird, like the way a shuttle must feel. And that’s where I went, through the atmosphere up into space.” He paused here again and Yuki didn’t interrupt him.

“God, it was so cold. I mean I knew it would be, but it was so cold it burned. I could feel my bones and blood freezing and I knew if even the tiniest speck of dust touched me I would have shattered. I stopped breathing, and then my heart stopped. And I was dead. Just like that. I’ve never been so terrified in my entire life.” He looked at Yuki and she saw he was indeed terrified of what he had seen. “I don’t want to die. Not like that. Not at all.”

“Of course not.” Yuki rubbed his arm. “No one does. But maybe it was just a dream, caused by the booze and drugs?”

He shook his head. “It was too real, and I wasn’t that drunk or high.”

“But Brandon and James said you just passed out. Maybe you did?”

He looked at her a moment before he jerked his arm away. He pulled his shirt off.
“Passing out doesn’t do this.”

Yuki gasped. Tracing their way from his waist up to his chest were black and purple bruises, each so large that they all just melded together into a grotesque picture of his torso.

“Jesus, Sora,” Yuki whispered, forgetting to speak in Japanese as she reached out a hand to touch him.

“What the hell is going on?” Lisa demanded. She turned over in her bed. “You guys are sitting over there babbling away in Japanese when I’m trying to get some sleep! Can’t you at least have some re-” but as she saw Sora’s bruises her eyes widened and her mouth snapped shut with an audible clack.

“Does it hurt?” Yuki asked. She pressed gently against a bruise on his ribcage.

“Ow! Dammit of course it hurts!” he yelled and pulled away from her.

“What happened?” Lisa asked. She sat on the bed with them. “Did you get in a fight? Was it with Brandon? Did you kick his ass, because he needs a good ass kicking.”

Sora shot Yukiko a look and then pulled his shirt back on.

“No he didn’t get in a fight, Lisa. Listen, do you promise not to speak a word about this to anyone?”

Lisa bit her lip.

“Lisa I’m serious. Just don’t mention this to anyone, especially not any teachers, okay?”

“Fine. But what about all the others he was spending the night with?”

Yuki glanced at Sora and he shrugged his shoulders.

“What about them? If anyone asks, Sora was here with us tonight.”

“They’re not going to believe us!”

“Yes they will. I’m a top student and you haven’t gotten in any trouble.”

“Sora has.”

“So what? We haven’t. Besides they’d have to come up with a story about where they were tonight since I don’t think any of them want to tell the headmaster that they were sneaking out to get drunk and high.”

“O.K. Fine. I’m going back to bed, but you both owe me,” she returned to her bed. “Especially you,” she glared at Sora. Sora flashed her one of his most charming smiles. She snorted and climbed back into her bed.

“So do you believe me?” Sora asked Yuki, once again conversing in Japanese.

“I don’t know. I mean it’s obvious something happened, but I just don’t think some sort of vision would do that to you.”

“It wasn’t the vision that did this, it was the energy.”

“Well whatever it was, I don’t have the answer any more than you. Maybe you should go to bed. Actually, better yet, take a shower. You smell.”

“But-”

“Listen, I’m tired and I’m not in any position tonight to make any sort of decision or judgment. Even if what you said happened did happen, what am I supposed to do about it? Write to Dad and ask him to please come and get us? Some paltry little bruises aren’t going to get us home. Now maybe if you had broken something, some ribs or an arm, that might have gotten us somewhere, but as it is for now we’re stuck here.”

“All right,” he sighed. “You’re right, maybe things will change once I get some sleep.”

“I’m always right Sora.” She led him to the door. “Now you get some sleep and we’ll talk again tomorrow.”

She stood on her tiptoes and kissed him on the cheek. She suspected that he would sleep well, no longer troubled now that he had unburdened himself. But she knew she would lay awake all night as she remembered the bruises that painted a grotesque picture across his chest.

***

So there you go. I wish I could remember where I was going with this story. Maybe I'll have to make something up.

See you tomorrow!

Monday, May 17, 2010

In Which I Ask Some Serious Questions

Happy Monday all!
Since I'm on no-work vacation, I decided to make some super serious and important polls for people to participate in. I'd really like to know your answers so please respond to each of them (there are only 3 and each has only 2 options).
The polls will close on Sunday evening, so don't think about them too long!












Friday, May 14, 2010

Friday Fun Words

Hiya Ape-Friends!

Yvie here to provide you with your weekly fun words to use in every day conversations.

I'm pretty excited because Mom just informed me that neither she, nor Anne have to go to work at all next week. How exciting is that?!

That means I will get all the worship and love I deserve. So ape-friends, if you wonder why she's not hanging around the interwebs, it's because she's too busy cuddling moi!



Required Cuddles



Onto the words!


Stivvies - skivvies for Stevens

Trishily - trashy Tricias

Judgmedl - when metal is really judgemental. You know, it's all "Oh her? Pshaa, she's not nearly iron enough. And also, she used to hang around dolomite"


"My body is 40% dolomite!"



Frorat - a hair style for rodents, allowing the hair to extend out from the head in a large rounded shape, much like a halo, cloud or ball

Firfore - golfing for trees

Stabliti - when you stab someone. But just a little.

This picture here is going to turn into too much stabbing



Thumsban - when thumbs are banned. Usually this happens when apes or maybe possums hang around animals without opposable thumbs which causes jealousy and then a ban.



That is all for this week!


I hope you all have a wonderful weekend and week and enjoy getting cuddles from your loved ones.

Thursday, May 13, 2010

In Which I Forgot To Write A Post

So I pretty much forgot to write a post for today. I was super busy at work (not stressed, just busy) and Wednesdays we head over to my parent's after work for dinner and some TV. And then came home and watched Glee and then went to bed and I barely remembered to write this little post.

Sorry. My Bad.

To make up for the short post, please accept this LOLCat as an apology.



Also here is a haiku Twin's friend/co-worker wrote that I found funny. She allowed me to share it so here you go:

My enemy waits
Lying on the bathroom floor
Never-ending bits!

Awesome.

Anyway, I hope you all have a nice Thursday! Just a few more days to get through until the weekend.

I'm excited because this weekend, besides being full of awesome things (like free tickets to an advanced screening of Shrek Forever After at the MOA (That's the Mall of America for you non-locals)) it also begins the beginning of my week off from work. Which means, a week of sleeping in.

So.
Excited.

Yvie will be in tomorrow with her usual Friday Fun Words.
See you there!

Wednesday, May 12, 2010

In Which I Printed Wrong

I've recently come to a realization regarding my revision process and it is this:

I printed my novel incorrectly.

How can that be, you ask? Surely there's only one way to print something?

No. That is not true.

Let me 'splain.

So I originally printed off the whole novel as soon as I was done with the first draft. Mostly it was just so I could stash it somewhere where Twin hangs out so she could find it and be all surprised. But also I figured it would have to be line edited anyway, so it certainly couldn't hurt.

Also I don't think I could have scene blocked without having it printed off next to me. I mean, I guess I could have written out each scene on a colored post it note by reading each scene on the computer. But really, that sounds horrible.

Also I've learned that if I find someone even remotely irritating (and by remotely irritating I mean, just barely intolerable) then I don't do it.




And scene blocking off a computer screen strikes me as something that is irritating.

BUT, all those reasons as to why I wanted it printed off doesn't counter the problems I'm now running into.

1. - I added a few scenes. These scenes are obviously not in my printed version

2. - I created chapter breaks

3. - I rearranged some scenes.

All of this leaves me with a version of my novel, printed out, that doesn't match the organization of the current novel.

And this is something I find irritating. For example, when I wanted to line edit chapter one, well the third scene in chapter one was originally scene 8, so I have to page through the novel until I find it. It's not that big a deal, but still. Kind of a pain when you have 325 pages to page through.

But, all of this irritation has led me to understand the correct way, in the future, to print out a WIP.

No, it's not chapter by chapter (or at least for me it's not).

It's scene by scene.

That way, I can move the scenes around individually whenever I want and not have to worry about chapters changing.

So when I'm done with this first set of line edits, I'm going to add page breaks not just after each chapter, but after each scene, to prevent any future irritation (and don't worry, it will be printed on the back of the current version. I don't want to waste paper)

Does this make sense? Am I crazy?

Tuesday, May 11, 2010

In Which The Interwebs Makes Me Happy

So normally I try to write a few blog posts on Sunday, so I can be ahead in the week. But this weekend I only wrote one. We spent the rest of the evening playing Halo until our Xbox offered us up the red ring of death again.



Damn you Xbox. Why do you make it so hard to love you?



So then yesterday I was super busy at work which led to a range of consequences:

1. I didn't get to comment on as many blogs as I usually do. Though I did manage to read most of them

2. The super busy amounts of work, combined with crazy dogs that were trapped inside until the lawn fertilizer dried, left me in a super foul mood.

  • Also, co-worker that I don't even know: If I tell you I can't help you with something and I don't know who you need to speak with, don't keep pressuring me to give you a name. And when I cave, certainly don't tell that person I gave you their name.


3. Which in turn left me with no idea on what to write for a blog post. Mostly I just wanted to take a bath, read a bit, and then go back to bed. Steaks for dinner notwithstanding

So what all this means is that today's post is going to be a random post of fun things I like on the interwebs.

Yay!

Do you read
hyperbole and a half blog? I swear, if you don't, you will regret it. Check out this post which may be my favorite. So. Funny.

We were discussing on Hannah's blog the wonderfulness of The Silence of the Lambs and I mentioned to her the wonderful Lego musical version which she has not seen. So here it is in all its glory.

WARNING: there is language in this video, much like in the real movie. You. Were. Warned.



I know we've talked a bit before about the kind of music I like (rock. A bit of metal thrown in as well). Lately I've been re-listening to Twin's Fair to Midland CD (shhh, I stole it from her...) and I had forgotten how much I LURVE them. Their song Dance of the Manatees is awesome, but my favorite is the below: (unfortunately the video is just the lyrics but you can still hear the song)




Here is Brother's, Twin's and my all time favorite LOLCat



Here's another fav


And that's all I have for today! Hopefully you found something that made you smile.


PS - I'm off all next week from work. Since Twin and I will be doing hella gardening and yard work, I probably won't be as present on the interwebs as I normally am. But I will be back in full splendor the following week.
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