Friday Fun Words

Hiya Ape-friends! How have you been? Good I hope.

I was sick over the weekend. I know, bummer, right? First I threw up some, then I drooled a lot, and then in the morning I didn't want ANY breakfast. Shocking, right? I know. I didn't get my girlish figure by skipping meals, no sir.

Then I threw up some more.

Mommy made a vet appointment, and they agreed to squeeze me in, even though they were booked.
Now I know some dogs don't like the vet, but they're crazy. I LOVE THE VET.
First off, I get tons of attention. Which is what I deserve of course. Sometimes I get treats too! And if there's other dogs there, I just tell them to back off, since this is my shining moment.

Anyway, when Mommy took down my leash and collar, well I knew we were going somewhere awesome, so I ran around and teased George and junk.

Mommy then decided I must be feeling better so she cancelled the vet appointment.
Can you BELIEVE that? What a jerk move Mommy, even if I was feeling better.


Anyway, ONTO THE WORDS!!

(the words were a bit sparse this week, so I've thrown in two LOLCats at the bottom to spruce things up a bit)

Dinesses - Duchesses who dine. I want that job. Royalty AND eating? yeah, sign me up

Dacided - when some jerk doesn't know how to pronounce "decided" correctly



Derbyo - When you're "heading out to the Kentucky Derby, Yo". I know, it's a bit of a stretch.



Graut - grateful Krauts

I dunno about you, but I'm not overly grateful for this...

See you next Friday!

In Which I Hodge-Podge

Hodge-Podge! I feel like a hodge-podge post needs a theme song or something.

Something along the lines of Grandad Robert Freeman's "Good food. Good food. Good foo-oo-oo-ood" song from the Boondocks.
Do you watch the boondocks? You totes should. Though it has a lot of language. A lot. But it's kind of the point.

This weekend we found a new game on our xbox arcade that we immediately bought because it looked awesome.
And it was.

It's called Limbo and is loosely about a boy who's sister goes missing and so he travels through Limbo to find her.

There's no music, and the whole game is black and white. It's side-scrolling and full of puzzles and scary creepy things like giant spiders, glowing slugs that attach to your head and drown you, and creepy Limbo children who set bear traps for you.

It's kinda gory, for a black and white game, but there is an option to shut off the gore. It's also pretty short, maybe just a few hours of game play.

We all agreed that we either wanted a movie like this, or a book. It totes made me want to write. AND I know I would have freaked out at its awesomeness had I been a graphic novelist/artist.

For reals, if you have an Xbox 360, get this game.

Here's a video and screenshots for those (like me) who can't always access vids:










I wrote a new short story this weekend. It came about because Hannah (Palindrome) had mentioned on her bloggy (and received agreement from Lindsey (at Dangerous with a Pen)) that sunflowers creep her the hells out. This had never occurred to me, that sunflowers could be something that frightened people.

AND THE STORY IDEA WAS BORN!

It's about 2k. I did a quick tightening but now have to sit on it to see if I can come up with a theme or junk to weave throughout. For me, themes don't come until after the story is complete.

But I was pleased with it. Hannah said it was creepy so that's good.

I also have another idea for a short story, and I had a dream this last weekend about a zombie-hunting family that I MAY (but probably not) write for NaNo instead of my sea serpent plan. We'll see.

There will be a two week span in August where I will be mostly away from the interwebs. The first week I will be camping and have no Internet access.
The second week I have to go into the office for fun time Six Sigma greenbelt training and since the commute is 1-1.5 hours one way, I will have less time to visit.

This is just a heads up. There will be more reminders later. I'll probably repeat some posts and maybe have a few new ones written as well.

And that's it for this Hodge-Podge experience!

How are things for you?

In Which We Learn About Writing

There's been some chatter around the blogosphere recently regarding honing one's craft and what specifically that takes.

I've mentioned before that I have a BA in fiction writing. But in all seriousness, I learned more about writing, the business and the nuts and bolts of everything from blogs (and some excellent writing books) than I did in my BA.

Let me 'splain. No, is too much. Let me sum up (NEVER GETS OLD).



I had a lot of fun earning my BA. The best thing about all my advanced fiction classes (and the few post grad classes I was approved to take) was the workshopping. Sure, we had to read some essays and articles on how to write, but almost all of my classes involved writing junk in class, then sharing and getting feedback or crits. I learned A LOT about how to crit and workshop in college (especially in that grad class, which was AWESOME). But I can honestly say, no teacher ever said "Show don't tell" or "don't use adjectives or adverbs" or any of the other important rules (though I did have one teacher who let us help her choose the cover for her most recent book and that was super fun)

Those rules came to me in books on writing.

When I started blog surfing over a year ago, that's when I really started to understand aspects of craft that I had only flirted with before.



I remember Simon had a post and examples on the "Show don't tell" rule that was just genius. It was the first time anyone had ever shown how to follow that rule (a bit ironic, yes? That we're always told and never shown how to Show, Don't tell)(it turns out I was doing it right all along. But it was good to know)

Before Query Shark I had no real clue what a query was. Yes I would have researched it if the time came, but knowing about how to craft a successful query helps me in my writing to narrow down the conflict of the novel ahead of time.

I certainly think you can benefit quite a bit from taking classes. Not to mention the people you can meet.

But if money's an issue for you (and it typically is for me) or if you're super introverted, you can improve your craft by using the lovely interwebs and books all by yourself.



Does that make sense? Yes? Good.

The key is to make the attempt to improve. If you're serious about improving, you'll find a way to do it, no matter your means.

How have you improved your craft?

Friday Fun Words

Here I am, the soft and squeezable Yvie to provide you with new words to enhance your vocabulary. Yes, enhance.



Last weekend we had tornadoes. They tasted terrible. I kid, I kid.



For reals, though, we were watching Whale Wars when suddenly we hear this terrible wail. Mom later said it sounded like a fallout siren. We live near a tornado siren, but this was different. George and I barked and the humans ran to find Tula.
What was the sound you ask? Tula, howling a terrible death wail. I guess the tornado siren was going off and she was warning us (stoopid show off, thinks she's so great with her weather warning howls).



So it was off to the basement with us. Which was AWESOME!! My most favorite chair is down there, so I jumped on that and scratched at it. Then I had to put on a collar and a leash "just in case". I got real excited that we were going to go on a walk, but apparently walks are right out when there's tornadoes.

So I spent my time beating up giant stuffed pig and chewing on George's legs when he wasn't looking.

It was so much fun, I can't wait until we have some more tornadoes.

Onto the words! ENHANCE!

Phoses - photoed roses. Their thorns don't prick, but they don't smell very nice



Hydre - when Dr Dre hydrates



Poting - when a potent pot pouts. HA!



Airail - when ailing air eats aioli. DOUBLE HA!



Clead - clean lead. OR, OR lead cleats. Take your pick.





See you next week Ape-Friends!

Updated: In Which I Forgot A Title...

Look at this fun video I got from my mom (cuz she's awesome like that)





AND because just posting a singular video seems a bit lame, here's some LOLCats joy!








(Yes I forgot to write a post again. Yes I am lame-o)

In Which I Share An Update

It' s been awhile since I've mentioned Foxfire, especially with all the excitement about Hole Ridden.

I'm still on line edits. They're taking a bit longer than anticipated, but what can you do? I still hope to have most, if not all, revising done on it before NaNo, but we'll see. November is coming up pretty quickly. I'm going to try a few new things this NaNo, including allowing myself to read over the previous day's work and correct typos etc. All assuming I have time that day.

Right now I've got about 1/4 of Foxfire line edited. But that includes both on paper and on the digital copy. I do about 10 pages by hand, and then upload those changes on my computer. I've already seen a few big changes I want to make regarding scene organization and possible scene cutting, but we'll see. I'll have to come up with some sort of additional conflict or action if I decide to cut a few scenes, just to fill it out (not that you can ever really have too much of either)

I'll still need one or two more line edits after this one is done, but once first line edits are completed it'll be much easier to handle the other revisions with a cleaner manuscript.

How's your WIP coming? Are you writing, revising? And will you be doing NaNo 2011?

Also, did you see Inception? Cuz we did and it was AWESOME

Friday Fun Words

I'm back, ape-friends! It's me, Yvie, your favorite part of this blog.



Can you believe Mommy forgot to do a post for me last week? What a B-, right?
No worries though, I yelled at her and so did some blog pals and her dad (who straight out told her that he thinks I'm the writing genius behind the blog.)

Know what else is an atrocity? Squirrels on the bird feeders! They know I'm small and can't get them. But little do they know that I'm going to learn to climb trees. Take that, suckas!

Onto the words!

Procon - when a bad thing is good



Pantic - frantic panting



Vidow - video widow. This happens when a pair of movies is split up because one of them dies.




Ionstore - clearly a place one goes to purchase ions



Regad - when one "egad" just doesn't cut it



Sapkinki - when trees get randy





See you next week!

In Which I Share A Garden Update

So it's been a little over a month since we planted the veggie garden, and almost everything is going fantastic.

Here's a quick look at the flower garden. It's got some sort of blight going on and killing the lillies, but there are so many that it's still pretty.

We also have a garter snake living in the garden. He suns himself in the lawn until he sees us coming, then he books it to hide in the lillies. I tried to get a pic of him the other day, but he's just too fast.

But here's some proof (with my foot for size comparison)

we've named him Pepper. Because he spices up our lives...

The herbs are doing pretty well. Though for some reason the thyme up and died. It was doing the best of all the herbs too. I guess it wanted to go out in a blaze of glory

basil, parsley, rosemary

Also the wildflowers I won from Summer actually seem to be doing quite well, regardless of the digging a squirrel did early on

The veggie garden is doing awesome. First our red potatoes came up. We have some planted in this potato bag and some coming up in a pile of leaves we never got around to composting.

what's taters, precious?

Here's a full pic of the whole veggie garden

From left to right again:

Asparagus and scallions. The empty spot in front of the scallions was supposed to be spinach. But apart from two little plants that came up under the Roma tomato plant, nothing emerged. sadface.


The scallions are awesome, because no matter how tiny they are, they still smell and taste amazing. We pulled a whole bunch to thin them out and put them in some fried rice.

The Roma tomato plant and the cherry tomato plant, which is about 5 feet tall.
They've both got tomaters growing.

cherry tomato

Roma tomato

Then we have the green beans behind the tomatoes.

Next is the golden bell pepper and the lilac bell pepper. The lilac already has peppers.





Behind them the peas! Peas are great because you can harvest them so much sooner than the other veggies.

YUM

The cantaloupe is spreading nicely. We're really hoping the melons turn out tasty, because nothing beats a sweet cantaloupe.

Then we have the lettuce:



And the carrots:



And finally the cucumber, which is crawling up the a-frame nicely





And the zucchini:








So there you have it. We're excited to be getting close to the time when we'll be able to eat some of the veggies.

How are your gardens coming?