Is it just me or does that deer have some wolf-like qualities?

















Tallest horse in Britain - Crackers.

I feel like such a bad writers-group member! I had exactly one thing to share two weeks ago, and have been rewriting the same chapters over and over again since then. Well, you will all be happy to know that I have FINALLY moved on to Ch. 3! I will not tell you how many chapters the final book has, because, well, I don't want to think about it.

And it is rewriting, not just editing. The pile of crap I wrote in November is really just starting material. I described it as a big tangle of yarn. I think it will eventually knit itself into a book, but there are a lot of really knotted sections that need to be smoothed out. I mean, at first I had my main character's Mom give her a ribbon to protect her from the fairies, then I had her Dad give her a nickel, then a talisman, and now... well, I can't tell you because hopefully this gift will stick.

"What is it?"

"It's a good luck charm."

"But what is it?"

He tucked her covers in tightly around her body and kissed her forehead. "Don't try too hard to figure it out, love. That's what makes the magic disappear."

Chapters: When I'm reading a book, I like medium-length-to-short chapters. That way I can always convince myself, "just one more chapter and then I'll go to sleep." I like the lengths to be varied so that some times I can't make it to the end.

When I'm writing (up until the point that I realized this just now) I have had chapters that are more like sections - like 50 pages! I felt like I was "cheating" to have short chapters. (???)

Other things that make me feel this way (I may have mentioned this before) include letters, some forms of flashbacks, diary entries, switching between two character perspectives (meanwhile, back at the ranch:) , and using italics and parenthesis. I have also gone back and forth on the idea of a prolog.

Well, in the interest of broadening my horizons, I just took my prolog, which is also a flashback from another character's perspective, and have made it into a short chapter. So there, muse! What do you think of that???

P.S. My muse is one of the Little Lords of Chaos who floats around on a cloud giving me both good and bad advice, both constructive and destructive criticism, and I rather hate him.

Writing is so weird.

I have been rehashing the beginning of my novel this whole week, to the point that I should be serving it for breakfast with two eggs and a slice of wheat toast. And although I can't say that it will stay the same between now and two minutes from now, as I read it this morning, it is looking SO GOOD! Like, "oh, so that's how it fits, okay. Now I can move on to the stuff I actually want to write."

Two internet searches I did while writing today: WWII and Childhood Development.

I don't think I can write this story set in the 40s. There was just too much going on. Reading the article made me think 1. Boy I didn't learn much about this in school and 2. Man, the reason we're living in the world we are living in now is mostly due to stuff that happened during that war.

I want to see Pan's Labyrinth.

Sidenote: woke up at 5 a.m. completely alert. Just now getting warm. I read some of the lame-ass Organic magazine I get, and two articles were about strange pains caused by stress. One was quite interesting about some 5000 year old healing program from India that made me crave oatmeal (which I am eating now, embellished with blackberries I froze last summer) and the other one had "tips" like, "When you are angry or overwhelmed, say to yourself, 'I am breathing through my nose.'"

Okay, so I'm a new-age weirdo and all, but that sounds hilarious to me. In fact, the article itself started to make me feel angry since at that moment, in the dead of the freezing cold winter morning, my nose was so stuffed up, I couldn't breath through it!

Enough of this chitter chatter. Back to work!

I did a bit of editing at the beginning of December, then forced myself to stop and gave myself the luxury of writing a fun little romantic piece of Christmas fluff. I returned from vacation on Jan. 2 and edited about five pages that first week, mostly at night and on the weekend. This is the first morning I have forced my grumpy self to get up instead of hitting the snooze for that "awe gee Mom, just one more minute!" hedonistic pleasure of staying in bed.

It helps that there is another writer in the house who not only has forced me to have something ready to discuss on Sundays, but who also may be substitute teaching soon and therefore I will not be the only one needing to jump in the shower at around 7 a.m. each morning. Therefore, I need to get up earlier, get my s**t done, and plop myself down in front of this computer if I am expecting any amount of roommatial bliss.

...or if I'm ever expecting to get this novel done, for that matter.