A to Z Challenge, J

Just another beautiful sunset. Yawn. Just kidding. I feel so lucky to have this view from my living-room.

I wish my cell took a true picture. This isn’t as gorgeous as what my eyes saw.

In thinking of ‘J‘ words January came to mind. Doesn’t that seem years away? Hey, remember Just Jot It January? Ah, that was fun. I know we still had up our Christmas tree. That dim, cold memory needs to go away. Let’s stay focused on the future, June and July! That’s more my speed. Let’s just pray it isn’t another fire season. The news for our area is all about the draught.

In this journal, I like to keep track of my writing and editing. I am nearly finished with the goal of 25,000 words to edit. I feel it is doing its job to jumpstart my jam. 21,957 words thus far!

Suddenly I am finding the need to report my reward games. I finished Love Story–Beach Cottage and am trying a new one, for me. Mystery Case Files The Black Veil. Since I’ve had it a while and never played it takes a bit longer to journey through its lands and find all the jewels. I’ll play as soon as journaling is complete.

This has been another Monday that I slept through writing group not realizing it was Monday. How it is that keeps happening? Napping is so juvenile! But nightly the ‘outside’ trips jack up my sleep. Having this sweet dog is sometimes harder than when I had 3 jobs: going to college full time, working full time ,and being a single mom of four. But I love her and ad-just<–that ought to count!

Well, it is time to get out the joystick, well ‘mouse’ is for ‘M’ day isn’t it?

Have a Joyous week all!

A to Z Challenge, E

Editing is not my favorite part of writing. But I am learning it is like doing dishes. Not my favorite part of eating a meal, ya know? So one way to look at that instead of an awful chore, it is the result of actually having something to eat. That is worthy of gratitude, you know? Editing means a whole lot of story came out and was a lot of fun watching the show in my head. The muse can’t help it if I can’t type it right the first time. That said my CampNaNo editing number is now 11,323. Enough of that. Pandamapocalypse is exciting for me. My chosen cover page below.

Energy was not my best friend today. I had another doctor’s appointment. That was fun. It’s sad when fun is going to the doctor. Everything was fine, just getting the yearly check-up tests done. My walk was a little later but that was extra difficult. It felt like I was pushing EVERY step of the way. Made a little over a mile. So another excellent ‘atta girl’ to me from me!

I’m so tired right now I can’t think of another E-word to save myself or even an elephant so I best go. I’m rewarding myself with a game of Return to Ravenhearst. I already found all the eyeballs, isn’t that gory? Not as awful as the spider that comes out of the doll’s ear. Take that! Two more e-words. I know another: Exhausted!

One-Liner Wednesday

On day 1, the politicians and NaNo writers say, I will… here it is day 2. Yeah, I did all the things, LOL!

 

That was a bit more than one line. But you get the gist. That was my answer to One-liner Wednesday. Thank you Linda G. Hill for this fun, easy prompt.

 

Just a bit about my day, I spent the day finding more pictures to represent characters I hadn’t found images for before. I find it helps me as I write to get a better handle on them. Mostly I am trying to make sure all my programs have all I’ve done so far.  I promised my blogging friend jenanita01 I would share my experience with Scrivener as I go. This copying and pasting from the other programs, Word, WriteItNow, and yWriter have given me the first experiences. If you like ctrl/a, ctrl/c, ctrl/v, like I do there, is a new step when you land in Scrivener. I kept pasting to Scrivener and the result would be one long URL (blue underlining of the copied work). I finally figured out that if I did ctrl/shift/v it pasted perfectly. 

I probably need to back up a bit. After two days of reading the instructions of writing in Scrivener, I was lost. I found the tutorial on their website that said you can start with a template of the kind of document you want. I chose the 2 part novel. It will probably be 3 but for now, this will do.

One of the first neat tricks I learned is ctrl/n that is for a new text (scene). One was already there but I didn’t know beyond there what to do. Right-click and the new text and a lot of stuff I still don’t know are right there. Oh, and ctrl/shift/n is a new folder (chapter). Figured out character templates, too. I should have copied the template and used it over and over. Instead, I made one character then duplicated the template, and just filled in the new character’s info. It works!

 

What Day Is It Anyway?

This is what I’ve been spending most of my day on:

Oh, and when my brain didn’t work I started these:

Both for charity.

When sitting got too much and it was gorgeous outside, Kali and I took a zoomie walk/run around the property. She’d run ahead and hide and jump out with what looked like puppy-laughs and I walk-ran to keep up with her to find her. It was so much fun. I doubt I hit a thousand steps, but it was more than I would have had in the bad temps of last week. I hope we get better at this so I can improve and lengthen our walks.

This What Day Is It Anyway I think is Tuesday. Cinco de Mayo/Taco Tuesday was plastered all over FaceBook. But I don’t spend a lot of time over there. So in my day, I lost the day many times. I took a fibro-flare seriously over the weekend and all day Monday. So I missed my writers’ group. The reason is that the pain was too much to keep my brain working. I had even started my prompt a few times. I knew where I was headed with it. But then I couldn’t hold my laptop without it hurting. I hate fibro for its way of deceiving me. I’m not sure about whether or not it isn’t the flu or covid or… It is only when it gives up that I know it was a flare. It was worse when I was working. I couldn’t tell, how do you call your boss and say, I don’t know if I can work today. It feels only tired, hard to wake up. It is only when it hurts so bad that I know I can’t be at work. It is only the aftermath of one step too far that lets me know. Remember exercise that you do 10 steps today, and increase to 20 tomorrow? I used to be able to make big increases and improve lots every day. No way can I do that now. 10 today 4 tomorrow, zeros and back to 10. If not flare. It is hard to know when it is too much. I always feel like such the ‘Fairweather friend’ in that suddenly I’m not there where I wish I were. If it were just pain, I could do it. But suddenly there are no words. Then the next day you wonder if that were true. Did it really hurt that much? And how long was I out? Well, shoot! I missed a weekend and Monday. So here is Tuesday.

Stream of Consciousness Saturday — Key

According to Linda G. Hill:  Your Friday prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday is “key.” Use it any way you’d like. Have fun!

 

The key to a good series is good editing. Hey, that sound professional, right? Yikes, how do you writers do this part? Since I finished writing in November I have chosen to keep at it by editing. I chose to move back into the novel I wrote for CampNaNo (April 2019?) Haven in 3D. It was going quite well. I opened the project in both yWriter and Word and used Grammarly to get me through. I may not have everything in the final order, there may be big plot bunnies running around. But at least it will not have glaring grammar or misspellings. After I correct a scene I copy it from Word and replace the one in yWriter so that it is also corrected.

I got as far as chapter 6. Then I had a mass of questions about past characters and planet issues. Did you hear the screech of the sudden slam on the brakes?

Where did I hide the novel about all of this? The title is Earth the Final Frontier. That project has over 92 thousand words according to the yWriter project and 99 thousand words in the Word version. Why the discrepancy? I haven’t figured that out yet. But I am pleased and proud that I have that many words in one novel anywhere!

So now, shifting gears I am into the first chapter of ETFF. When I get far enough to find said characters and can get back to Haven in 3D I will have rescued the key element.

I have a build-in amount of time I can put into editing. It seems to be four or five hours and then I am spent. I am done with words. I feel like Eliza Doolittle, “Words, words, words! I’m so sick of words!”

So the key to good editing is knitting! Bye! Now, where is that little hook-doohickey?

(You see what I did there? hehe)

Today? Editing!

What is worse than looking at a blank page?

Editing!

 

Pixabay     

I spent today editing my CampNaNo story, Haven in 3D. I don’t do it like the picture, though I think I might near the end. My process is: Open yWriter project. Open Word with the RTF of that project. Then I open Grammarly Pro. Though I don’t think I am down to the words but the actual overall story, why not fix what I can as I read?

After I have cleaned up a scene in Word, I copy and paste it back into the yWriter scene and move on to the next scene. I think I added 26 words. That was a surprise because at first, I was killing words left and right.  I spent from around noon to just an hour ago. I covered one chapter and two scenes from the next chapter. I needed to do this one to have all the information I needed for the one I just finished. It is fun to get back to the spring novel. It has all my favorite Haven characters. I can’t wait to get the series up for everyone to enjoy. It could just be me. I hope not. But if so I have had a fun time living part-time in another universe!

Review: Tears and Triumphs of a New Author

Tears and Triumphs of a New Author by Robert Thornhill
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is for Kindle version ASIN B008ED36EC

Thank you, Robert Thornhill, for letting me read your book. I am so glad you had the giveaway day so that I could see the road ahead.

Mr. Thornhill has invited the readers in to view his life as a budding author. He tells how at the young age of 66 and retired, he found writing to be his passion, one he never knew he had. How this guy wrote so much and stayed so passionate about his subject matter and used just a finger and a thumb to typed two series plus this book, is absolutely amazing!

Since I have been on the road of writing through 11 books of my own, I understood that passion. But I must admit that I am a bit envious in that I don’t have a perfectionist wife to read my stories and get them to the next level. Still, I gleaned a lot of good ideas and feel more ready to start on the next steps.

I think all new authors would do well to read this personal account of the rollercoaster ride to publication. Robert never gives the opinion that he knows better than the rest of us. This is merely the paths he took and the lessons he learned. I found that refreshing.

AND this book got me curious enough to order his first book and see what its like. I’ve got to admit to loving the title.

My only problem with the book is the repetition. There were parts of his story that got repeated a few times. Being in the editing mode, I see that it can happen very easily. Hopefully, he and his editor/wife can look at that. From what I hear it is fairly easy to go into the Kindle versions and fix things.

Regardless, I will be sharing this book with writer friends of mine. We all need the kick in the butt to get to the next level like Mr. Robert Thornhill. Even this 64 year old youngin’!

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