ryokogal

Writing group meeting in an hour. Spent the last five hours (seriously!) reading and critiquing 40k words because I just can't be bothered to plan ahead. Orororo... @_@

On the other hand, writing group meetings are always good to spike my writer's bug into gear. Current plan: complete YA novel draft by mid-March, so that I can submit chapters 1-2 for review at the beginning of March, get them reviewed at the mid-March meeting (preferably after draft is complete) and then dive right into revision.

I just can't buckle down. So easily distracted by other stories and ideas. Case in point: wrote prologue chapter yesterday for YA novel sequel, because it wouldn't leave me alone. Yes, SEQUEL. There's that damn optimism again, assuming the first book will actually be published, and also be successful enough to demand additional story. Yikes, yikes, and more yikes.

Planning to go sledding tomorrow morning while the snow lasts and I have a day off work. :) Then writing in the afternoon, with you-know-who if she's up for it. *nudge*

Yet more proof that I am a dork.

Like you needed more proof. And like I needed another hobby, right? Current plan is M-W-F posting. My first non-personal blog. A quasi-professional (or at best hope, an amusingly informative) blog.

Or, just a silly blog. Oh well. I keep telling myself it's good practice for freelance-writing a REAL blog rather than the odd ramblings I post here. But in reality, I'm having fun and it makes me giggle every time I look at it, so it's worth it. :) Feedback on it is welcome here, btw. Too wordy? Too uppity? Too...silly? ;)

I have bananas going bad downstairs that I really want to make banana-chocolate-chip muffins out of. But it's too late to bake muffins now. Boo. :(

Went to the ConText convention this weekend, sort of a print-focused scifi/fantasy convention including writing workshops, paneled seminars, and a small vendor room that was made up of like 4 book vendors and an anime/movie vendor. Probably one of the few scifi/fantasy conventions that has an Editor Guest of Honor. :)

I had preregistered for 3 of the writing workshops (some of the others were full by the time I registered) and I took no less than 16 journal-pages worth of notes. (I specify this because my journal page is only about 2/3 the size of a sheet of standard notebook paper.) A few of those pages were from lectures/seminars that weren't about writing and were more about the genre, market, etc., and at least a page worth was me applying some of the concepts to my stories or ideas as it occurred to me during the seminar. But still - 16 pages is a lot of notes!

The three workshops I attended were great - one was on world-building, one on plotting the novel, and one on writing cover letters & synopses (which was great to end the con with, as it got me pumped to go look for markets and dig up and send out things I already have finished.) The frustrating thing, as with most conventions, is that there's almost too many options. Anytime I was scheduled for a writing seminar there was always some really interesting-sounding talk scheduled elsewhere at the same time. :(

I also finally got to meet Matt Cook. He had his first novel, Blood Magic, published this month, and I helped proofread it by the fact that I'm a less-than-active member of the writing critique group he's in. Good book; he's working on a sequel now too. We'd communicated through email, and even exchanged some more social-chatty ones after the proofing was done, but as I never seem to get to the workshop meetings I hadn't met him. I finally met him at the room party Saturday night (name tags are a wonderful thing) where we proceeded to talk about writing, markets and publishing, sci-fi and fantasy genres in general, and some of our favorite books for about four hours. Not kidding. It was fantastic! We probably would've kept going except the room party was breaking up and everyone else was heading to Waffle House. I figured since it was 2am and I was singing in choir the next day I should probably go home. :P

Aside from the rather claustrophobic hallways of the conference center/hotel, it was a great experience. :) I now need to decide whether to try and finish a novel or polish and send out a short story I've been struggling with for a while.

Les amusements du jour (or du soir? I dunno, I made that up, I don't speak French):

If you love lolcats, you might like "lollergirls"... http://lollergirls.blogspot.com/

If you don't know what lolcats are, I pity you. Go here quickly before I must disown you as a friend: http://www.icanhascheezburger.com

And just because it's funny, crude, and yet amazingly talented all at the same time:



I believe the song is Weird Al. Yes, I am a geek.