My Reading for the Remainder of 2012

At the time of this writing I have read 75 books out of the 85 I had planned.  I'm ahead of schedule.  I will no doubt finish my goal with no problem.  I didn't have a reading plan when I started at the beginning of this year, and now that the year is almost over, it seems silly to have any goals, but I have a few to make the last 3 months go off without a hitch.

1.  For November only:  Read Books that are 300 pages or less.  Preferably 200 pages or less.  This is because I plan to participate in Nanowrimo, and my reading time will be taken up with writing time and I want to make sure I can finish a few books in November.

2.  I am doing an alphabetical title challenge on Goodreads.  I need to read 3 more books.  The letters I need are Q, U & V.  I need to read these before December 31st.

3.  Any audiobooks will be 6 hours or less.  

4.  Balance Christmas reading.  Last year I read a lot, but I didn't read much else during December. I like Christmas books, but I will not read as many this year as last year (I say that now).

5.  No more non-fiction (except the one Christmas Non-fiction book I have planed), for the rest of the year.  Non-Fiction dominated my reading this year.  Time to put it to bed.

I think these are 5 doable goals.

I will be posting my reading goals for 2013 in a few days.  As well as some ideas for keeping up with my journals / writers notebooks.

Writing Space

I bought this desk in March.  I worked on it but it wasn't really set up for any type of writing.  I finally got things sort of the way I want them.  I'm sure this will evolve over time.  I have to see what works and what doesn't.

Nothing on the cork board yet...hey, these things are important.  I haven't had a place to work other than my lap for about 9 years.  It is nice.

OK so it is not beautiful but hey, it is functional.

New Blog for my Writings

I've decided it is time to seperate my writing from my book/movie blog. Therefore I started a new one. There is nothing really there yet, so if you are one that follows my writing, please go to the following link:

http://cwbusy.blogspot.com/

All my ROW-80 updates will be in this blog from now on.

ROW 80 - Check in 4-6

1st post for Round 2 (although this is my 1st round) Monday was not much of a writing day for me. I did work on my assignment for WVU some. Tuesday I did more reading on the craft. I'm reading 2 books Writing Fiction for Dummies and The Modern Library Writers Workshop. It takes me a long time to get through them because I'm always taking notes. I'm also listening to Writing Down the Bones by Natalie Goldberg. I'll be working on my class assignments this week, one of which is to edit a short story.

I also did some long-hand writing in my book. Just germs, but I hope to put them into a future story or work into a book idea.

A Round of Words in 80 Days – Round Two!

This is my first time doing ROW-80. It came to my attention through one of my blog friends.

Round Two: April 4 – June 23, 2011

I'm enrolled in some online writing classes at Writers Village University, so I am forced to write stuff every week anyway, but this gives me the push to do something other than my assignments every day.

This blog is not a dedicated writing blog. I do not feel I write regularly enough to warrant one, so my check-ins will be within this blog. I mainly keep this blog to books and movies so it kind of fits in.

If anyone is interested, the sign up linky is here. You can read the other participants goals for Round 2.

My Goals (subject to change)

Write at least 1,500 words per week.

Complete and polish 2 short-stories.

Start outlining novel.

Read a lot about the craft.

That will be it for now. I want to achieve my goals. But anything extra I do manage to do will be included in my check-ins.

One Possible Goal

I've been reading that blogging helps writers write better. I've been blogging for a long time, and occasionally I blog a thought provoking post (most of the time it is a lot of pulp). I blog regularly so consistency isn't the problem. However, I am going to attempt to do one thought provoking post per week. It will be either on reading or movies or maybe even writing. Let's see what the wind brings.

Short Story Writing 2011

I have written my first short story in two years. The last time I wrote a story was in March 2009. It is called "Vines". I recently re-read that story and cringed. The idea was good, the execution, not so good. I don't remember really editing it, so I'm sure I could get it to be much better.

The story I wrote this week is entitled "The House Began to Shake". It was for a WVU class. I have been up at nights trying to figure out what I'm going to write about. I started it and then changed my mind, I had a bad case of writer's block. But then I decided to just write and see what comes out. I'm not disappointed in it. I actually read it over and cried. I cried at my own story, good lord.

My mind is racing because I have been reading a lot about short story writing. It is such a different animal than novel writing. And to make matters worse, they want this story in 1st person. I'm not a 1st person writer, I can write in 1st person, although I prefer to write in 3rd person. This was tricky since the protagonist dies 2/3 of the way through the story, now how does one narrate dead? Think "The Lovely Bones".

I managed to get most of the adjectives and adverbs out. To my count there are only 2, they are both adverbs though, however, sometimes you just need that one to get your point across. I mean, when you are a sixteen year old girl, and you grab a huge man, you better grab him "gently".

I still have trouble with the "Show don't Tell" concept. I think most of the story is shown, except in part II where it gets a little narrat-y (made up word) in the first three paragraphs. I have until Tuesday to work this out.

The story limit is 2,500, I top out at the moment at around 1,600+. So I have some room to play with it.

I also am to write another short story starting next week for another class at WVU. I won't be up late at night thinking about this one as I already have this story mapped. Hopefully I can get it down on paper the way I see it in my mind. And then come the critiques, I'm sure they'll be brutal.

Writers Village University

I found a cool site for writers.

Writers Village University. This is an on-line course site that offers classes on writing. You can find courses in fiction (short story, novel...etc), non-fiction, poetry, etc. They even have MFA courses. It is $69 a year ($99 the first year because of the one $30 fee). I am taking a few courses at the moment and they are very helpful. Some of them are peer-facilitated, while others have a facilitator.

There is a free site that is associated with it called F2K Social. I have not joined that, but what I hear from others is that it is a good stepping stone before you sign up for WVU. It seems to be run differently, but it is still a good chance to see what it is about before commiting.

I haven't written for an on-line writing site in a while, but my first partial story was pretty bad. It was about 4 guys in the 1920s playing poker in a seedy, smoke filled bar. OK, I didn't pick the topic, it was given to me, I just picked the era and the place. What do I know about Poker? or the 1920s for that matter.

Hickey stood and pulled his piece from his waistband. “You wanna rephrase that last comment?” His gap toothed smile and tick gave way to a stone face and steady hand.

That's right, I have a character named Hickey!! What of it? LOL!

The course is loads of fun, it is having me write things I would not normally write. I mean really...

Also I found a very good Readability Calculator on line. I like this one because it is indepth. However, if you are trying to achieve a certain type of lingo, it kind of reads it as poor English, so take it with a grain of salt.

Book Reviews

Imaginary Jesus by Matt Mikalatos
240 Pages

Mikalatos writes this in first person. He takes us through his world of Imaginary Jesuses. We first meet him and his traditional imaginary Jesus, the one with blue eyes and long blonde hair, but we quickly see that our view of Jesus is not traditional through the eyes of others, but rather we imagine Jesus the way we need him to be.

Mikalatos runs into the Secret Society of Imaginary Jesuses, and is quickly overwhelmed with a bevvy of Jesuses for every occation and every individual.

This is mainly a book about searching for the true God, but it has a humorous slant. My favorite part is when Mikalatos meets the Mormons Elder Laurel and Elder Hardy (yes that's right Laurel and Hardy), and their conversations are laugh out loud funny.

Interesting enough to keep your attention but not offensive to turn a Christian off.

4 out of 5 stars

Accidental Genius by Mark Levy

Audiobook narrated by Bronson Pinchot

Unabridged 4+hours

In this book, Mark Levy talks about how free writing can help generate ideas. This is not just a guide for writers, it is a guide for anyone who needs to generate new ideas, whether it be in business or life.

Throughout the 29 chapters, Levy gives insight as to how the process works. He gives examples and prompts and shows why it works. At the end of each chapter he suggests an excersise.

Free Writing can be a useful tool, especially when we are stuck.

One prompt that stuck with me, that I've used several time now is:

The night smelled like...

This book is narrated by the smooth voice of actor Bronson Pinchot. I cannot tell you how important it is to have a good narrator for an audiobook.

App for Nanowrimo

I discovered a new app. Someone posted about it on the Nanowrimo forums. I've been testing it out and I think it will work fine. Since I'm temping and don't know where I will be from one day to the next, and I do a lot of my nanoing at work, I will always have to remember to send my stuff home via email and to clean it off of the computer every day. What a pain, I thought. Then someone mentioned My Writing Nook. It is an on-line website where you can write from any computer and it is saved on-line, as opposed to on a hard drive. You can send yourself an email with it as well so you can have a back up. It has word count, It has dictionary and spell check. It also is an app for iphone/ipad/itouch/Android.

I was iffy about it, because sometimes when I am on the train, I get ideas. I hate to have to pull out my Molskine to write something. I was wondering if this would work, since it is on-line. But it does work. You can type anything, you can sync it later. You will never lose a thought.

This is put out by Google. I remember Google did something like this a few years ago, I think it was called Google Doc, but I don't know what happened to it, but I like this, especially because of the app.

So all of my nanoing this year will be done on this website & app. Check it out and see if it works for you.

I Write Like... & Up the Down Staircase.

This cool link was brought to my attention.
I Write Like

It analyzes you writing, and tells you who you most write like. I was wondering if it was more of a random generator. A lot of people on the board I found the link on got Stephen King. And so did I, the first time.

I whipped up a two paragraph random piece of fiction. Not really thinking about it, just something quick. When I got Stephen King, I thought "OK yeah." I mean, I love Stephen, but we all can't write like him! Then I thought about putting up a non-fiction piece. I put up one of my blog posts about being Catholic, and guess who it said I write like? Dan Brown.

Tell me that's not funny! LOL!

I'm sure there is little science to this. It probably picks out random words and uses that as some type of algorithm I suppose. But it is all in fun.

Yesterday I watched a movie from 1967 entitled "Up the Down Staircase" starring Sandy Dennis.

A young white teacher has her first assignment in a tough urban high school. Not a new storyline as "The Blackboard Jungle" tackled it first. Nor was it the final one as "Dangerous Minds" came decades after. However, this is one of the better ones I've seen.

Ms. Barrett is an inexperienced teacher who teaches English to a group of rowdy high school students. As it is set in the late 60s, we see a lot of racial tension. With that in the background, she has to deal with kids who are abused, neglected, have self-esteem issues, sexual identity crisis, basically, she is dealing with the reality of being a teacher.

There is that one student that gets under her skin. The more she reaches, the more he resists. There is the student that shows appreciation for her, thus changing her outlook.

Those of us who like to read, will like the fact that Ms. Barrett is an English teacher and talks about Emily Dickinson and Charles Dickens. The class reads "A Tale of Two Cities", and discusses it, though not in depth in this movie.

I'm usually iffy on the movies from the late 60s/early 70s, but this one is very good.

4 out of 5 stars.

On a side note, I felt sad when I saw Florence Stanley in this movie. Those of you may remember Ms. Stanley from the hit TV show "Fish" starring Abe Vigoda.

I met Florence in the strangest of places. We had a class together. It was at the 96th Street Y in Manhattan. We were in a writing class, along with several other people. She was the most senior person in the class. No one else recognized her, but I sure did. It was the early 90s, and she was living in NYC at the time.

We struck up a friendship. She was a lovely woman, and very down to earth. I am not sure if anyone ever recognized her, and I never gave her secret away. We lost her 7 years ago, I think about her every now and again. I was sad but also happy to see here in the movie. Haven't seen anything by her in a while.