Jul
25
2010
I’ve been looking for a while at different ways to save money. I’ve had a lot of people suggest coupons to me, but I can never wrap my way around that because I usually can’t find coupons for things that I use, or if I do find coupons it doesn’t seem enough to be worth it.
I’ve heard friends talking about saving over half their grocery bills by using coupons, one friend recently saved at least $35. Of course I’m envious, and I’m sure there are ways that I could do the same thing but I can’t wrap my head around it. I should try to. It’d help us out a lot. Though part of it is that a lot of coupon sites are very confusing, and I’ll admit I get distracted or I forget that I was meaning to look for coupons until we’re halfway around the grocery store. On the upside our local store often has two for one deals which they will double up with in-house coupons and while that means we do save things it doesn’t maximize our saving potential.
Jul
13
2010
I’m thinking of setting up a reward card for when I write, much the same as I used to do with my son when he was potty training. I can set up a little chart for myself and when I write I can get a point. If I write over a certain amount then extra points and things like that.
I’m not entirely sure how it would work. I don’t want to trap myself into deadlines because it can be counter-productive much the same way that some times at Nano there are stalls for a while because of the pressure from the having to get a certain amount done. Hopefully I can do it in a certain way so that there’s no pressure and expectation just bonuses when certain things are done. The thing is with a reward system there has to be a reward of some kind and I’m not sure what I could reward myself with.
Jul
13
2010
A friend on livejournal tried out this meme and it told her that she predominantly wrote like Stephen King. I decided to try it with snippets from various drafts I’ve done over the years.
The first part I analyzed was what I’m working on right now which is parts of the werewolf story which are from J.C’s perspective while he’s in wolf mode.
Now, the beginning of the whole werewolf story which is more Jay-centric.
“Too Deep” story:
The Condor story:
Kiddy’s story:
Hope Academy:
Can’t Cry (one of the first stories I wrote and one that actually completed (sort of) but I was 16 and I re-read it now and I’m going ack-ack-ack-ack!!!)
Sanctity story:
Jul
10
2010
Here’s some bits from the werewolf story. This is one of the “vignettes” given it’s set quite a bit on in the timeline and involves a character that the other players thought was dead.
They think I’m still asleep. Lay still, keep breathing slow. I can feel straps on legs, arms. May as well be paper. Now is time to lay still though.
“I just thought you should know,” male, tender, “The amount we’ve had to put in his system. Surprised it’s not gone toxic. We should lay off…”
“No,” it’s the one from before. She was all pissed because the Anna lady calmed me down and she couldn’t, “He’s dangerous. It’s best to keep him down. Wean off though because I need to talk to him–sort out where he comes from so he can go back there.”
“But Anna–”
“I don’t care what Anna said. She’s not in charge of this ward. I am. Call me when he wakes up though. I have to go sort out an admission. Some idiot girl overdosed on weight loss pills.”
“It’s comforting to know you’re so concerned about our patients,” dripping sarcasm.
I make like I’m waking up, groggy mumbles and attempts to stretch and show shock at being tied down, “What? What’s going on?” I pull at the straps but not hard enough to rip them through.
“Good to see you,” one says, clearly not happy.
The guy next to her looks apologetic.
“Have we remembered anything more about who we are? What’s your name?”
“John.”
“Are you sure?” she folds her arms, mouth thin line, “or did you just overhear us calling you John Doe?”
At least my voice is cooperating more, “I may not remember much, but I remember that John. J.C.”
“So, John C…something? or just John C…Cooper or…”
“John C. something.” I confirm. Certainty growing.
“At least you didn’t say Smith, I suppose,” she sighs.
Initially the matron was going to be another man; but I got hung up on memories of the prim, bitter charge nurses running the wards remembering the stories my Grandad used to tell of the obnoxious night sister who ran the ward and deliberately put him on horrendous duties because she didn’t like having a male nurse on her staff.
Jul
10
2010
I’ve started on a bit of something that’s technically taboo but I figure it’s worth it to continue the werewolf story. My room mate had read some of it for me when I was initially writing and pointed out that the beginning had a drastic amount of over information that would swamp a reader, and that I should probably start the work a bit later on. Up until this last week I’ve been continuing on with it anyway because I had all the input and needed to get it out so that I could not have it in my head. So, rather than pulling my hair out over the issue I moved on this is good for several reasons not least of which that there really isn’t a hair loss treatment for women that will fix it if I pull my own hair out.
So, there I am soldiering along and then I start getting stuck so I start skipping around writing little vignettes that are dotted around in the story’s time line and then this last week I went back and copied what I have from the initial draft into a separate file so that I can start again. It’s not exactly starting over but at the same time I needed to re-write a lot through the first few thousand words because information that is pertinent and not over-loading needs to be in there so that people aren’t lost. There was no explanation of who Cora, Clair, Stu and Jared were as they related to each other because that was all in the first section that I’ve cut out to be interspersed in flashback throughout the story now. So, I have to include those in the descriptions now. So far it’s working pretty well. I’ve pared down a vision scene which starts the book, shortening a lot of text down to sentence fragments to hopefully make it a bit more feral and I’m also working on expanding one of the later pieces that I only have about 500 words on so far.
Jul
07
2010
I was thinking this morning about the irony of the last doctor’s appointment that I went to. I was all ready to ask him what he thought was the best weight loss supplement so I could get him to prescribe it to me, because I was at the desperate point of wanting to lose weight; and it turns out that my thyroid level is out of whack and so he prescribed me synthroid to fix that so that I would be able to right my metabolism and since then I’ve lost about four pounds and my energy level is returning which is going to be able to work in tandem to keep that going.
It’s gotten me thinking about weight issues and appetites of certain characters. The two stories that I’m working on right now feature very different takes on food. Sam, from “Too Deep” is liable to eat anything that’s not nailed down and hoard what he can because he’s so used to not having enough to eat, whereas Jay from the werewolf story hardly eats at all, which is a big issue with him and his family; and I still haven’t quite nailed down why this is on his part. He has plenty of food. He can eat. You’d figure werewolves have a really high metabolism and need to eat A LOT.
Jul
07
2010
That’s web work NOT wet work. I’ve taken a few days off from work on stories because I’ve been sorting out some online things. I had a bit of an alternate muse takeover, in the sense that I was doing a redesign of a website just for fun, which, to be honest, it’s been a while since I’ve done that; not only did that happen but I also taught myself how to make css stylesheets and how to use them, and did an entire CSS site from scratch based on a layout I’d already done and was using iframes for but now functions through image maps.
I’ve been trying for months to grasp css and php but it just won’t stick. However this past week I was able to do a fairly complex image map within two hours. I’m very pleased with myself and my clarity of thinking this is a good amount of progress. However, there are still a few things that I can’t do without a builder of some sort, such as slide shows. One of these days I’ll get it; but I’m going to practice with stylesheets and things a bit more; then see if I can actually make a wordpress theme from scratch and then we’ll move on to something else.
Jul
01
2010
I’m at the point where I’m actually loathe to put vampires into the werewolf story. There are so many vampires in modern culture at the moment. Between “Twilight”, “True Blood” and “The Vampire Diaries” and various other shows like “The Gates” coming up then I’m worried that the market is getting over-saturated.
Granted I haven’t seen much with werewolves. Werewolves pop up periodically in the vampire stories. I’ve seen the most recent episodes of “True Blood” actually have some werewolves in them but so far I haven’t seen them in “The Vampire Diaries”. It’s just…all these ‘creatures of the night’ hiding out in the day time in their walled up windowed rooms with the Quoizel lighting on to protect themselves from natural daylight.
They can be creepy but they can also be cliche. On the upside at least they don’t sparkle when I write about them.
Jun
28
2010
I some times have problems with these. I don’t want the characters to all wind up being carbon copies of each other like my Sims often wind up being. I have a ton of goth style sims with multi-colored hair and very unisexual in looks a lot of the time. It’s hard for me to sort out how someone who wears hip hop clothing would look as I don’t, and most people I know don’t either. So, while I might be able to look at TV shows and see people in those clothes I have no idea what is actually “in”. It makes me feel old, but there you are. My co-worker’s niece not knowing that Beyonce was in Destiny’s Child also made me feel old.
On the one hand it’s safe to stick with ways of describing people that you like, but other people aren’t necessarily going to like or be able to relate to that, and also if all the characters are the same in look you may as well be writing horrendous fan-fiction.
Jun
28
2010
I *love* my muse some times /sarc. I was up until about 11 p.m. last night hoping for the writing bean to strike, but it didn’t. I would flux between playing DOA and watching the season finale of Dr. Who, and nothing would come. Any time I got a niggling of an idea and I put whatever I was doing on pause to follow it up then thread would snap and I’d be left zoning out to a blinking cursor.
So, I finally decide about 11 p.m. that I’m going to go to bed early so I can get up first thing in the morning and perhaps exercise outside before it gets too hot. I spend about a half hour talking over something with my room mate and go to the bedroom to sleep. Then I wind up scribbling away in a notebook until 12:30 a.m.
Thank you muse! It better be good is all I can say because it meant that I didn’t wake up until almost 9 a.m. by which point it’s already too hot to be outside for more than a few minutes :p Florida while I’m at it!
