Tag Archives: autoblogging

Writing Dates

cowriting, garbage post, my writing, personal life, Uncategorized, , ,

thanks, memegenerator.com!One of the things I constantly struggle with is finding time for writing. I work full time, have a toddler, and occasionally pretend to have a social life, family life, or marriage. When the heck am I going to fit in writing?

I jot stuff down from time to time, of course, but usually my best ideas come when–I’m way too busy to do anything about them.

And I’m not at a point where I can turn it on like a faucet and just squeeze in half an hour of writing every day. (Someday, maybe?)

So one thing that I’ve been trying to make time for is writing dates: times when I set aside time with some accountability partners to Get Shit Done.

Sometimes this is more effective–when I’m primed for it–and sometimes less (like tonight, when I’m tired after a three-day weekend where I was solo parenting while C worked). It can be really hard to hit that sweet spot. I think making it more regular might help, though, so my writing buddies and I have agreed on two more dinner-and-writing dates in the next three weeks–meaning that, hopefully, I’ll have 10 more pages to turn in to my writing group by our next meeting! Right?

 

….right????

 

D:

Late for Saturday, or early for Tuesday…?

my writing, personal life, teaching, writing exercises, ,

Sometimes it’s so hard to tell.

The beginning of a new semester is always tricky, but especially when you’re sick (still? again? who even knows at this point).

I have a new bunch of students in Creative Writing this semester, and it’s about half the size of last semester’s class–and 80% male. This is the first time I’ve had enough kids sign up to teach it twice in a year, but with the smaller group I suspect it’s going to be a very different experience. Last semester had a lot of humor and several big personalities, and this semester seems like mostly silent students.

But our first unit is Creative Nonfiction, so I’m looking forward to having them write and design their own Six-Word Memoirs.

I just killed like an hour looking for the one I designed on Canva, but have now given up on that. My six-word memoir: “Learned more from teaching than school.”

What’s yours?

 

off to a great (?) start

cowriting, my writing, revisions, , , , ,

not-off-to-a-good-startHey, remember how I was going to blog twice a week, Tuesdays and Saturdays??

Yeah. And…

Today is Wednesday.

Hmm.

On the plus side, I spent about four hours yesterday working on writing (lesson plans, work emails, and then–eventually!!–working on the RSWIP with my cowriter in a super-sweet new-to-me coffee shop. So good overall! And I do intend to continue with Tues/Sat as my preferred blog schedule… even though this week I was lying in bed ready to sleep Tuesday night before my eyes flew open in a panic as I remembered I’d forgotten to update the blog.

getsmartAaaanywho, despite having pulled a Maxwell Smart on my first regular blog update of the year (whoooops), I did still get a good deal of writing done, and I’m excited about it–tonight I’m back at it and have just cut over 1200 words from the draft I’m revising.

AND I’m also strangely nervous about this, but I’m going to be submitting pages from the RSWIP to my crit group. Why is this weird? Who knows. Why is this somehow scarier than giving them pages from the YA-SFF-WIP? Maybe because this is Romantic Suspense and nobody in IndyScribes “writes romance” (although most people’s stuff has romantic subplots from time to time) and I feel weirdly embarrassed and dorky about liking Romance, despite the fact that it sells super well, and is super popular, and since when do I care about people thinking I’m a weirdo?!?!

I was nervous the first time I sent them pages from the YASFFWIP, too, so probably it’s just that overall nervousness of “okay I’ve been working on this with my whole heart and soul for literally years now but tell me what you REALLY think of it” and I’m sure it’ll be fine.

Right?

New Year, New Me? (Nah)

housekeeping, Lilly grant, my writing, personal life, Uncategorized, , , , ,

archer-wiki_characters_archer-vice_skinny-pam_01Well, after my flurry of November activity/NaNoWriMo, I sure did taper off on blogging, didn’t I?

And since today’s New Year’s Day, it’s a perfect time to resolve to blog more in 2017!

Among other resolutions, of course. But don’t worry, no “new me” stuff — as Pam says, I really like me. Continue reading New Year, New Me? (Nah) →

Retreat to Move Forward

cowriting, fanfic, my writing, NaNoWriMo, personal life, revisions, , , , , ,

jackdonaghySo, tonight instead of writing words, I cut about 600 from the draft of the first chapter of the co-written Romantic Suspense WIP. (I need a better name for that. TCWRSWIP? Hmm, not much better, actually… And my writing partner and I definitely agree that I’m not allowed to come up with titles for anything else. Maybe I’ll see if she’s got any ideas.)

Anyway! I sort of can’t believe how much I’ve learned in the two-year fallow period I spent in between bursts of work on TCWRSWIP (for lack of a better title). I’ve been reading a lot about story structure, scene structure, beats, etc. at Jenny Crusie’s side project blog, and that has helped a lot; and, of course, the first version of this scene was sort of a trial balloon that Chel wrote to see if I had any interest in the concept (4 years and 143k+ words later, I think it’s safe to say yes–yes I did). But the story has changed very significantly since then in our minds.

So that draft did its job (get the writers interested).  Continue reading Retreat to Move Forward →

Craft Show Madness

cowriting, garbage post, NaNoWriMo, personal life, , , ,

I’m in Cincinnati this weekend for a craft show, my mom’s birthday, my grama’s birthday, to see my aunt who’s visiting from Arizona, my brother, my great-aunt, and assorted other aunts and cousins, and to grade some papers, coordinate Thanksgiving plans with a bunch of people who are currently not texting or emailing me back… and work on not giving in to this cold that I’m not–not, dag-nabbit, I am NOT–catching.

And I definitely meant to write a good entry, but I’ve been running around like crazy since about 5 am and there’s just… there’s just  nothing.

I have been thinking about how much better the New Beginning of my co-written novel is going to be once it’s completely rewritten (working on that now) and how much of the old stuff we’re going to have to discard or change completely now that Our Heroine has been completely overhauled. I got about… thirty more seconds into the scene I’m working on??

I’ll try again tomorrow.

There Is No Weekend

garbage post, NaNoWriMo, personal life, teaching, , , , , ,
This is Avery Jessup, reminding you...
This is Avery Jessup, reminding you…

Today’s Friday, and I’ve had a nice, relaxing evening – play with baby, watch Project Runway with Cam, drink a glass of wine that made me want to go to sleep immediately, etc.

Tomorrow we go to Cincinnati for a craft show, and to visit my family, and we’ll be back Sunday, and then three days of school and then we’re hosting Thanksgiving, and the someting-something-Friendsgiving-idk and then work and then the first weekend in December I’m going on a road trip to Chicago to sell more cutting boards while Cameron goes to do the same in Philly. And then… finals and Christmas!

So… I’m starting to have that glazed-eye look and short fuse that signal it’s mid-November! WATCH OUT, HAHA!

In more cheerful news, my advisory did the #mannequinchallenge:

Kitten’s Got Claws

NaNoWriMo, personal life, teaching, , , ,
A selfie that I took this morning right after only 7 of 17 students in one of my classes turned in the major project that was due today.
A selfie that I took this morning right after only 7 of 17 students in one of my classes turned in the major project that was due today.

Well, we’ve reached the portion of the school year where I run out of fucks to give.

Coming up on Thanksgiving, as usual: I’m behind on grading; students are starting to realize that their terrible grades are going to be permanent if they don’t get it together; lots of classes are demanding work from students; behavior is slipping; suspensions are rising; fights are breaking out; and, wouldn’t you know it, there’s a SuperMoon? (I’m not 100% sure what a SuperMoon is, exactly, but I do know that teenagers–like werewolves–react badly to full moons. I am not making this up. Ask any teacher.)

So I spent most of today irritated and full of rage. Which I try to contain. But I know for a fact that I get a little bit snappy.  Continue reading Kitten’s Got Claws →