Friday, August 31, 2012

Music...Makes the people...Come together...

Friday, Friday, gotta get down cause it's Friday. Ha, now you have that song stuck in your head! My favorite cover artist for that particular song is my four year old. :) She only knows the chourus, but it's so dang cute! Anyway, music on the brain. Obviously. Most the time I'm okay to write with whatever noise is blaring, honking, or squeaking in the background. As long as someone isn't talking to me, I'm good. Shut up, shut up, don't want to hear it! Every so often though, my characters aren't quite sure what to do, and I need some music to put them in the right mood. Notice I said my characters and not me? It's totally their fault. For example, the other day I was writing a scene in which my MC was out with a hot guy, but their dialogue just wasn't working. They were both being kind of quiet and boring. I wanted sexy and mysterious. So, I put on Haunted by Evanescence. Boom! Sexy and mysterious dialogue and it just escalated from there. You're unbelievable! What do you do when your characters aren't quite cooperating? Bonus points to whoever can name the artist for each of the songs I've quoted!

Tuesday, August 28, 2012

When inspiration hits...

I'm doing a late post today! I had the craziest dream the other night. I won't go into detail because you will think I'm crazy. My husband and sister do when I tell them my dreams, but luckily, I convinced them how seriously awesome I am before I started telling them. So, the dream....It was crazy, but it planted the seed for another story. While my current WIP is more in the fantasy genre, this one is leaning to be in the more sex, drugs, and rock and roll drama. I'm still working out the kinks for the idea of it, then gotta work out the kinks for the first draft, and yada yada yada. Just know that there's a sexy musician, a sweet girl, drugs, and love, both wanted and unwanted involved. Oh yeah, I know you're intrigued. Now, when I get ideas, I want to write them down before I forget. Thank goodness there's an app for that! For quick notes like grocery store stuff, chores, and the likes, I use an app called 'Notes'. Pretty aptly named, right? When I get ideas for a story, there's usually a lot more to it than I can summarize in a quick sentance. For these kinda things, I use an app called 'A Novel Idea'. It's AWESOME! You can put in different characters and it asks you their height, age, skin tone, even their race! It also asks what external and internal conflicts and movtivations are. You can really break down these characters and see what makes them tick! If that's not cool enough, you can add settings, scenes, locations, and attach these to whichever book you want. Did I mention you can do all this for more than one book? I love it. Whenever a thought hits like, 'x can be y at z', I just whip my phone out, got to 'A Novel Idea' and put it in! No more forgotten ideas!

Wednesday, August 22, 2012

Happy Dance!

I already missed a post! Darn Mondays! As I've mentioned before, I'm not the most organized person and have a bit of a spaz-o personality. Oh well. On the upside, I did have a good reason for missing. I wrote 5,000+ in one day! If you're shrugging your shoulders and saying, 'so? I do that everyday.' Then please know I am sticking my tongue out at you. In insane jealousy. On my good days, I'll get a couple hundred words out. This is in large part thanks to my two wonderful kids who always need me for something. Like to settle a dispute between who gets to push the baby stroller around the house. Gotta love them though! No, really, you do. Well, I'm going to continue my happy dance until someone sticks a fork in an electrical outlet.






Friday, August 17, 2012

Armed for writing

A baker's favorite tool may be their KitchenAid. A construction worker's favorite tool may be their hammer. A parent's favorite tool may be a portable gate. What about writers? My favorite tool to be armed with is a thesaurus. There's only so many times someone can smirk before you want slap it off their face. Or maybe you want to describe how happy someone is but excited doesn't cut it. You look it up in the thesaurus and decide ecstatic is a much better fit.  What's your favorite tool that you make sure is nearby your writing station at all time?

Wednesday, August 15, 2012

Scatter Brain

I know I haven't been posting long, but does anyone else notice how easily I get sidetracked? I remind myself of Dug from the movie UP, but instead of--- I had pizza for dinner. *Sigh* See what I mean? I really am like this a lot in my day to day life. It drives my husband nuts at times. Due to my lack of attention span, I don't ever keep to a schedule. While you may be thinking, "Wow, I wish I didn't have a schedule", let me tell you something, it kinda sucks. I never know when I'm going to be able to squeeze writing in, or what time I'll get around to doing dishes. Now you're probably thinking, "Ok, this lady is kinda weird". I totally agree with you! Aren't the weirdest people the most fun though? :) I wish I was one of those organized people who you know that from 10a-10:30a are eating their breakfast (Yeah, I believe in late to bed, late to rise), Monday mornings they will be gone for two hours to go grocery shopping, and every day from 3p-5p, they sit down in their nice comfy chair and let the words flow endlessly from their mind to their fingertips. There are days that I don't even get writing in *gasp* because I'm just meandering throughout my day. I've finally gotten to the point that I'm  okay with the fact that I will probably never be a particularly organized person. I'll probably always be one of the people who you call up at 2a and I'll say "Oh, I'm just cleaning the oven." Ok, that's a total lie.  It'll probably more along the lines of, "I'm biting my nails because Edward just asked Bella to marry!" Don't tell me you don't get excited even when you read it for the 20th time. What are some things you wish you could change about yourself at times?

Monday, August 13, 2012

Spell Check

Spelling has always come pretty easy to me. Great, now I know I'm going to end up misspelling a bunch of words in this post and be called out on it. Bear with me, ok? Every super hero has a flaw, something that can knock him (or her) down. Superman->kryptonite, you know that sort of thing. My super spelling powers always suffer when I have to spell definately, oops, I mean definitely. Gets me almost every darn time! My other kryptonite is people. I always want to spell it 'pepole'. My secret is out, let me have it! While you're laughing at me (admit it, you totally are), share in my embarrassment and tell me what words are your kryptonite.


Friday, August 10, 2012

Sneaky!



One of my favorite movies is Down With Love with Ewan McGregor and Renee Zellweger. I love the sexual tension and twists and turns and conceiving antics of the the characters. (Plus Ewan and his sexy accent? Yum!) In a tiny nutshell, Barbara Novack (Zellweger) writes a best selling novel called Down With Love that teaches women how to take control of their own lives and be happy without needing men. Catcher Block (McGregor) is a playboy journalist who is determined to prove Barabara wrong. During a tv interview (not with Block), Barbara says her sales doubled when all the men snuck out to by her book to see what the female population was reading, and her sales tripled after a church group burned her books then snuck out to buy new copies to replace the old. Ok, now I'm at the point of the story I wanted to share. Go watch the movie to find out the rest! With 50 Shades of Grey as popular as it is now, I wonder how many people have snuck out, bought it and read it. I did at first. It wasn't until I read all 3 books that I admitted to reading them. I loved the books, don't get me wrong, but they're naughty, especially for Utah, in my opinion. I loved every minute of them. ;) For those of you that read them, are you biting your lip and proud of it? Or are you hiding in the playroom hoping no one finds you?

Thursday, August 9, 2012

Pick me!

Ok, an unscheduled post, but Megan from Reading for Refuge is doing a giveaway on her blog for Chantelle Sedgwick's newly published book, Not Your Average Fairytale. This is totally meant for me because I just found out I missed the giveaway from Chantelle's blog and was totally bummed. Anywho, go here to read a bit about Not Your Average Fairytale and enter in the giveaway.

Wednesday, August 8, 2012

What do you write on?


Do you prefer papyrus? Maybe banana leaves are more your style. Ok, so I may be a century or two off. Let's fast forward into the world of technology. Most people these days own a desk top computer. Mac or PC, that's all on you. I personally have a PC, but my husband wants to get a Mac next. I'm down with that, Justin Long is cuter than that other guy after all. Hey, maybe we're even related! Back to the subject....Do you write on your desk top? Or do you have a laptop that you've nicknamed Typo? I do most of my writing on my desk top. I'm used to the keyboard and I know how it works, but it's a bit hard to bring outside when the kids want me to watch them build their sand castles. A couple years ago, my husband got an iPad from work. Instead of giving into my begging and pleading and not so subtle hints for a laptop, he got me a keyboard for the iPad instead and saved us at least $200. Thanks to Dropbox and an app called CloudOn, I'm able to jump back and forth from my desktop to the iPad. The only problem is my new keyboard is a bit touchy and I end up double typing letters. A lot. I'm trying to get used to it, but may just spend $20 on a new keyboard. So, what do you write on?