Wheee!  So I totally passed up buying a Beauty and the Beast novel that focused on a modern day version from the perspective of the beast - because I found a copy of Beauty by Robin McKinley! I check the Borders we do our weekly crit group at every so often to see if they have any other McKinley books in that I don't own already - and this week there were two copies of Beauty that were not there before! I was very happy.  And we finished the group early enough there was plenty of time to go wandering around.  Which considering it was Suzan, Linda and I was a bad thing.  I'm far too easily encouraged to buy - and Suzan and Linda are all too willing to suggest - especially Suzan!  I bought a book called The Princetta, which is a story about a princess turned pirate.  That's all I needed to know to buy it....

I'm very excited about what my fellow critique group is writing and I look forward every week to seeing their stories unfold.  I'm still focused on finishing The Barking Dog before I bring any more chapters, which means at best another month or two before I'm really ready.  But that's okay!

Progress is being made in that quarter as well.  I'm coming to the close of the section which will mark a big achievement in my opinion.  I hope that next month, despite my mom's race and the quickly populated weekends I will be able to write more focused than this month.

I'm still pumped from reading The God Engines and driving home I puzzled through some other points of the book that left me thinking.  It's a fascinating read!  I'm going to read another McKinley book, Spindle's End, next.  I'm starting to attempt to think through some of the other books on my shelves and put them in some sort of order of how I want to read them.  Of course I know I'll pick one up when I feel like reading it, but I should try to get through some of the others soon!!

So far this week is going by slowly, but I'm being very productive.  Wrote a bunch yesterday, got a lot of stuff done.  Finished one book, read another, wrote a really good chunk and set up the next, necessary bit.  I'm starting to think about the rest of the week.  Tomorrow night Amanda and I are going to church in Grand Prairie.  Thursday and Friday nights will be spent at home, I believe, during which I will clean and read and write in preparation for the weekend.  Saturday a bunch of us are going to TCC for a creative writing workshop and Sunday is craft day.  Lots happening, really exciting, and look - the Olympics are on!

Okay, so today is the year anniversary of all the new credit card restrictions.  Supposedly this is going to make the big, bad evil credit companies behave! Except.... things have only gotten worse.  Look, I know I don't even begin to understand all the rules and what's going on, but I do know that before all this mess I managed very well on my own.  Yes, I had a balance I was kicking myself about, but I was paying it off and the interest rate wasn't awful.  I'm not sure what it is now, it's something I need to do a little detective work and figure out, but things are getting stupid.  I paid off a credit card two weeks ago - or was it a week ago? Whatever! I paid it off, I'm so excited that I did! In another six months I'll have paid off another one and then it's time to tackle the black holes in my life; my two albatross birds.  However, credit rates and rules are going crazy.  I understand that in the long term this is supposed to be helpful, but right now it sucks and it's frustrating and I'd like nothing more than for it to all have never happened.

Next on the list.  Health care.  Excuse me Mr President, but we have a war going on.  Yes, I'm sure health care is very important, but in this economy, with a war going on, I think there are other things to worry about other than gouging me of every penny I have.  I'm literally dreading when we have to change insurance; seriously dreading it.  How much is it going to go up?  Will I be able to afford it?  What else is going to be up'd in price?

We're experiencing a terrible winter this year.  Tomorrow it's going to snow again and if we get the projected two inches of snow we'll have had the snowiest winter ever in Texas.  This means it's been cold here.  The winter is usually when I can get by with tiny heating bills and save up some extra money.  Not this year.  I'm paying as much, if not more than I did to cool my apartment.

I know I'm complaining, but all of these things are out of my control.  I can't exactly get the credit card companies attention, and if I could they wouldn't care.  The president doesn't care about little me, he's thinking about the country and the long-term plans.  And the weather sure as heck doesn't care!

Today is Monday, can't you tell?  I had a mostly sleepless weekend because of dreams and just not being able to stay asleep. I even went to bed early last night and I'm more exhausted today than I have been in a while.

Friday was loads of fun because I spent it with Amanda and we ate dinner with her family, saw Valentine's Day and got gellato at Piccomolo.  The down side was that a toddler ruined most of the movie and an older gentleman talked at us for almost an hour at Piccomolo.

I had a weird, terrible, horrible dream Friday night/Saturday morning that Amanda and I were kidnapped.  It was so bad that I text'd Amanda just to make sure she was okay....

Saturday was the writer's meeting - and we had a blast!  Might not be getting as much writing as I'd like to done at these, but they are so much fun!  I also found The God Engine, which I blogged about but have yet to read.

Sunday I went to church at my old professor's church, loved it, thinking I'll go back again.  After that I went to my parent's place and watched the Olympics with my dad and wrote. 

Tonight I hope to do some outlining work on some other projects and write a bit.  The end of Suspicion is so close! I can see it looming in the distance! ...and then I start Premonition.

Mostly, today's just a Monday and a blah one at that and I'm tired and whaaaaaaa~~~

OMG - I needed the relaxedness of last night so bad!  I got home and yes, I preped dishes for the dishwasher, and I did a few other things, but mostly I just did a little exercising time, watched a movie, some writing and I did my first ever card embroidery!

I talked about it a few days ago - but another opportunity to do it came up when someone close to me had to have a sudden surgery. I've made the card, but I still need to cover the stitching on the inside with something which requires glue... which I don't have.  UG!  But I'm really happy with my first card embroidery.  It's simple, but cute and made made.  I'll probably do one or two more like this and maybe change the dimensions so it'll fit in a normal envelope.  I tried an overly complicated design first, and then went for this simple text and daises.  If you do too much you start forgetting which line goes with which dot and then it's all messed up!

I'll be starting my next one probably this weekend and hopefully sending it out soon as well since it's for an upcoming event that I'm being all say-nothing about.  :P

This weekend should be a lot of fun. Despite the crazy weather, my friend and I will be going to the Stars game tonight.  I'm really excited!  Not only do I get to go to a hockey game, but I get to go with my best friend!  I'm going to take a lot of pictures this time, of us and the game and hopefully they do really well tonight!  But if not - we're going on Sunday too!  I'm hoping to get a lot of writing and revision done on Saturday, as well as a load of domestic things.  Maybe I'll even fix the darn vacuum cleaner.

I absolutely have to register for the Writer's Conference tonight or tomorrow! Must-Must-Must!  I'm excited because several people I know and adore are going so even though I'll probably be a wallflower, I'll still have fun!  It also puts some more pressure on me to finish my novel.

I'm looking at the big picture of writing The Barking Dog and I'm considering cutting a huge portion of the Premonition section at the beginning that's just yet more stuff, more stuff, more stuff. I'm thinking I may just cut to some big action and allow the reader to get backstory details through flash-backs or filler paragraphs. Not sure.  I still have several chapters to go before I get to that section and by then I think I'll have a lot more of an idea where I want to go - or at least I hope so!  I won't cut anything at the moment, I'm still fleshing out the beginning and working on that.  I'm altering some of the plot so that more of the major stuff comes in at the beginning instead of later on.  Really, I am very much excited about it all.  I like my story, I think there are probably some areas I could do better on, but I'm learning and I'm continually doing better!

I swear stuff costs more than it did two years ago when I moved out on my own for the first time.  A dollar doesn't buy what it used to - which sucks considering no one is making more than they used to.  I probably need to sit down and evaluate where I spend what and reign in some of my spending and redirect it better, or something.  It's frustrating and I have to do better.  I'm not broke, but neither am I saving as much as I wanted to.  I'm probably also my own worst enemy when it comes to spending and impulse buying.  I don't know if I know how to say no to me sometimes... This is probably a very dangerous thing.

Today was a really successful writing day.  I totally plowed through chapter 2 and came up with some stuff I really liked.  The critique group really helped me see an opening I missed for inserting more world info.  Tomorrow I'll work on editing that and get the whole bit over to my friend who is doing beta reading for me.  It's really exciting.  I just hope I can keep this up. 

So Paperback Writer suggested this interesting site today that makes up words. This could be very useful for when I need to make stuff up in writing and just need a quick word!

Now, I think I've mentioned this but I'm going to the DFW Writer's Conference.  Well, Inky Girl tweeted today this blog entry about Conference Tips from Jane Makuch.  I really need to finish my manuscript and work on a short this-is-what-my-book-is-about.

Anyways, short blogging day!

This has been an enjoyable weekend.  Origionally I was going to be volunteering for church and thus the entire weekend would have most likely been a blur of which I would only now be returning home to collapse into bed until tomorrow.  Instead, Friday I went with my friends to see Leap Year; a new romatic comedy about a girl who goes to Dublin, Ireland to propose to her boyfriend and meets an Irish man who - well - I'll let you play connect the obvious dots.  Cute, funny, but most of all I liked the question the Irish man posed to the girl.  If a fire happened and you had sixty seconds to grab whatever was most important to you - what would you grab?  And she learns the truth.

Saturday was a day of accomplishments! I got up and did stuff, I seem to recall washing some dishes and writing a bit before heading out to the mother-ship of Half Priced Books in Dallas where I quite literally walked around lost for about an hour before the rest of the year-round-writing-group showed up; by this point I had a stack of six books and was walking around rather wide-eyed.  They politely collected me and we seized some tables in the meeting room and set to - well - socializing.  I was a bad participant and spent half of the time talking to Suzan and Criss, found out about this program called SuperNoteCard..... I feel like my plotting life has just grown simpler by leaps and bounds!!!!! I even managed to finish rewriting all of chapter one!! I'm so excited about that - I feel like with chapter one done, I can go through the rest of it!  I even made a half-hearted attempt at starting chapter two, got a little ways into it and stalled - there were more books to go look at!!

I bought the following:

• The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini - I've heard things about this book, seen it everywhere, might as well read it, right?
• The Stupidest Angel by Chris Moore - yes, another Moore book for my shelf.  He's so funny!  I'm going to save this for after NaNo this year.
• Grim Tuesday by Garth Nix - I bought the first book in this series and have yet to read it.  It was only $2.50 so I couldn't see why I shouldn't buy it.
• Swords of Ice and Other Tales of Valdemar AND Crossroads and Other Tales of Valdemar both edited by Mercedes Lackey - Okay, I'm slightly addicted to the world of Valdemar, not going to lie, and I haven't even seen these anywhere else.  Figured it was worth it!
• The Wish, Ella Enchanted and The Two Princesses of Bamarre by Gail Carson Levine - These will all be quick, easy reads, but really good I think.  She's such a good writer!

Gotta love HPB!

Today has been a lazy day.  I'm slowly cleaning with the goal of eventually going to Wal-Mart and getting something to store wrapping paper in and get the tree down finally.  I'm still working on the same scarf, taking it as I go.  I unfortunately realized Friday that my Netflix were all still on the coffee table - and have all been watched with the exception of one I'm really not interested in watching.  I thought I sent them off like Tuesday - but apparently I have failed myself!  *sigh* Whatever will I do!!  Maybe go see Book of Eli tonight.....

I finished the birthday scarf! And I can show pictures off because, well, this friend doesn't know about my blog and even if she did I'd still be excited about actually finishing a project this year!  LoL!! See - I do stuff besides read and whine!!  It's red, not pink like the picture kinda makes it out to be.  It's silly how excited I was to stick the completed picture up on Ravelry and move the status bar to 100%.  This maybe the new motivator for finishing projects.....  I'm working up on the stripy scarf for my other friend who may or may not ever actually get it.  He asked me to make him one when I was in a really good mood and I found yarn I liked so I started.... I like the scarf, I'm knitting it on those round, circular needles and the yarn's nice and soft.  I'm not exactly motoring on ahead on that project, so I'm toying around with the idea of some others and looking forward to the 24th and the crafty day!!  I think I need new yarn..... And apparently I have a free weekend!!!!

I keep going to start revising and.... I don't.  I just don't revise at all.  I do nothing.  It's bad.  I need to do something about it but I'm not sure what.  I'm still sort of stuck on what I'm doing and without an identifiable goal, well, I'm a bit listless.  That was written this morning.  I had a long conversation with a friend of mine and he read what I'd revised, as well as what I'd rewritten and we decided that the rewritten was aimed in the better direction and was just more engaging so I believe I have a bit more direction now, though it's still a daunting task.  Since I suddenly have my weekend free I will see if I can't encourage someone to go to a  movie tonight and the rest of the weekend will be spent completing chapter 1.  I am more encouraged by this, but in the manner and style I'm writing now all three books will just be sections of the same book....if that makes any sense..... Oh well - hopefully it does and will and I can plow through this with grace and poise and come out with something decent on the other side!!!!

I think it's pure stubbornness I'm wearing my dress today.  I bought it before Christmas but it was just too cold and pointless for me to wear anything other than jeans to work.  It's a brown dress, which is even more pure novelty considering I don't particularily like brown or wearing it - but this one has a design of blue colored teardrop and semi-nike-swish things that go absurdly well with my blue cashmere sweater that - well - I kinda felt super compelled to buy it.  And thankfully the weather is copaerating and it's warm enough to wear it so today is a good day.  I'm also feeling much better!  I think that tomorrow I will push myself to get up and exercise.  I put it off on the weekend and yesterday for not feeling well at all, but I think tomorrow morning I will be pretty well off.

Last night I lay awake in bed and contemplated a new prologue for Suspicion and I penned out a few paragraphs I think I will have the critique group read.  I'm rather thrilled with the idea as well as expanding the novel to include various bits from other characters perspective other than the female main characters.  I think it will help the reader fully understand the complex plot that was just lost on the first draft.  Lots of nothing happened and then in a few thousand words everything happened and left even my head spinning for how in hades it all came to a point besides the fact that green is a very suitable color.

I was reading Brandon Sanderson's blog, oh my, yes - blogs, and the whole thing about his books being made into movies intreigued me.  I've sort of been forcing myself to ignore that he writes anything other than Wheel of Time but I do believe I will have to read his books, and at the current rate I am devouring printed pages of stuff I should easily be able to do that - later this year.  Heck, I started Robin McKinley's book The Hero and the Crown last night; I probably haven't read it since Jr High.  I can't believe I haven't read it between then and now - it's such a crime!  I will probably also finish it tonight or today or something impossible like that because I just could not sleep despite how exhausted I was so why not read?  (and of course between the time I wrote that line this morning and now after work, I finished the book.)

Perhapse I need to be interested in thicker books.  Then I would spend more than three days reading it.  It's a little exciting to move on from a book so quickly, but it's also a bit of a let down.  I wish they lasted me longer, but I am glad to have read them.  I'm going to force myself to hold off reading The Blue Sword until tomorrow.  I believe my current plan is very much to not go to church tomorrow because my fever has yet to leave me and the headache is still permanently wrapped around my head so that even after ingesting drugs to dull it - it's still just there outside of sight and hearing like.

So I leave work very soon and I'm going to go on to the Borders where we have critique group at instead and probably eat some soup at McAllisters and piddle around on the next scene of Suspicion and force myself to be yet more productive today.  Ug, and I must also get food for that little varmet the rabbit - and it needs fresh bedding.  I ached and hurt so bad last night I almost didn't clean the Chin cage, but I did.  I don't have the right bedding for the rabbit.  The rabbit gets expensive, absorbant stuff.  That's what happens when the animal actually sits in their bedding; they get the better stuff.  My Chins, who have a tray that slides out of the bottom of their cage, can have cheapy crushed corn stuff that absorbs and whatnot and so long as I am mindful of changing it every few days works rather well.  However, I'm starting to feel that their cage isn't getting really clean and I'd like nothing more than a chance to hose it down and scrub it - but where do I put the Chins while I do this?  I'm pondering over this question and browsing CraigsList.  People are bound to have cages they don't need anymore, what with small children learning the responsibility of an animal isn't all that glamerous.

Woohoo! Third morning in a row I've managed to get my arse up and out of bed and do a 20 minute work out!  I'm proud of myself. And I'm actually startled that I'm feeling it in my legs; it's a really light work out, I have no illusions about getting an awesome, toned body.  I do hope to drop a bit of the weight I gained ....wait, I almost said this... last year.  Yikes. Last year.  I still sort of forget the magnitude of an entire year passing; I'm sure it'll hit me later.  According to the Wii I've lost a little over half a pound in the last three days.  I don't believe it.  If in a week I'm still decreasing, well then I'll own up to loosing half a pound, but I seriously find any results this quick to be suspect.

Last night I started a master plot matrix for Suspicion and .... dare I say it? I'm getting excited about revision.  Excited - yes! I can't wait to rewrite that first scene because I know I can do it better; I know a better way to incorporate more details than I did last time, to introduce the reader to the world better, earlier on besides the first blunt detail...

I probably won't get to that until Saturday, if not Sunday - and perhaps not even until next week.  Tonight I'm going to get off work, run home and get my nice, warm hoody and go to BandN and read the Olympian book, and buy Redeeming Love, our book club book I thought I bought off of Amazon.  I've been waiting for it to be delivered and went online to go complain and found that as I had purchased the book, the seller was updating that they were out of them - so my purchase was refunded and supposedly I should have gotten an email.  I didn't. I now need to go buy the book and get to reading.  Ug!  Anyways, if all goes well I will also see some late movie with Amanda tonight.  Saturday I want to finish the Olympian book if I don't Friday.  Then there's a church meeting at 4pm for the youth group, my friend's going to church with me, and I know I'll be too distracted to get anything done if it doesn't happen before the meeting.

And OMG there are a lot of movies out that I want to see!  Alvin and the Chipmunks, Leap Year, The Princess and the Frog, Did You Hear About The Morgans, Nine, Invictus, and The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus which is strangely not playing in very many locations.  I think tonight it will be either Leap Year or Nine.

Plus I will need to start baking cake on Saturday night - because I want to have cake-pops ready for Home Group on Sunday!!  I'll need to decorate on Sunday morning/afternoon before Home Group.  And maybe I'll make another batch Sunday night if I don't go to my other friend's house.  Yes, busy weekends ahead.  Next week I will be taking advantage of every opportunity to relax because next weekend I'm volunteering my whole weekend to the church media team.  It's a good opportunity, but it's also a whole weekend when I'm starting to really try to get writing done.  I believe I will be selfishly taking Monday, Thursday and Friday to myself for writing, lounging and knitting purposes!  ....oh but I need to read....

Right - so I am still working my way through On Writing and loving it! Will read the Olympian book tonight and tomorrow at BandN, buy at least Redeeming Love for the book club and if I think I can read Isabel Allende's House of Spirit's before 2/1 when EA will be hosting the discussion on it, I'll pick that up.  Lastly, I believe I will be acting on my friend's suggestion and buy Maggie Stiefvater's book, Lament.  Not that I don't already have a hefty list of things to read already, LoL!

An update on my 1K a day.  I decided to go ahead and bite the bullet and created a spread sheet with all the stuff on it I need to track my progress.  I started on the 4th and have written as of the end of my lunch break, 6,007 words on various writing projects.  I expect this number to go up this afternoon, but I can honestly say I'm happy I'm doing this.  It's encouraging me to just write and go, go, go!

Blogs, blogs, blogs - have been a bit dry recently. Lots of recaps on last year or stuff about this year, whatever.  However, I just about keeled over when I read this entry from Rick Riordan's blog, Myth and Mystery talking about the new companion guide to the Percy Jackson series and - There Will Be More Camp Half Blood Books!!!!  Meaning he's not done with Percy Jackson's world! I'm very excited, in case you can't tell...

So I'm trying some different ways of keeping track how much I write a day.  I'm not really sure what would work best.  I had a great widget during NaNo that measured my daily average, but I don't know what I could do now in place of that.  I'm avoiding using excel.  I have Chaos Manager and I'm trying out just inputting a daily activity that records how much I write but I get annoyed with the reminder.  If you have a suggestion - let me know!  Today I wrote about 700 words on a prompt, that I need to finish the little story and then I believe I'll be over the 1K challenge for a day number!!!

The crafty afternoon/night is catching on!  There are several people who are interested and I'm really excited.  I also want to go buy more yarn in case...well...I don't know in what case but I want more on hand!  LoL.

So I'm really struggling with rewriting Premonition.  I've forgotten some small details, things have grown fuzzy and I'm beginning to wonder if it wouldn't be better if I put Premonition aside and revised Suspicion.  It might give me better ideas for a more finished product on the second book.  I'm very torn here.  On one hand I just want it finished but on the other I'm trying to think about the most logical, and best use of my time.  It's either that or I need to go back and reread stuff to see what I might have forgotten.  Bah - so frustrating! Why couldn't I finish it in December like I'd planned?  I'm going to give it a go today and see how I do on plotting out the novel tonight and I might just start rewriting that opening scene.

It's cold.  It's really cold today.  I cranked up my heater last night and sort of over-did it, but I wasn't cold!  I even managed to crawl out of bed this morning and do a 20 minute exercise. I'm telling myself I'll do one tonight after I do some lazy news watching and plotting.  *sigh*  I'm going to save my eloquence for my writing  :P 

OMG - stop the presses - I just found out that Brandon Sanderson, the person who is completing Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series will be at Dragon*Con this coming year.  My friends have been trying to coerce me into going but I think this just won me over. Go to Dragon*Con, hear him speak, maybe see the other Writing Excuses guys?  HECK YES!  *strangles inner fan-girl*

I'm adding two more things to my 2010 Goals.  I can't recall if I blogged about this already and I'm too lazy to go back and look. I'm joining in the blogging adventure, Project 52.  The idea is that you write 52 blogs a year, once a week.  Now I know I can do this; I wrote close to 80 to close out 2009 and only started in like...September.  However, I think it's a good goal and I'm doing it.  The other goal is a bit more daunting; it means I have to be a bit more disciplined.  Inky Girl is challenging people to write 1000 Words a Day in 2010.  This means I'm already behind, having written a whopping 1500 words last night on Premonition.  Gee, I need to get something cranked out today. I'm hoping this motivates me some more this year to continue with my writing.  I'm even biting my teeth, really wanting to go to the DFW Writer's Conference in April, but I don't have the cash just quite yet.  I emailed my mother, thinking she'd talk me out of it because that much money right after Christmas is hard to come by - but instead she was very excited and is encouraging me to go.  *sigh*  We'll see what I can come up with in the next few weeks.

Okay, so I haven't blogged much because New Years sort of tirededed me out.....

I spent New Years at my friends place; we played some cards, some other odd games and then did a champagne toast at midnight where I discovered - I don't like champagne.  No big surprise, honestly.  Then someone had the great idea to go out on the balcony and light up sparklers and stand in a circle facing each other. Yeah - doesn't that sound like a great idea to you too? Not to me. I stood outside of the circle and was the only person to not get burned.  I was the first to leave, but I also had the furthest to drive and went home and I think I went to bed fairly early.

New Years Day my brother came over around noon and we hung out for a bit.  I introduced him to The Lightning Thief and I believe he's currently hooked.  We also went down to Chance Webb's Tattoo Emporium and got our tattoo finished - finally!  We're both really happy with how it turned out.  I'm entering that painfully itchy stage of healing that makes me want to go cross-eyed all the time, but soon enough it'll all be over!  I think I cooked us dinner and we watched some Four Star and then went to go see Avatar in 3D which wasn't all that much different from the normal one; I thought it looked a lot more unfocused and that it would have been just fine to see it without the 3D nonsense.

The next day my brother and I went to a Stars game.  It was super fun and I got a Dallas Stars SNUGGIE!  Don't be fooled by their strange looks, they rock. I really like mine, even if it's all covered in rabbit hair now; silly rabbit.  Brother left not long after the game to go back to Wyoming and I had a few hours to myself.   (Note - I waylaid the Ice Girls and informed him he was getting his picture with them.  He didn't protest.)

My friend Micah came over late (I'm talking either 9 or 10pm) that night.  It's probably the last time I'll see him for several years.  His parents are taking up a church in Vietnam and they'll probably stay over there for most of the next three years and he lives in Virginia Beach now doing his doctoral so though we talk on Skype a lot (during his classes sometimes - oopse!) we probably won't get to hang out.  I was super impressed when he gave me a bottle of home-made vanilla extract.  Like REAL vanilla extract! He MADE it.  Really - like it's real stuff and wow.  I'm just blown away by that. I think I'm going to try to make some myself.  How cool is that???

Eventually Micah had to scoot out and that left me going to bed a bit late - but because I made Sunday my Selfish-Day, well, it was okay.  Really I stayed home by myself and read The Titan's Curse and watched a movie and did some cleaning and played with my Chins and the rabbit and did laundry and went grocery shopping and had a great, stress-free day.  I think I'm going to start requiring more of these in my life; like once a week or something.  I knew going into this week that we were having a writing night Monday, Critique Group was Tuesday, The Mix where I volunteer with the youth is on Wednesday, people come over to my place on Thursday - the only other time I'd have to just veg would be FRIDAY!  So I didn't feel bad about taking Sunday to myself.

A little update on my challenge to write 1000 words a day.... I wrote a little over 1000 on Monday, and like 700 on Tuesday.  I'm a bit frusterated with those numbers, I'd like them to be higher, but oh well.  Now if I'm really going to this Writer's Conference I need to have a finished something to take with me.  This means I'm going to be putting a lot of effort into Premonition now and hopefully will finish it in January and start editing Suspicion in February and get the second draft done and start getting critiques and reads in March.  WHEW!

Bah! I checked my Amazon order and it's STILL not here! I ordered my bookclub book before Christmas and it's yet to show up.  I'm getting impatient. I think I shall read Gail Carson Levine's Writing Magic the rest of the week and camp out at BandN and read the last Olympian book because I just don't want to buy brand new hardcover.

[edit] After skimming through the first two chapters of Writing Magic, I realize I need to do as the book suggests and sit down and do the writing exercises.  I'll be doing this, but I think I might take it slower - maybe do one chapter a day or something and compile all of the writing exercises into a yWriter project.....

And one last interesting bit. I joined Ravelry this morning at the urging of another knitting friend.

And with that, lunch is over and I must go back to work....

I've discovered the three places I get hit by the inspiration train. 

• In Bed. Either from the thoughts just before I go to sleep, my dreams, or whatever I'm thinking about when I wake up, these thoughts have often lead to a creative gold mine.
• While Driving. I do a lot of thinking, playing music and mussing through stuff here.  It used to be more pronounced but even now I get a lot of good ideas while driving and thinking and listening to music.
• In the Shower.  This has been the place to go for the last few weeks.  Don't ask me why, I don't understand it, but I get in the shower, washing my hair, and I'm slammed by ideas.

So yes, maybe I'm strange, but these are where I get a lot of my ideas.  Yesterday I was in the shower thinking about this vampire short story I was writing - and just had this awesome idea.  Okay, I think it's awesome.  Anywyas, I realize that using it will completely take it out of the short story realm and plop it into novel length, but it has potential and could go somewhere, so I'm going to put it on the back burner and plot it out a bit better and go back to working on Premonition in the hopes that I can finish it in January and start editing Suspicion.  I'd really like to get both in some semblance of neatness in the next few months, truth be told!

Last night I went to go see Sherlock Holmes, I think I'll make a semi detailed blog about it that critiques bits of it - overall I thought it was good but I was not in love with it like so many seem to be.

Finished V for Vendetta, will write up a review of it later - I highly suggest reading it!  [edit] Review done!

I'm not sure what to read next; if the book club book came in today I should really start on that, if not the next book in the Olympian series after The Lightning Thief might tempt me to read it.  It's actually not as thick as the first book, so it will probably hold me through the weekend - even with my brother in town!  We'll see what I pick out tonight I guess.

I keep forgetting I have a rabbit at my place now; she makes noises around her cage that my Chins do not and it keeps startling me.  It could be that she's on the opposite side of my apartment's living-room from the chins for temporary quarantine purposes; Chinchillas are rather delicate creatures.  I'm going to run to the store tonight to pick some stuff up for Lady Gray - the rabbit - since she came to me with a cup for water, not a water-bottle, and has special bedding that I don't use considering there's a tray in the bottom of my Chin's cage.

I finished the green scarf I was working on for a belated birthday present for my boss and have since started another homespun one in red for a friend's birthday - which will also be a late present considering she just told me when her birthday was....Ug! Maybe I'll get a lot done tomorrow on it....I can hope, right?

This morning I was late to work - I've been cutting it really close, but this morning I was straight up late.  This is not good. I think I'm going to start forcing myself to go to bed earlier and kick people out of my apartment at 9pm.  I have noticed that I cannot go from having people over to being in bed; I need an unwinding period where I sit down and veg for a bit to get myself to a point where I can actually get in bed; problematic I think.  The only solution I can see is creating a buffer time where people are gone and I'm alone to get stuff done or whatever.  It won't be fun, I know people are going to not be happy about it, but I need to be better on top of things for work; it is what pays my bills after all!

In completely random news: men's razors are by far more awesome than women's.  I heard it said, I doubted it, I tried it, and omg was I wrong! I was paying about $10 for a package of three of those silky razors which did a pretty good job but $10? It hurt me to buy them.  I paid $4 and got six razors and the results are by far much, much better.

Nathan B posts a blog about how even in the book industry - where authors used to be drunken, druged up loons, it's not tolerted anymore - go read No More A-Holes. Plot to Punctuatin wraps up it's 2009 with a list of the Top Character Development Ideas of 2009. Are you a moralist? What do you think about stealing?  Go hit up the Fuse blog about To Borrow or To Steal.

Oh my - I throw a good party apparently. I got up yesterday very early to bake four sheets of cookies and stick the brisket in the oven so it could cook for eight whole hours.  Yes, you heard me right, eight hours.  My beer battered brisket consisted of one can of bud light, half a cup brown sugar, half a cup chili powder, garlic powder, salt and pepper and one red onion.  My ten pound slab of meat cooked for eight hours at 250F, in hindsight I think it should have been done on 225, but oh well - what can you do now?  I spent all day cleaning and doing piddly things, even when Kyle arrived and we made a quick store run.  People got to my place around 5 and I think that's when everyone's sanity went out the window.  Kyle and I seemed to stick to the kitchen where at 5;30 we pulled the meat out of the oven and started cutting it into thick pieces; should I cook brisket again I will invest in an electric knife.  In the process of getting food out we broke Amanda's moms' crock pot in half, yes - in half. Something about putting it on a hot burner didn't go so well - so now I need to replace that.  Oopse!  Courtney broke a wine bottle - and I believe that's all the super drama for the night.

The food was good; the brisket only a tad bit more tough than I would have preferred, but oh well - it was far better than some I've eaten before!

As soon as the food things were cleared away - out came the cards.  I think we played Uno for hours; we had one game that simply would not end and we were yelling at eachother, threatening and generally being so loud I just knew my neighbors were going to show up any second to yell at us.  That never happened and the party lasted until 11:30 when everyone finally went home.

I really do have some awesome friends; I was amazed by the generosity of my friends - I got a set of Stars tickets, a B&N gift card, a yummie smelling candle, this super fun story telling card game, an awesome jump drive and I know I'm missing something, but it was all so awesome and I am touched by how thoughtful everyone is.  Hopefully we can do something similar again, but first I need to recover from THIS party. 

Really I wish I would have gone right to sleep last night, but I laid awake for most of it, tossing and turning, unsuccessfully sleeping so I'm very much tired today, but hopefully tonight I can really crash.  My parents are coming to take me out to eat tonight, so I'm looking forward to that - and giving them some brisket to take home because there's a lot left over.  Next time I'll cut it in half and save myself some trouble.  I'm sure I'll do a great deal of cleaning and taking out the trash tonight. My apartment needs it!

Right - blogs...in quick, no particular order....

Writing Excuses has a new episode up on gender roles; listened to it once, going to go through again this afternoon. Love listening to these guys!  Paperback Writer has a whole list of Christmas themed stuff on her blog; I wanna go back later and click through it!!  Fuel Your Writing is interesting - they have an article up on various Self Editing methods.  I'm such a girl; I don't care really about the whole Harlequin debacle, but it makes for great drama to read about and the Writer Beware Blog keeps delivering on the latest news!  I really adore The Inkwell Bookstore, but they blog about twice as much as I do so I'm limiting myself to one of their posts; this one is about Amazon opening a physical store!  I recently discovered Plot to Punctuation and their fourth installment of the NaNoWriMo series is up; honestly it's too soon for me to think about revising my NaNoWriMo as I still have yet to finish Premonition.  Doesn't mean I'm not itching to edit up Suspicion, but one project at a time, please and thank you!  Lastly, Nathan Bransford has a new blog layout that includes a forum section that I find awesome - check it out!

Right - back to work - lunch is over!

I do intend to take something of a break AS SOON AS I FINISH PREMONITION!!!  Really.  I have some great ideas inside my head, but I need to let my gray matter turn solid again.  I want to knit!  I want to read this book that was suggested to me several times over that I FINALLY bought today on Amazon - Stephen King's On Writing.  Familiar with it? I've heard both good and bad things, but as I was listening to Writing Excuses and they suggested it, I just bout it.

Well yesterday was our last Monday-Nighters write-in at LM and I'm very sad to see it go.  I really liked meeting up with Linda and Lynne' each week and writing and all of the...odd things we'd talk about.  We all three hit our goals last night, me eeking it out shortly before the restaurant closed and celebrated by buying us chocolate tourt cake something or other. I was ready to go to bed early...and then couldn't sleep. I wound up picking up some knitting - only to realize I must have been on crack when I started this scarf.  It started out probably between 15 & 20 stitches, and widened to 26 - so I had to do the painful thing of completely ripping the whole thing to pieces, rerolling the yarn and starting over.  It's super soft, angel hair green stuff that fits our company's green super well and will - eventually - be a scarf for my co-worker.

So today starts the mad dash for Danielle's wedding.  I have GOT to put the hem in my dress, drop it at a dry cleaner, and start organizing stuff.  I'm supposed to go to the critique group tonight but I'm wondering if I shouldn't skip it in favor of cleaning and finishing the dress and the billion other things I really need to do.  I got ----

I need to pay bills!

Okay - now where was I?  Other things I need to do! I got roped into hosting a Christmas/TGIO/Birthday party, and I'm warming up to the idea - but it also means in depth cleaning and preparation for a party the day after Danielle's wedding.  I will survive, I swear!  And I've completely lost my train of thought.

Okay, I'm going to move my other blog or article references to the end of a my blogs.  With that said......

So poor choices are not just limited to Wall Street; Jane from Dystel & Goderich Literary Management discusses some of the frivolous things book agencies do.  I really, really, really like reading Nathan Bransford's blog; he usually has some really awesome thoughts and ideas and sees things from both sides.  He just posted a blog about taking critique letters and how best to respond to them; as I'm thinking about revising Suspicion it's really good to take these ideas to heart because I'll be facing critique group - eventually.  For now, as of Tuesday night, I'll just be observing and probably sitting on the sidelines plugging away still until I finish Premonition. 

There are a lot of blogs I'm hearing about that have nuggets of interesting stuff to say about revision, I should put those all together at some point, and print them out.  I'm still going to go back to Gail Carson Levine's blog Do Over when I start revising; it was a great blog, very inspirational and upbeat.  Today Inky Girl twittered Brian Yansky's blog on Seeing Your Mistakes; not anything super long or how-to, but a nice, brief read and encouraging.  Inky Girl really dishes out good resources and in the theme of revision, here's a back-blog from Paperback Writer blogger, Sheila Kelly on revision.  

I continue to love The Inkwell Bookstore blog for all of the random, fun, interesting stuff they post.  Their blog, Tuesdays' Tips for Flailing Writers is rich with links and stuff!  (One of them, Why Writing Rubbish is Productive, references NaNoWriMo.)  I'm still looking through it so it's really interesting and whatnot.  Check it out!

Back to work I go!!!!