Last night I did write a little bit, but it was all editing on stuff I’ve already edited. Today doesn’t seem quite so busy today at work so I’m going to take the opportunity to write during breaks.

The key is, I need to scroll past the stuff I’ve already edited without re-reading it and get to where I last left off (Is there a bookmark feature in MS Word?). Even a quick glance is enough to completely derail me. This was part of the reason I’ve kept my writing files in separate documents in the past, sometimes to the point where every document was a single scene. I have this bad habit of randomly editing while I’m scrolling down, and right now it’s a problem because I’m saving my entire book as one document. I’m doing this to create a simple quicklaunch shortcut. One click and I’m ready to write–I’m far less likely to write if I have to browse through several folders just to get to my manuscript.

I need to break myself of ‘drive-by editing’, or I need to create a new document every time I hit a roadblock like this one…. Ah. That’s what I’ll do.
Currently my main manuscript is called FIVE RINGS.DOCX. Maybe it’s time I created FIVE RINGS2.DOCX so I can revise the part of the book I’m supposed to be working on instead.

I’m sure by now I’m your favorite website … You know, that site that always has topics that say ‘hacked again’? Yeah … I didn’t think so.

The good news is–for those of you who’re still out there (Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?)–these attacks haven’t sapped my will to write. And I’ve learned  a lot about protecting my site from maliciousness.

*A sinkhole at the grocery store parking lot just down the street. I guess people thought ramming grocery carts down it was funneh. :)

Ahem. From tragedy comes change. A new era is beginning!

What’s New: Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve been tagged! It’s been awhile….

Merilee of Not Enough Words was the tagger, and the subject seems timely and appropriate, don’t you think?

1. If you could have any superpower, what would you have? Why?

The power of ‘Save States’.

This is how it works: Read the rest of this entry »

Now that I’ve completed the short story The Never-Ending Night, I feel a whole lot better about myself as a writer (even though it didn’t turn out to be quite as good as I had hoped…). Anyway, vowing not to post here until I was finished worked like a charm– It drove me to write more often than usual. Maybe I should start doing this with book chapters….

Anyway, I can either work on a new site layout, get another chapter done, or finish another short story. You Don’t Belong Here practically screams to be written; I loved the idea for it during the creativity workshop and I find myself thinking about it a lot (the story about the girl in a coma).

I was also thinking about doing a Con-lang post here. So here’s the to do list.

1. Write a Con-lang post.

2. Finish the current chapter I’m working on for Five Rings.

3. Finish the short story You Don’t Belong Here.

I’m really starting to enjoy this thing you guys call ‘finishing stuff’. Maybe I’ll even make a habit out of it….

The Tower of Babel (Etemananki) has made life that much more difficult for us story lovers. We miss out on a lot of great books that never get translated overseas. We have to get our own works translated to see the broader world market. And us writers, depending on the scale of our stories, are forced to consider that people in different countries often speak different languages and use region-based dialects.

[The whole earth was of one language, and of one speech. And it came to pass, as they journeyed from the east, that they found a plain in the land of Šin'âr, and they dwelt there. (…)

And they said, "Come, let us build us a city and a tower whose top may reach unto heaven; and let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth."] Read the rest of this entry »

Just an update…

In my personal life, some good news. I just found out that our baby will be of the male variety, due date is still Jan 10th.

I’ve decided on a title for the NaNoWriMo project I’d like to do this year. It will be The Tragedy of Larimosa.

I’ve still been editing Five Rings every day and am quite excited about how it’s turning out. Some of my close friends have been reading the results of my work, so I’ve been trying to have one or two chapters edited to official ‘Doesn’t Suck’ status by Wednesday of each week.

I’m going to try to put up new annotations each Wednesday, too. But we’ll see how far that goes. …

Here’s the three annotations for Five Rings thus far:

By some miracle, I’ve been editing every day since my last post. I seem to have my groove back!—Here’s hoping it sticks around for awhile.

My recent success of revising/editing nineteen pages in the last 48 hours made me feel like I could break away from this project long enough to post another annotation. This time, I speak about the actual title of the book FIVE RINGS and the reasons behind my choice. Read the rest of this entry »