I am trying to break your heart

That's the name of the flash fiction workshop I'm taking this week at the college where I work, and it's lovely.

Granted, it's also stressful trying to write a piece of prose every night knowing I will probably have to read it out loud the next day, on top of all the other madness going on there, because this week is the start of a three week long festival of workshops and events and all sorts of nonsense that we've spent months arranging, so it's only Tuesday night and I'm already a little exhausted.

But I'm playing with words again, and getting advice and critiques about those words. And that feels marvelous.

Their loss is my gain

The Borders in my neighborhood is closing. Of course, I say "the Borders" like there isn't another one on the south side of town. It's just that the south side one isn't as big, is in a crowded shopping center, and isn't right next to a World Market.

At least I will still have the one Borders. But still, the big one is closing, which means there are lots and lots of discounted books to be had. And after today, I do have several of them.

I'd been thinking a lot this week about how infrequently I'd been blogging lately, and what I could do about that. So I decided I'd bring back booklove Sundays. And dropping over a hundred dollars at Borders seems like a good way to go about that. I could talk about the book I'm actually reading right now, but as it's going a little bit slowly, there's a very good chance I'll still be reading it next weekend. So I'll talk about that then. For now, lookit all the stuff I got!

I did get a couple of non-book things. A cute apron with cupcakes on it, which just happens to match the cute pencil bag with cupcakes on it, which I plan to use as a notions bag for knitting things. Stitch markers and a tape measure and stuff like that. And four knitting magazines. And a journal with typewriters on it. I like all those things. I've already broken in the apron, while I was making some of these.

But all the rest was books. And mostly books about books. Either writing them, or loving them, because I can't seem to get enough of both of those kinds of books. Looking at the stack on the floor by my feet (because my bookshelves are already crammed, and I'm not sure where I'm going to put them), at the top of the stack is The Lost Art of Reading, by David Ulin. It's subtitled "Why Books Matter in a Distracted Time." As someone who both recently signed up for Netflix, and is knitting a stripey cashmere sweater with a really interesting construction that I can't seem to put down, I am certainly distracted. And as it's a short book, I figured it couldn't hurt for easing myself back into reading more. I'd kill to get my attention span back to where it used to be, when I could lie still for hours just reading one book after another.

Next is The 4 A.M Breakthrough from Brian Kitely. I already had the book that came before it, The 3 A.M. Epiphany. Both are about writing, which is the other thing I'd like to be doing a lot more of these days. They're both a collection of prompts and ideas to (hopefully) jump-start writing. This has been on my mind a lot lately. I have one friend who's doing a Master's program in creative writing, and she just turned in her novel to her advisor. I have another friend who is currently editing her novel, and plans to start sending it out to publishers this year. And I have yet another friend enjoying her full ride to Emerson's fantastic Master's program, also in creative writing. I'm feeling lazy. So it's time to get back to work. And more creative writing books won't necessarily help, but they certainly can't hurt.

So I got that one, and another called A Novel in a Year, which is a writing book that's pretty much what it sounds like, and one called Views From the Loft, which I kind of can't wait to start reading. It's essays and interviews and observations and advice from a slew of writers from the famed writers' workshop, the Loft. This ties for the book I bought today that I'm most excited about.

The other I'm thrilled with is Melissa Clark's In the Kitchen with a Good Appetite. I've only glanced through it, but I can't wait both to read it and start cooking lots of recipes that sound amazing. I made myself stop looking at it, because I didn't have any post-its handy, and I refuse to dog-ear the pages. There are a lot of things I'm going to want to cook. But I like that there's a lot of her just writing about food, and eating food, and loving food. I already love the part where she talks about how her parents tricked her into eating so many strange foods as a kid by telling her it was chicken. Rabbit, horse steak, frog, squid. Stuff like that, which any kid would have second thoughts about trying. It was hilarious.

It's enough to make me wish the Oscars weren't on tonight, because a big part of me would like to be reading. But instead, I'm going to go back to knitting and watching. It's time for more stripes on my sweater.

It's done

It's not exactly a novel, but it's done.

Yay me! I have time to knit again!

Happiness is a sleepy kitty

My NaNoWriMo word count for today: 3584 words.

I also baked brownies from scratch, and made red beans and rice (which are still stewing on the stove), and watched two and half Harry Potter movies, and The Mummy.

It's been a good day.

Also, Bagheera is sleeping on my left leg. She's all warm and cozy, and she purrs when I scratch her belly.

The Boy Creature went out and bought a vacuum cleaner today. She's going to hate it.

Frankie says... I hate this blog title. But I'm tired.

It has been a long week. Luckily, it was a nice enough day. It was my
day to bring breakfast to work. And even though several people were out
today, one of the ones that was there said it was the best Friday
breakfast yet. So that helped.

I made homemade pop tarts. They really are pretty awesome.

Plus, I got some actual writing done on my NaNoWriMo novel. Even after switching novel ideas on the first day, I still ended
up bored with what I was writing. So four thousand words in (still
behind on my word count), I gave up on the storyline and just started
writing anything. Basically, I just had all the characters I've ever
carried around in my head burst in on the storyline and take over.

And just as anyone but me would expect, as soon as I stopped worrying about
trying to eke out a good story, suddenly the writing got really good. I
like the last bit I wrote more than anything I've written in ages.

FINALLY!

I should relax more often.

Think of all that brain space wasted on math and lyrics to 80s songs

Boy Creature sometimes asks me what words mean. This is becoming somewhat of a point of contention in our relationship.

He asks me a word, I give him a fair, if rough definition (usually. Sometimes I just get it wrong, mostly when I'm mixing it up with a similar-sounding but entirely different word) of what said word means. Then he decides that's not good enough, and looks it up, and admonishes me because my definition wasn't verbatim from the dictionary. To which I reply that I was more or less right about the word- maybe I didn't cover every nuance of meaning and every evolutionary step in its particular colloquial usage and pinpoint the etymology, but I more or less told him what that word meant, enough that the next time he came across that word, he would probably get it. And then I p0int out that if he's just going to look it up anyway, he shouldn't have asked me in the first place. And then he says, he's glad he looked it up because clearly I don't know what I'm talking about, and what good is a creative writer if they don't know ALL the words. To which I reply that I'm not a walking dictionary.

All this is why now, when he asks me what a word means, I've gotten into the habit of telling him it's complicated and he should look it up.

Just now, he asked what "halcyon" meant. I say look it up, he makes fun of me for not knowing, not a walking dictionary, blahblahblah. But I looked it up anyway, and read him ALL of the definitions in a dramatic voice. Whereupon I found this jewel:

Noun- a mythical bird said by ancient writers to breed in a nest floating at sea at the winter solstice, charming the wind and waves into calm.

Isn't that nice? I love words. Even if I can't remember them all.

The bug has bitten once more

I may have decided not to do NaNoWriMo this year, but as fate would have it - brace yourselves - I've begun writing something anyway.

I only started seriously considering participating this year a week before it started. So I spent much of the last week of October planning. I had decided not to do an actual novel. I've been out of the writing habit so long this last year, that I really didn't think I was up for it. Instead, since there are no real rules to NaNoWriMo, other than don't start until November first and don't stop until you hit 50,000 words, I was thinking about just writing lots and lots of short stories instead.

So throughout the week, I started writing down ideas. Some were brand new. Some were old things that I'd been tinkering with in the back of my brain. Some weren't even fully-formed ideas, just images and thoughts to use as a springboard. I told myself that if I got a good number of ideas down, I would go ahead and do NaNoWriMo. If I came up with only twenty five ideas, that would come out to two thousand words each. And then at the end of the month, not only would I have joined and accomplished in the insane creative explosion that is NaNoWriMo, but I would potentially have twenty five (or so) stories' worth of raw material. That's a lot to work with, after a year of barely writing anything other than some very rough ideas and even rougher drafts. After all, you can edit anything but a blank page.

As the week went on, other things came up, and I didn't get down as many ideas as I'd hoped. Plus, the thoughts of all the stuff I'm up against, what with the move and everything, I had to admit this probably wasn't the year for it. And I was ok with that.

But those ideas were still simmering in my mind. And today I looked over my little list and started to see how similar in tone some of them were. And how this character felt like the beginnings of that one. And how several, if not all of my ideas, could conceivably fit together.

And suddenly I have the beginnings of what could potentially (possibly, maybe, don't say it too loud or you'll scare it away!) be a novel one day.

And I have the first four paragraphs written and the basic framework of an outline.

Wish me luck.