It's the little things

I am uncommonly upset that there is no 2013 reading challenge for Goodreads up yet. How am I supposed to commit to a reading goal for the new year without a widget?!

Feeling this...

You were not born to be average, normal or typical.

You were not born a carbon copy.

You were born unique, born to excel, born to manifest the glory of the universe in your authentic spirit.

You are not weak.

You are stronger than you imagine, wiser than you know, and have vast powers that you have yet to actualize.

Stop playing small.

Be YOU. Tell your truth – now, today, this very moment.

Manifest your true self – not a poor reflection of your circumstance.

Don’t walk through this world unconscious of your greatness, sleep walking, surrendering your light to the bland grey around you.

You were born to be brilliant,

to be light,

to be fire.

Infuse your glory into this moment, into your choices, into your deeds, into the habits you create.

Consciously choose:

Choose your body through conscious consumption.

Choose your attitude, through conscious thought.

Choose your destiny by being present right now – for remember mindful moments multiplied, totally transform tomorrow’s.

Today choose integrity, choose discipline, choose joy, choose joy, choose joy.

Rejoice in your blessings AND, most importantly, know that EVERYTHING is a blessing.

And your blessings are rich soil.

So choose to grow into the boldest, proudest, most glorious version of YOU.

You were born for this.

Cory Booker

Books 83 - 85

I just finished Maggie Stiefvater's "Wolves of Mercy Falls" trilogy, and I have to say that I feel like she's grown so much as an author since she wrote these. They're still beautiful, with lots of short zippy chapters and shifting points-of-view that keep the story moving along, but having read The Scorpio Races first, I can see the clear development of her skill. I'd still recommend these to people who like YA novels, but I don't think these were her best work. I have her newest, The Raven Boys, on request at the library, and I hope it's as good as The Scorpio Races.

Book 82 for the year

The Unruly Passions of Eugenie R. by Carole DeSanti
My rating: 1 of 5 stars


A good idea, but god, the execution was terrible. Sentence fragments were abundant and frustrating. I wanted to read this, but life's too short to parse this mess for meaning.

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Adorable Potatoes

Nearly bought these at Whole Foods tonight, just because they were tiny and adorable. Had no immediate ideas how to prepare them...just, you know, SQUEEEEE!

I shouldn't be allowed at the grocery store with a debit card, sometimes.

ETA: The picture doesn't really do these justice. They were like marbles. Teeny.

Bad at blogging...

I used to be able to do this multiple times a day, every day. Now weeks go by and I never feel like I have any thought worth committing to pixels. What gives, brain?

Bitterblue by Kristin Cashore

Bitterblue by Kristin Cashore
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I wish we could give half stars. I'm torn between rounding up or rounding down. It's somewhere between a three and a four, I guess.

I think, in the end, I preferred Fire to Bitterblue, but that was mostly because I preferred the protagonist in the former to the one in the latter. I would like to reread all three of them soon, just to get the story told in all three clearer in my mind. Too much time and distance between my first reading of each is muddling my perception of them all, right now.



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Reasonable people MAY disagree, but every word in that sentence has meaning.

I've been thinking a lot lately about the notion that reasonable people may disagree on some subjects. It's a no-brainer, really, isn't it? One of the things that makes life so interesting is the varied philosophies and temperaments that comprise the people in one's own life, let alone the entire world. Inevitably, some of these variations in human life will give rise to disagreements; this is probably particularly true during an election year. I endeavor now, though I didn't always, to be polite and open to discussion, even with people that I know I will take the opposite sides of a given issue. I believe strongly that there are valid opposing points of view on most topics about which I feel strongly.

The other day, while driving to work, I pulled up at a traffic light behind an expensive, late-model SUV that was sporting a bumper sticker that read "Navy SEALS took out one Muslim threat to America, and it's up to the rest of us to remove the other."  They also sported a small tasteful American flag on their (import) SUV.

Setting the irony of the flag aside for a moment, the bumper sticker just floored me for several moments. I live in an educated, affluent suburb of Kansas City. This person was ostensibly educated enough to recently a nice, imported SUV to display that ignorant bumper sticker.

As I said on Facebook when I related this anecdote initially, I followed it up with the thought this chance encounter had crystallized for me: "There are things about which reasonable people can disagree, but the emphasis is on the reasoning skills of both parties."

It's terribly depressing, but I think I've finally given up hope of meaningful exchanges of ideas with a vast swath of humanity. There's no reasoning with a person who holds views that willfully ignorant. There's no discussion or room for persuasion with someone who only latches on to the information that reinforces their worst ideas and biases.

It's a grim idea. It fills me with fear and purpose though, and those two things are inextricably related. My fear is that this is the future of American discourse, and the time of cross-party cooperation is forever at an end. My purpose is to never, ever be one of those people for my own side.

Today I ordered a bumper sticker for my own car:

Fell off the wagon. Bounced.

I'm starting fresh for September, which means I have about one hour and thirty-five minutes to get my three pages written for today. I wrote really consistently for most of August, but I fell off the wagon completely the second day of a terrible cold. Nothing for it but to dust off and try again.

Wish me luck!

Today's words: 756
Darling of the Day:  My real mother, who is not Momma but the Dark Lady, comes to see me sometimes, but only at the new moon. Her clothes are fine, soft, and made of rich dark fabrics of blue or green. She meets with my Momma and Papa alone first, always, and then she sits at a stool near the fire and watches me. If I am asleep, this wakes me. If I was awake, she always knows if I am pretending to sleep. She smells like spices in the holiday cake, but never like baking. I have always known that this is the smell of money. No one ever calls her the Dark Lady, but I have made it her name in my head. She is my mother, and my Momma is my grandmother. I know this, also, without being told. It is part of my gift.

Tried something new (old) tonight

I didn't write for the current project tonight. Instead, I returned to a short piece that I had been noodling on for several months and added three pages to it. I'm pleased with how easily I picked up the thread of the narrative and added more to it. I think the task of daily pages is making the words come along a little easier, like my brain is ready to get to the task each day. This was my seventh day, which means I've created 21 pages of fiction that didn't exist in the world before I started this project. If I could write on just one project, 100 days would yield 300 manuscript pages, which is an entire novel. The problem with making this project into in a novel is that I suck utterly at plotting and outlining. I wish there was a book that discussed methods for improving this vital skill for authors.

More late words...

...but they're done. Take that, inertia!

Five Days in a Row!

I keep getting my words in JUST under the wire, which is okay, I guess, so long as the words are happening. I'm a little concerned that every night I get a little closer to the midnight cutoff. I find the story taking shape, but the three pages a time makes it feel choppy, in my head. I'm not sure what I could do to smooth that out now, given how the writing is coming about, but I am constantly mulling over how I might change what I'm doing. Tonight clocked in at just over 800 words. I've done 15 pages since I started. Wonder if any of them are readable?

Three in a row!

I think it might be getting easier as each day passes. Tomorrow will be a real test, as I try to find time for all my daily goals on a day that I open at work. I can do this.

Words like stones today

Kidney stones. I had the whole day to sit down and do my writing, but it was another late night session. I just finished my words for the day, including an annoying and lengthy pause in my flow while I moved late night laundry. I am not sure if what I have been eking out is interesting at all to anyone but me. I know I'm not supposed to be thinking or caring about that right now, but I find I can't help it. Maybe I'll work up the nerve to show it to someone once I have a coherent arc roughed out.

Day One!

Covered with hives and after a long day at work, I sat down at the laptop to make with the words. I did it. :)

Back from the War

...I mean, the BAR. Tomorrow is Day One of my Hundred Day Challenge. I'll be working, initially at least, on a set of episodic stories based on a dream I had. If this yields results I like, I will post some excerpts here. What matters most in this exercise is daily pages and the habit of writing. I'm pretty excited to start!

HDC!

One of the main purposes of the fresh blog was to recommit to daily pages as the best (probably the only) way to significantly improve my writing. Owing to outside factors--specifically studying to take the bar exam--the first day of that challenge is going to be July 29th, 2012, and I am going to undertake it as part of a hundred day chain of writing. Writing will most likely take place at 750words.com, and I will post links as I accomplish my daily tasks. This will be happening in conjunction with another HDC regarding exercise, and I am hopeful they will go well together. See you on the 29th, if not before!

...grumble...

Ready to start a new blog and commitment to daily writing and tangible goals...and I'm so plugged up with writer's block that my hair hurts. Anyone have any helpful hints for getting unblocked?

On Writing Like a Motherfucker

Dear Sugar, at the Rumpus, is my favorite advice columnist. Her words pierce right to the heart of me almost every time, and I find myself turned inside out with longing to write the way she does, with heart and humor and clarity.

Her column that spawned coffee cups and a Facebook page of its very own is Dear Sugar #48. If you haven't read it, you totally should:

"At the time, I believed that I’d wasted my twenties by not having come out of them with a finished book and I bitterly lambasted myself for that. I thought a lot of the same things about myself that you do, Elissa Bassist. That I was lazy and lame. That even though I had the story in me, I didn’t have it in me to see it to fruition, to actually get it out of my body and onto the page, to write, as you say, with 'intelligence and heart and lengthiness.' But I’d finally reached a point where the prospect of not writing a book was more awful than the one of writing a book that sucked. And so at last, I got to serious work on the book."


Right on, sister.  Write like a motherfucker.

Something to remember, when this is hard...