November Goals

I might have been on haitus from blogging, but I’ve been very busy writing. Part of my problem with blogging right now is that I’m writing things for my pen name, which is so completely different than anything I’ve written here. I wonder now what I should blog about, or even if I should keep blogging because I don’t feel comfortable talking about that stuff here. It’s weird and kinda stinks. Still, I’m going to figure it out. So, let’s talk November and goals.

• Write 65,000 words
• Get my novella to submission ready
• Figure out what to do about blogging

Last year I wrote over 200,000 during NaNoWriMo. That was an accomplishment, but not a good one. Yes, I wrote some great stuff, but it was kind of all over the place. This year I want to slow it down and really enjoy NaNo.  I want to go have fun and not feel guilty if I don’t write between 7,000 and 10,000 words a day. If I only write the minimum, that’s okay!

The novella is almost at submission ready quality, so that’s not a huge goal, but I don’t want to lose sight of that goal.

Like I said above, figuring out what to blog about and where to go from here needs to be decided. I used to blog in detail about my projects but I don’t want to do that anymore. I’ll need to figure out another focal point. I think I’ve learned a lot while I’ve been away from blogging, and I could very well blog about that. However, I don’t think I’ll be blogging every day again. That takes something out of a girl.

So that’s me for the month of November.

How about you?

Wordless Wednesday: Breakfast

Critiques?

I’ve been actively working on some other projects that I haven’t – and won’t blog about. However, I’m still looking at polishing these projects. I have a wonderful, amazing and talented group of critique partners, but we’re all busy writing and doing other real life things. I’ve been thinking that I need more critique partners, but the question is: How do you find them? How did you find yours?

During my first NaNoWriMo I lucked out and hooked up with some amazing women who write better than I do. We’ve stuck together and shared a lot of our joys and frustrations of writing, but like I said, I can’t burden them all the time. So it stands to wonder, should I fish in the NaNo pool to try to find more crit partners? How do you evaluate someone to know if they’re good or not for your project?

On a whim last week I joined two online critique sites. Both operate under a critique and be critiqued method where you gain credits or points from each critique you do, which can be spent to put your own critique up for consideration. I was obsessively checking them both to begin with, and then I got busy. I’m working up the nerve to go through the critiques and work out some things and do the next chapter, if these look worthwhile.

I’m not sold on the idea of the online, whoever wants to critique it can, style. There’s a certain bond you develop with someone who sees a project all the way through to the end and reads a whole piece. They can offer feedback on a whole manuscript, and not just that chapter. Maybe I can find people on the sites who want to go to a direct one-on-one approach, but how do you broach that subject? Is it considered rude to bypass the website?

So that’s where I’m at this week. I’m not really focusing on revisions or writing or critiques since I’ve been so ‘on’ over the last few months. This week is more of a recharge week. Lots of cleaning and reading and doing Book Addicts stuff. Next week I really want to be cracking on the revisions, so critique partners are going to be on my mind a lot.

Do you have critique partners? Where did you meet them?

October Goals

This has been a random month. Writing the end to Decoy was both exciting, and like pulling teeth. I’ve been kind of bouncing around, not really steady, so in a large part this month has been frustrating. I wanted to get more done than I did, but I did what I set out to do. I knew heading into September that I needed a breather. I needed to focus on fewer projects and get other, non-writing things taken care of, like finding a new place to live! And work!

Overall, September was a great month that went by far too quickly. I’ve been looking forward to it for a while because of FenCon, and it didn’t disappoint in being an eventful month!

September Goals!

• FenCon critiques.  There are 18 of them to do. Very time consuming.
• Finish the additions to Decoy and set aside for at least a week.

What I did…

• FenCon critiques – all of them.
• Decoy’s ending is done, but now I want to write a new beginning!
• Finished writing a novella I haven’t mentioned.

Yes, I randomly wrote a new novella/short novel! The workshop was an interesting experience. It was good, but I think I need to focus my feedback on my audience instead of settling for feedback, period.

Okay, October! October is an unfortunate month. It’s right before NaNo, which is always a drain, so I like to take October easy, at least as far as writing goes. I hope to get revisions on at least one project done and loads of reading. I’ve seriously been slacking on my Book Addicts duties and I need to step it up.

I don’t quite know what I want to write for NaNoWriMo, but I hope to get the project ironed out over the next month so I can work on it during November.

October Goals!

• Write new beginning for Decoy.
• Revise on Decoy.
• Plan for NaNoWriMo.
• Read. Lots.

Well, that’s what I have going on. How about you?

September Goals

So I knew that August was going to be a tricky month.  Because of PBP I was going to lost two weeks, add in the family stuff with my grandmother passing away and both my drive to write and the time was sapped.  I had hoped to do some writing in cafes while in Paris but the logistics of carrying the netbook into the city and the general disbelief of having outlets available worked against me.  So writing wise, August was disappointing, but experience wise it was super rich.

August Goals!

• Revise Decoy

What I did…

• Wrote a new ending for Decoy

So I had a really sad discovery about my zombie story.  I only wrote half of it.  Yeah.  How much does that suck?  After throwing myself a pity party, I figured out the new ending and I’m still kind of writing it.  Yeah.  I didn’t get as much of it written as I thought I would be able to before or even during my trip so I’m in a really bad flux place with it that I hate, but I love the direction of where the story is going.  I got to add two characters that will need to be interwoven in the beginning of the story, but I’m glad for this chance because one of them will get a spinoff novella.

September is going to be a busy month.  With FenCon coming up, I have a lot of critiques to do and I really want to finish Decoy and get it to submission readiness before NaNoWriMo, which I also have to start planning for.  All of this has to work into my goals.

September Goals!

• FenCon critiques.  There are 18 of them to do. Very time consuming.
• Finish the additions to Decoy and set aside for at least a week.

So there you go.  I’m keeping my goals simple since FenCon will probably sap me for a whole week and there’s so much involved with that process and what goes with it.  I’m sticking with keeping my focus on Decoy because I think it’s a good direction for me to flex my writing muscles.  So yeah.

What do you want to do over the next month?

What it’s like to be on the sidelines of #pbp2011

When my mom brought up the topic of going to Paris-Brest-Paris last year I didn’t think she was serious.  I thought it was an idea only and we wouldn’t really be going.  Imagine my surprise when my mom said in February that we were going.  Like, really going.

I’ll be honest, my planning for PBP didn’t involve much.  My sole job was to get mom across the pond, organize the sight seeing and help her with any cycling stuff pre and post ride.  As far as the actual ride goes, my responsibility was to just text her the weather.

Let me pause and explain what PBP is, since most of my readership is writers and readers and friends, not the cycling crowd.

Paris-Brest-Paris is the oldest organized cycling event in the world.  Started in 1891 to showcase the practicality of bikes, it was at that time mostly a race, not a ride.  A race is a timed thing, a ride isn’t a competition.  That first time in 1891 there were 400 cyclists.  This year they capped the entrants at around 5,000.  The ride is a 90 hour event with 15 controls, or check in’s.  The cyclists start in a western suburb of Paris and ride to Brest and then back to Paris, a distance of 1200K, or around 750 miles.  (Quick note: there are options for a 80 and 84 hour start, wherein cyclists have less time to complete the course.)  It’s a test of endurance and perseverance on the cyclists part.  God knows I wouldn’t be able to do it!

So, we arrived in Paris on Tuesday, August 16th.  First thing all the cyclists did when we got to the hotel was to ask about where the bikes were.  Because we were picked up in charter buses the bikes were delivered in a different truck.  As soon as those bikes arrived it was chaos!

There were bikes everywhere.  We stayed at the Campanile hotel, which was one of the more centrally located ones to the activities around the start/finish.  Because we couldn’t have bikes in the rooms, not that there was much room for them anyways, we utilized a lower room space in the hotel as a bike room.

Most of the cyclists went on pre-rides around the city or into the countryside.  My mom didn’t, we went sight-seeing around Paris and London instead.  That was a decision we were worried about before the ride.  She didn’t get to ride her bike and test it out, but she also didn’t start the ride exhausted and worn out from other rides.

On Saturday the 20th we had to do bike check and get drop bags done.

Bike check was crazy!  Everyone had a time slot to show up at the facility to get it done.  It was a few blocks from my hotel and also the location of the start/finish of the ride.  All cyclists have to get their bike approved before the ride for safety concerns.  But, it’s a mad house trying to get 5,000 people through there!  I couldn’t go into the building where the bike check was actually happening because I wasn’t a rider or crew person so I hung around outside on this track area, which you can see below, and found various people I knew and took pictures.  As a non-cyclist there wasn’t anything to do and no real reason for me to be there, but it was fun to be around the excitement.  You really catch some of the PBP-bug being around all these people.

We went to PBP with a travel agency that takes care of the riders, like you wouldn’t believe how well they were taken care of!  One of the things the agency offered was to meet the cyclists along the route with drop bags.  Drop bags are duffle bags with all sorts of cycling stuff in them.  New shorts, cycling jerseys, whatever the cyclist wants to put in that bag that they would want access to during the ride.  We had to get that together and take it a few blocks away to another hotel to drop it off and then go back to our hotel to get the bike ready.

The cyclists pushed off on Sunday afternoon.  All cyclists tackle the night before a big ride differently.  My mom set out to sleep about 12 hours if possible – and she did it.  I did my best to stay out of her way and be quiet until around noon when she got up and everything became hurry, hurry, hurry!  We had to get lunch, which proved to be difficult because Parisians take their Sundays seriously.  Nothing was open!  We found one bakery open and got sandwiches.  The line was crazy long.  It was also hotter than usual on Sunday, which was tough on the cyclists when we finally went to line up around 3pm, despite having a starting time of 6pm.

I’m not altogether certain of when all of the cyclists started, there were racing groups, a start for the tandems and recumbant bikes, a start fr the 90 hour crowd, a start for the 84 and then 80 hour crowd.  My mom was a 90 hour start, along with a few thousand others.  To prevent a few thousand people charging ahead at once, they do staggered starting in groupings of around 500.  Even though we got into line at 3pm, there were people already in line and she wound up starting in the 3rd wave of 500.

Sunday was hard.  It was hot, I went to the starting area with 10 bottles of water and an umbrella and wound up giving away all 10 bottles to the Texas cyclists standing in line for hours.  I ran out and needed more, so I was buying cokes and bottles of water from the vendors and handing over to the cyclists lined up ready to start.  You can see one of the waves of cyclists at the starting line above.

The start was festive.  There were stilt walkers, kids bike races, fire breathers and big presentations going on.  There were people lined up and police all over the place.  It was a big deal, and everyone was so excited about these cyclists.  Everyone in the area had been very nice to us, especially when they realized we were there for PBP.

My mom actually started around 6:50 pm, which was good because she got out of Paris before dark and had several hours to tackle the outgoing route in the daylight.

I stuck around the starting line and took pictures of friends and hung out with the Wife Club, aka the cycling wives.  These were the lovely ladies I had dinner with and saw around the hotel.  Being one of the ones left behind is an experience in and of itself.  We take comfort in one another, celebrate our cyclists progress together and worry together about conditions on the course or how morale is.

This year the cyclists had a chip they were given that was used to update the official site with the cyclists progress.  If you went to the PBP site and put in your rider’s frame number you could see where they had checked in and when.  Since majority of the family and friends left behind didn’t have a way to contact their rider, this was a huge relief to be able to see that much at least.  My mom and I planned for this part and we bought French phones to be able to call one another as well as home.  Of the wives staying at my hotel I think I was the only one with constant communication during the ride.  My mom called me once a day or more to check in, get a pep talk or find out the weather or latest updates.

As exciting as PBP is, this year was also tragic.  Tuesday morning after texting my mom the weather she called me asking odd questions.  She had heard of an accident on the route and had thought I knew what happened.  We didn’t learn the full story until after the ride.  On Monday evening a cyclist was in an accident with a vehicle.  An American cyclist was killed.  It’s super sad and hit the whole community hard.  Randoneurs are a close knit, welcoming crowd and any loss is tough.  I heard of riders dedicating PBP 2011 to the fallen cyclist and of at least one who decided to quit his ride early.  Even now thinking about it makes me tear up.  I never met the cyclist, but it’s sad and it makes me think about my mom and the chances she takes.  It also makes me want more cycling awareness in the USA.  Moving on!

So the days of waiting were tough, but in the end she came ‘home’ with about an hour and a half to spare.  The finish was no less exciting than the beginning.  There weren’t as many people there, but cyclists had been finishing as early as Tuesday morning and it was Wednesday around midday when I was there waiting for my mom to come in.  I was lucky, she called me leaving the last check in so I knew within a window of about half an hour when to expect her.  I came with her shoes and food, ready to take care of a sleep deprived, disoriented cyclist.

I was super excited when I saw my mom finish.  There was a lady who jumped in front of me right before she pedaled up, and I’m totally guilty of elbowing her out of the way to snap the above picture of my mom coming in.  Rude?  Yes, but I flew across an ocean to be there when she finished her ride.

Just because the cyclist crosses that line doesn’t mean they are done.  When a rider gets to a control, which the finish is, they have to get their cards signed.  The chips that were used to update the website might replace the cards someday, but for now the cards are still used and until the rider gets that signed they aren’t really finished.  At PBP there’s also a few other places to check out, like the photographers booth and the beer tent before you check out your bike and are free to go.

We walked back to the hotel so mom could walk out some of the kinks in her legs.  I would have thought she would have showered and crashed, but she showered, I got her more food, and we broke her bike down to pack it up.  After that, she did crash for some much needed sleep – and as the family member – that was a big relief because for me, PBP was a closed book.  There are lots of stories she’s told me about the ride, but they are hers and if you’re lucky you might get to hear them.

PBP was awesome.  We may never get to do it again, but this was a great experience.

Wordless Wednesday

The beginning of Wordless Wednesdays.

I used to follow a blog that hosted Wordless Wednesdays.  The author included pictures of themselves, things they had photographed, inspirational photography – and no more than a sentence of text.  I don’t do personal blogging here, but I think I’m going to do this.  So after today, don’t look for many words on Wednesdays.

My celebration flowers.

August Goals

July was a really tough month.  Lot’s of not so great things happened.  I lost the house I was going to buy, my mom had heat stroke, my grandmother was care flighted to the hospital, the doctors mistakenly diagnosed my dad with cancer, and we prepared to say goodbye to my grandmother.  I’m honestly amazed I did anything at all.

I always push myself to do more, be better and get stuff done.  This summer and spring it just hasn’t happened.  Stuff has gotten in the way and I’ve done a lot of shuffling goals and projects.  It’s getting on my nerves because I’m not where I wanted to be, but life happens.  You deal with it and you do what you can do.  I learned a lot about my writing habits under stress and honestly I’m questioning some of my earlier notions about what I should write.  It’s been interesting.  But anyways, moving on to the goals that I did and did not complete.

July Goals!

• Revise Decoy
• Submit Rescue Me
• Write my superhero story
• Work on my alias

What I did…

• I am still revising Decoy.  It’s had a few passes, but I’m adding to it.
• I submitted Rescue Me.
• I scratched the superhero story.
• My alias rocks.  You’ll also never hear me talk about her again.

Like I said above, July kicked my butt.  I didn’t do what I wanted to do, but I did stuff.  I wasn’t a slouch, but neither did I push myself to do stuff when it wasn’t the best decision for me.  Thus why Decoy isn’t ready to go to critiques yet.  This last month I’ve also begun the process of seperating myself from my pen name.  People question the use of pen names and say you shouldn’t use them, but I think in my case it’s a good thing to use one.  And therefore I need to seperate the two very different individuals in my head!

August Goals!

• Revise Decoy.

I’m going to be in France for half of the month.  I don’t think that will allow for lots of goals for the month, so I’m keeping it simple.  I want to revise on Decoy.  There are some things I need to do that are writing related but they’re not just ‘me’ projects.  Speaking of, I need to get working on those as well.  And that’s another reason I want to focus on one project right now.  Burn out.  I need to safeguard against that.

So what are your August goals?

Finding Something Else

I write.  A lot.

Chances are if you check out  my blog, you do too.  I’ve passed up social engagements to stay home and wriet.  It’s something that’s important to me and that I enjoy.  But sometimes, you need to step away from the novel.  You need to get away from the computer.  Go do something else, writer!

Right now my life is stressful and kind of crazy.  Writing is focal, but I need to take a step back.  We all get to that point where we need to veg out.  What I do to veg out is different from other people.

I think that vegging out time is important.  Sometimes when all I’ve been doing is go-go-go and I have to organize things, be creative and plan ahead, my brain just gets tired.  Just like my body will give out on me, so will my brain and those times I try to find some time to do something that reduces me to vegetative qualities.  Giving myself a pass to not be the one in charge, to not be making a plan or not doing something – is hard.

Part of this is based on the way I grew up.  You were measured by what you did, not who you were.  It was something that always rubbed me the wrong way, but it’s made me who I am today so I can’t complain too much.  I just have to remind myself that I’m not always what I do.

My staple vegging things are reading and watching streaming things from Netflix while knitting.  They’re easy things to pick up and do right now.  But sometimes you need something else.  When I need days of vegging, there’s a tried and true past time for me.

I sew.

I like to sew.  There’s a creative aspect to designing a garment and assembling the pieces that I really love, and the mindless rhytm of sitting at a sewing machine and pushing fabric through.  I’ve spent hours at my sewing machine doing French seams and hem lines, pulling out seams gone wrong.  There’s a rhythm to sewing that puts my mind into a place where I can lose hours.  I’ve sewn all day and most of the night, fallen into bed for a few hours and got back up to finish what I was working on.  It’s not as taxing as it sounds, and my mind is free to wander.

Finding something else to do is important I think.  Sure enjoying writing and all that is great, but a person needs more in their life than just words.  Where do the words come from?  Your head.  How do those words get in there?  Reading.  Taking a walk.  Experiencing something new.  Deep emotions.  You miss out on all of that if all you do is write.  It’s like trying to pour a gallon of water out of a pint sized pitcher.  There’s nothing leftover.  Find yourself something that you enjoy doing besides writing and do it.

What do you do?