TGIF!

Welcome to the final weekend in July. This officially kicks off my massive and continuing panic attacks about the beginning of school and how little I've prepared for it. It also reminds me of how few days I have left to wake up at a reasonable time, linger over multiple cups of coffee while listening to the quiet and the chirping of birds while I sit on my patio and enjoy the morning. I've always hated the end of summer. It feels a little bit like death to me. I haven't met any of the goals I had set for myself this summer. Haven't even come close. I'm hoping my state of paralysis changes for the better soon, and that as I get into the start and swing of the year, I can once again string together coherent sentences and write.

How about you? How do you feel about the impending end of summer?

What summer?

Where has the summer gone? As a teacher, I have always approached August with little less than a panic attack. There’s so much to do. Lesson plans, opening your classroom, in-service days, professional training, slideshows to make, teacher pages and blackboard classes to update, direction sheets and work sheets to be created and copied. The list is never-ending. And teachers operate on a different calendar than others. This is the beginning of our year, and so much rides on it. If I’ve prepped and worked all summer, I can start the year more easily, and it unfolds much less stressfully. If I haven’t had the time or the chance to do all that prep, the year gets off to a rocky start and goes downhill quickly from there. I’m hoping to get it all together during August, so we’ll see.

Is writing for you the same? Tons of prep and then a fairly easy delivery of your writing? Or do you do it the other way? Less prep, more pantsing? I’ve been working on transitioning to some hybrid approach that I’m still not sure is a good thing. How about you?

Celebrate Monday

Happy Monday everybody. I hope you all had a great weekend. It’s time once again as we start a new week to celebrate ourselves. Tell us about something good that happened to you. Something that made you happy. Something that you did that made you feel good.

It doesn’t have to be big news or anything earth shattering. Small is good, too.

So in that vein, what I want to celebrate this Monday is some great advice I read over the weekend. Given the roller coaster ride not only of real life, but of the writing process and the journey to publication, it should come as no surprise to anyone that some pretty negative emotions can surface along the way. James Scott Bell over at The Kill Zone has a great post here about envy and what writers can do to mitigate its devastating effects. Check it out and tell me: Does envy make you miserable? How do you cope with it?

And on a happier note, what is going on with you? What’s making you happy and/or going well in your life? Share it with us and celebrate yourselves.

TGIF!

TGIF! Sorry to be so late, but it’s been a long, difficult week. All told, it’s been a brutal few months, and I’m feeling more than a bit distracted. But I did find this really interesting post over at Plot Whisperer in celebration of pantsers. Click here to check out the role of cause and effect as a really great strategy for writers of all kinds and tell me: Do you write this way?

Decisions, decisions

If you’re like me, you periodically undergo a conscience of crisis. Well, at least one at a time, if they’re well-behaved. The one I’m talking about is the question of writing the story that is in you burning bright and wanting to get out, and writing the story for the market, the one you know will find an agent, audience, and sell. I have two novel WIPs stalled in progress because I can’t even figure out what genre they would fit into and I’m convinced no one will want to read them. On the other hand, I know I could write something in a genre I have no real interest in and have that move.

Elizabeth Spann Craig from Mystery Writing is Murder has a guest post about this very thing over at Alan Orloff’s A Million Blogging Monkeys. Check it out here and tell me: Do you write for the market or yourself?

Celebrate Monday

Happy Monday everybody. Once again, I’m sorry I'm late. I hope you all had a great weekend. It’s time once again as we start a new week to celebrate ourselves. Tell us about something good that happened to you. Something that made you happy. Something that you did that made you feel good.

It doesn’t have to be big news or anything earth shattering. Small is good, too.

This weekend I participated in Tessa’s Blogfest of Death. Scroll down to Sunday’s post to read my entry and for the links to catch the other wonderful writers who participated. I also even managed to make some headway on my crit group reading.

What about you? What’s making you happy and/or going well in your life? Share it with us and celebrate yourselves.

Blogfest of Death

Today is the day that Tessa over at Tessa’s Blurb is hosting her Blogfest of Death. There are a whole bunch of fantastic writers signed up, so after you finish here click here and go check them out. My entry is the scene immediately following the one I did for Mary McDonald’s Terror Tuesday Blogfest about a month ago. You can click here if you want to read that scene. If not, just read below.

He staggers out of the barracks into the first cold, grey light of dawn, bumping off bodies skeletal and empty-eyed stumbling into strained lines in the center of the yard.

Eyes tearing with cold lock forward. Face still, he stands and stares, watches a dull sun arc along a thin, tight horizon.

Nothing moves across the raw, barren, black terrain beyond the watchtowers; scorched earth, all that’s left of a long ago burn.

Down the line, somewhere to his right, someone’s hacking up the latest plague. Spine straight, head unbowed, his fingers curl into white-knuckled fists at his sides.

The wind shifts; carries the smell of burning from the remains of a wild fire dancing along the serrated slopes just past the dead fields.

The sound of the shot explodes in his head. All-too-familiar rage and fear and shame churn in his gut; tighten his chest.

Wet, grey flakes of snow and ash fall through the raw, cold daylight; filter through the dead trees, the charred, lifeless trunks still standing sightless watch on the other side of the fence line.

Ash and ice, cold and wind stretch and move across the waste like a living thing, breathe harsh and jagged along the grey, serpentine river that snakes past the camp, cleaving the cauterized landscape.

He doesn’t think he’ll survive another winter.

The jolt from the stun stick slides down his spine; buckles his knees. Hard hands shove; send him staggering across the yard.

He doesn’t look at the body or the spreading spill of bright crimson against grey on his way to the pit.