Shanna Swendson's Blog, page 291

Chili Weather

In the category of "I never could get the hang of Thursdays," I've noticed for the past few weeks that something seems to happen to my brain at about 4 on Thursday afternoon. I lose all ability to focus. I'll be going along just fine, then at 4 the brain comes to a screeching halt. I wonder if that's the point where my brain has done enough writing for the week and needs to recharge or if it just happens to coincide with where I am in the work. Yesterday, I'd reached a point where I'd figured...

Scary Costumes

This week is weirdly both long and short. In a way, I'm like "I can't believe it's already Thursday," but at the same time, I woke up this morning thinking it was Friday, so now I'm like "you mean it's still just Thursday?" Not that Friday has the same allure to it that it did before I was self-employed. I usually end up working just as much on Saturdays as I do on other days of the week, and I'm more likely to have to get up early in the morning on Saturdays. Still, there's just something ab...

Publicity Tactics

When I made my last writing post about planning your publicity efforts, I got some questions about what kind of things a writer might do about publicity. So, this week I'll talk about some of the things I've done, with some tips on how to make them work. Remember that everyone's different, so what works for me may not work for other writers who write different kinds of things or who have a different personality. The other thing to remember is that it's almost impossible to know which publicit...

Emotional Notes

I hope it's not some kind of harbinger of the sort of day it will be that I started the day with a funeral. It's yet another one for someone I never met, but they needed a choir and I have a lenient (probably too lenient) boss. I don't have the money to donate to charity right now (I am the needy), but I can sing and I have a flexible schedule, so this is one of my forms of community service. I did my usual thing of crying more at a funeral for someone I don't know than at funerals of people ...

Cultural Enrichment

It turns out that I am not delusional in feeling like fall skipped us. According to the weekend weather guy, the average high temperature for this time of year is around 80. We've been hitting around 55. I actually kind of like it, though I do like the more typical fall weather, which we should have back by next weekend.

I got my cultural horizons all broadened over the weekend while discovering some cool stuff not too far from me. There was an Armenian festival at the Armenian church in the t...

Crossing the Threshold

We reversed yesterday's weather pattern for today. Last night when I went to bed it was hot and muggy. During the night, I had to pull up more covers, and this morning it's cold and rainy. Should be a good writing day.

Which yesterday wasn't. I was still wrestling with that scene because while I knew what the emotional undercurrents needed to be, I wasn't so sure what was actually happening, event-wise. That made me wonder what the purpose was. I knew there was a conversation in there that I r...

Thinking Days

Weird weather today. It actually got warmer during the night. When I went to bed, it was cold and misty, and when I got up, it was warm and muggy. We're supposed to get big storms today, then it will be cold again tomorrow. We seem to have skipped the transition between summer and fall that we usually get. I usually have a few weeks when I can turn off the air conditioner but still keep windows open and use the ceiling fans, but this year I seem to have gone straight from AC to keeping window...

Imaginary Conversations

I think I'm on a roll now. Not only did I write more than 4,000 words yesterday, but the book is really invading my brain. I've caught myself daydreaming and even dreaming random conversations between various characters -- what would probably be "doing laundry" scenes if I tried to put them in the book, but that tell me a lot about these people. Having this kind of insight into them when they're not saving the world makes them more fleshed out and vivid when they are. This morning I got a rea...

Book Report: Recent Reading

I have made it approximately 1/4 of the way through my projected first draft on the book, but I suspect that the first draft will come in longer than projected, as it's not so much of a "draft" because I keep tinkering along the way. My process seems to change with each book. On this one, I have a big-picture outline that the story seems to be sticking to, but everything in between is making it up as I go, and I keep discovering things along the way that subtly change everything. I am trying ...

Fall TV Update

This may have been a close-to-perfect weekend. Friday I went for lunch with my friends to a Lebanese Food Festival at a nearby Lebanese church, and it was the perfect day for sitting under the trees and eating. Saturday morning it was one of those days when it was warm enough to be summer elsewhere but not too hot, so I walked to the library, taking the long way. When I got back, my neighbor was out walking her puppy, so I got my recommended allowance of puppy kisses and cuddles. Since it was...