Linda Nelson's Blog, page 46

Linda's Memorial Weekend ROW80 Check In

Are you having a good holiday weekend? I know there is lots of turmoil happening all around the states with all the bad weather. Everything from flash floods to tornados has caused damage in many different degrees to people's homes. Even many animals (pets) have been left homeless.

I have to say I am one of the thankful ones who happen to live in a state that has been free from this type of damage this year. Previous years we had bad flooding in the state of New Hampshire. We had the Mother's Day floods back in 2005 and then it did nothing but rain almost all summer long for the next two years.

I keep watching the newscasts covering the Joplin tragedy. The scenes they show are overwhelming. My heart goes out to all those people.

Personal tragedy can have a major impact on a person's life. I know I have had my share in the past. And it does not even have to come in the form of Mother Nature or a death in the family. I look at trials in my life as just complications and nothing more. Six years ago this would have been different. At that time, a flooded basement would have turned into a disaster for me. Now it is just an eh moment.

I think my attitude toward life's little problems changed due to some inner healing I received when my son entered rehab for the very first time. The program not only offered hope for him, but for me as well. When he was done with his program, I kept using what I had learned and a major attitude change happened for me.

Then I rediscovered writing and began pouring all that I was feeling into my writing. Talk about major therapy. It felt like a great weight had been lifted up off my shoulders.

My son is now back in his rehab program and I really feel good about it. My hope for his recovery is much stronger this time and I am sure he will be able to pull himself through his program and start his life over. I have seen that even his attitude is beginning to change. Drug Abuse can not only devastate the abusers life, but it does also take its toll on the immediate family as well.

Now that all that is out: I will now report how my ROW80 has gone.

Total word count for last week including yesterday, was close to 4k. I guess I had a good week again. I am even satisfied by what I have written in the word count and now have begun to work on the first edit. I know from the past that at least another 10 k will come out of the edit when I add prose that was probably left out.

I tend to write very tight, almost too tight when it comes to prose. I have to battle between choppy sentences and run on sentences. It happens to me all the time. Word has helped me out quite a lot when it come to this writing flaw I have.

Yesterday I edited what use to be the first two chapters that are now chapters three and four.

My new ROW80 goal will be to have the first edit complete by Fourth of July so I can get the story off to my beta readers to proof and maybe give me some feedback on.

If anyone out there would like to be one of my critics just drop me a line. The more the merrier. My skin has grown thick after publishing Friends of Choice and receiving some very strong criticism on the story. Which, I will have to admit, was hard to swallow in the beginning, but now I am grateful for all of it.

Memorial Weekend Beach Read

Stop by and grab a Memorial Weekend Beach Read.
Promotional price: $0.00
Coupon Code:

YM57K
Expires: June 1, 2011             


http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/24590

Coupon Code ends June 1st.   (Code is not case sensitive)

Linda Check in with her ROW80 Update

Oh I guess it is time for ROW 80 check in again. The past week, since
Saturday, I made some decent progress. I think the last time I checked in I had completed another 3k or so words.  

Now I get to report another thousand words have been added. Hmm…. Not to the end of the story, but to the beginning of the story. Maybe I will piece the last few thousand words into the story here and there. I am sure I will come up with more too when I do the edit. I tend to short change myself when I write the prose.


Prose is one of my weak points that I am still working on. I think I have gotten a little bit better with prose since my first release, Friends of Choice. Talk about struggling with the prose. I pulled my hair out trying to write
descriptive scenes and make them work for the story.


Aaron & Keja has been a little bit easier to write… I will see how much easier
when I finally get to start doing the edit.



My goal, I'm not sure I will make it, but I have my sights set on finishing this
first draft by the end of Memorial Weekend. I will keep my fingers crossed and see how the words fall.


Fall back goal if first date is not met, will be…. I pick 4th of July
weekend.

I was playing with the cover creator today. This is the rough draft of the book cover using their free cover creator on Create Space.
I know I need to work more on the description for the back of the cover, but I had to put something in here just to see what it would kind of look like.
Comments are welcome...

Linda's Rainy ROW 80 Check-In

Well it  keeps doing nothing but rain, rain rain here. I don't know if it has anything to do with the spider I stepped on last week. It was a big barn spider. At least I don't need to water the garden. I just hope eveything does not rot in the ground instead. All this rain should keep me from making excuses to write, right? Well, at least to some extent. The sun did come out for a short time yesterday and we took advantage of it to get some outdoor chores done. Even the dog was able to get her bath in. She does not really enjoy getting the bath by the hose, but she does love being nice and fluffy when she is dry. I let her have an extra biscuit for her putting up with the cold water that came out of the hose for her final rinse. She was happy with that.

So how did I do for the week with my ROW80? I think I did pretty well. At the beginning of last week, I had somehow brought the word count up to 30 k on Aaron & Keja and as of yesterday I was at 31,600. I will keep on pushing to get this done. I have my sights set for Memorial Weekend and I keep telling myself I can do this. I mean this has to be the easiest part to write, right? I have my plot outline, which reads almost like a broken down synopsis, so I know where I am suppose to go with this story.

When I am done with this blog I will go and tackle the story some more.

There was an inspirational post earlier this week about gratification. I have decided to incorporate this gratification into my family life. My Mom and Mike want to repaint the interior of the house. I have to agree that it does need to be done. It has been almost seven years since it was last painted. Since they both have agreed to give Aaron & Keja the go over when I am done with the first edit. I told them I would buy the paint, a $60 dollar big bucket of white interior paint, after I finish the first edit.

Now I have not only set up gratification but also a little bit of pressure from those around me who have not really always taken my writing seriously. Mike has been a lot more serious about it than my Mom. At night she seems to want to disturb me on purpose. I can play my World of Warcraft game at night and she does not bother me then, but as soon as she hears me typing away, that is when she seems to want to break into my concentration.

Let me introduce you to Julie. She helps me with Aaron & Keja. I think of her when I am writing about Keja's character. She is 9 years old now and is beginning to show her age at times. But in her heart she is still a puppy. I think she would make a great Keja. She is bold most of the time and her bark is worse than her bite. The only thing she is afraid of is when the refrigerator compressor goes click and comes on. I don't know why.

She can be comical too. When bug season is in full swing we can mention a bug, a fly, being in the room and she will run around the room looking at her butt to see if it is chasing her.

Linda's ROW 80 Progress for 5/18

Can a cat have special powers other than defying gravity? I don't see why not. Maybe I can give Chancy lightning sharp claws and super ball agility. Cats can be like that, can't they?

Last night I was able to write another 500 words on Aaron & Keja. I left off with the evil elves chasing Chancy the cat through the woods. They think the cat has magical powers of some kind. Hmm…

The only thing I have written tonight has been this blog. So much for doing more on the work in progress, I keep getting distracted and I am just plain tired. Work does that to me sometimes, especially during the middle of the week.

I just don't really feel like writing tonight. It is almost like a blah feeling. The story is now at 30,500 words and on its downhill slope. I did write about 2k words last weekend and was shocked when I topped the 30k words.

Even this blog is hard for me to write tonight. I just don't want to do any of it. I don't really want to watch TV either. I probably should just go to bed but I feel obligated to stay up until it is 10pm.

I would love to just go into the other room and be by myself and write but then there is Mom. She is seventy years old and is kind of lonely at times. But does the TV have to blare so loud. I bet they can hear it down the street. The things we do to make our elderly parents happy.

Hope your progress is going better for you. Got any plans for Memorial Weekend. Me, I am going to sit in the screen house and play cards till the wee hours of the morning….lol (maybe not)

Linda's ROW 80 Check' in and Grandbaby's Birthday Party

Fantasy has always been my favorite Genre anyways. I was a Hobbit fan, yes a Harry Potter Fan too and I do have a few fantasy authors who I have always admired, like Roger Zelazny, Robert Lynn Asprin, Anne Mc Caffrey, Piers Anthony, and Jose Farmer. I can dive into all their worlds and become lost from myself. Their books absorb me and before I know it, I am at the end of their stories.

Writing fantasy is kind of like opening a doorway to the imagination, for me. I can see it, I can feel it, and I can sometimes forget the real world around me. Maybe this is more of my calling than writing urban fiction, paranormal or just plain young adult.

I do have my moment where I just am not in the mood to write. Not because I can't think of anything to write, it is more like a feeling of boredom, and then I have to wait for it to pass. This usually happen during mid-week. Maybe I'm just tired from my real job and my writing oomph is gone. When the weekend arrives, let the flood doors open and the story just seems to flow.

Yup, the outline has helped too. It has added some sort of focus for the story line.

Saturday was Jasmine's Birthday Party. She is now 1 years old. What a cutie. You can see her holding her new bubble wand, her Mommy will have to help her with.

Boy has she grown in the past year. The last time we saw her was shortly after she was born. They live so far away. The ride is five hours one way and we always make the trip to and from in one day.

I know, you ask why not stay longer and our answer is; we got chickens now instead of kids. Got to take care of the birds too and they do not know enough to go inside the coop at night by themselves.

We had a good time with Megan (my daughter) and Jasmine. We did leave before the party actually started, but that was fine. We were able to spend a lot of quality time with the two of them before the guest were to arrive.

I can just imagine how big she will be by this time next year :)

Word Cloud Under Investigation

I just gave Wordle a try and all I can say is Wow... I think I will hold onto this site and double check my word cloud frequently.

Thank you Rebecca  http://rebeccajfleming.wordpress.com/  for this post on Wordle...
I plan on pass it around too on my blog.

http://www.wordle.net/

Linda's Mother's Day ROW80 Check-In

How has your week gone? Mine flew by. It flew so fast that I did miss Wednesday's Check-In. But I did manage to have another productive week.

I find it hard to believe that I have written so much on the Aaron & Keja story, for the month :)

Since I first started working on the story back in April; again after letting it sit for more than three years, I have written….are you ready for this…6 k words…I say wow…I can't believe it is now past the 28 k mark. This means the first draft is nearly done. That has been almost an average of 2 k a week. Woot  :)

Another milestone is approaching fast: This one is a family matter.

My Granddaughter will be 1 years old on May 11. This too shows how fast time flies. I have not seen her since she was born a year ago. My daughter lives so far away, in Upstate NY. We are making plans on traveling there next weekend for Jasmine's First Birthday Party.

I hear she is starting to walk and talk :)

What does a Grandma get her Granddaughter on her first Birthday? Hmm….I still have not figured that one out… I do have that book I just read Peter and the Whimper-Whineys  by Sherrill S. Cannon. I think she will enjoy having her Mommy read that book to her at night. But she needs something else too. Maybe a nice Big… Lolipop?

Any suggestions? I would love to hear them :)

Classical Ghost Encounter

Have you ever come face to face with a ghost? A real ghost and we are not talking about skeletons in the closet ghost either. I did many years ago. At the time I never really thought much about their existence except for that which I would see on a TV program or read about in the newspaper or a book.

But then the day came for my very first encounter which changed any beliefs I had about them. This is my recollection of that very night.

Many years ago, when I was newly married to my first husband, Ernie, we lived in an old apartment building in the town of Bennington, NH. We had been in this apartment for only about a week when the incident happened.

Ernie owned one of those now obsolete stereo systems which had a dial for setting the radio stations. He had set it up on top of the dresser in our studio apartment. Now mind you, the apartment building was old and we were living on the third floor. The building was subject to the normal shifting of the foundation like most old buildings are, so maybe the floor was no longer level.

Anyways, on that night Ernie was in the kitchen cooking supper and I was sitting on the bed listening to the music playing on the radio. He had an oldies station on that was playing fifties and sixties music. We had been listening to this music for over an hour. And, yes it was dark outside. If I remember correctly, this happened in the month of April.

When the radio station changed all of a sudden, Ernie yelled at me for changing the station.

I in turn yelled back, "I did not change the station."

The dial on the radio was now all the way at the other end of the bandwidth. The music playing was now classical music. Ghezzs… I like classical music once in a while, but I will not normally search it out on the radio.

Ernie then proceeded to put his station back on the radio. No sooner did he leave the room, the station changed right back to the classical station. He then marched back into the room and put the oldies station back on.

That was when we both witnessed the dial turning while the radio went back to the classical station.

Ernie then went and began trying to see if the floor was level and came up with the bright idea of jacking up the stereo so the dial would have to travel up hill to get to the classical station. Boy were we surprised to see the dial go right back to that classical station.

Erinie then became furious. He began yelling at whom ever was changing the radio station to stop it. Telling them that the only time he was willing to listen to classical music was when he was going to bed. Right now he wanted his Buddy Holly and Elvis and that was it.

To our astonishment, the radio went back to the oldies station and stayed there for the rest of the night.

Not long after that, like the very next day when we were telling his mother about the incident. (She lived in the apartment on the first floor.) She told us about the house having a history. How a woman had burned to death in the building many years ago.

A month later we decided to move out of the building  and to a different town. Ernie decided to sell his stereo on the sidewalk so we would not have to pack it. Wouldn't you know, he couldn't even give it away. He wound up throwing it in the dumpster instead. I guess that after he told people of the ghost story involving the stereo, they thought the stereo was possessed.

That was not my only encounter with a ghost. I will save that story for next time…..

Linda's May 1st ROW80 Check In

For this week I am happy to report that I was inspired by the blog on deadlines. I had a very productive week. A total of 3k, almost 4k was done on the Aaron & Keja story. It is now at its half-way point and I am happy to report that the story is still making sense.

I guess that is pretty good for a first draft. I know it will need more prose added when I go over it when it is done. I have been trying to NOT edit while writing it, but the red flags and blue flags catch my eye and I have to occasionally stop and fix them.

Yesterday I work for most of the morning on the story. While today I did no writing at all.

Do I need another one of those inspirational blogs? Maybe…it really did seem to help me a lot.

On another note… I did manage to plant my vegetable garden today. Almost everything is planted. I planted tomatoes, peppers, beans, carrots, broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, cucumbers, snap and snow peas, and some summer squash. Now hopefully everything grows this year.

The past two years we have had problems with too much rain and it gave us a bad bout with wilt and fungal disease on our plants. This year I am going to try doing the weed block paper. Hopefully this helps keep the wilt and disease at bay.

Next weekend if the weather is good…it will be time to plant a bunch of flower seeds.

I am so glad summer is almost here.