Loni Townsend's Blog, page 14

The Problem with Pantsing NaNo #amwriting

NaNo is the short name for National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo. It takes place in November, and the goal is to write 50K in 30 days.

Three NaNos ago, I won. I’m paying the price for that now.

Oh, it’s not an issue with the quality of my work. No, I actually still enjoy what I wrote. But I wrote it all in one POV with the expectation of integrating it in with the other POVs at a later date. Here we are at that later date, and I’ve had to completely chop up my timeline. I’ve come to realize most of what I wrote that NaNo won’t survive, simply due to timeline changes. I even combined another two chapters this past week. I think I would’ve been fine if it was a single POV book, but since I didn’t have a clear idea of where the other characters were going three years ago, I’m facing the changes now. But it’ll be better! Really, it will.

I’m currently on what will likely be chapter 17 (assuming I don’t rearrange everything again). My current plan has me at 60 chapters. Of those 60, 36 won’t be impacted by my timeline changes. Not too terrible. I might not have reached halfway chronologically yet (3 1/2 chapters to go), but hey, half of the writing is done!

Have you ever had to completely toss out a novel’s worth of words? Do you work with multiple POVs? Do you have a habit of rearranging chapters?

The post The Problem with Pantsing NaNo #amwriting appeared first on Squirrel Talk.

Challenge Complete

The Colonel’s Challenge ended last week. It took me scrambling to get in some aerobic and high intensity work out there at the end, but I did it.

There are actually four areas to the Colonel’s challenge, which includes losing 5% of your body weight, but I didn’t make it there. I lost 4 lbs in 10 weeks, but I couldn’t shed that final 3 to meet 5%. I’m not too terribly upset with it, though. I’m under 140 now, so I’m on track to meet my goal of weighing 125 by the end of October.

I got a few badges out of it, which includes being in the top 10 for women’s situps/pushups (8th overall) and top 10 for swimming (4th out of 4, but hey, I got into the pool and did some stuff). I also got an ant for working out for more than 2 hours once, and a bee for working out for at least 50 days during the challenge.

The state of Idaho recently deemed that rewards and incentives for the Colonel’s Challenge participants weren’t appropriate use of funds, so there’ll be no fancy water bottles, challenge tokens, key chains, or pins this year for hitting the goals. But I knew that going into it, so no hard feelings there. My sis-in-law and I are going to continue our schedule of weightlifting three times a week and running twice because we’ve found it works for us. Plus, I’ve got another 15 lbs to shed to meet my goal of losing 30 in a year’s time.

Writing wise, I mentioned last week that I was struggling with a scene and my gut told me it should be the earthquake that separates my POV from his friend. By the time Wednesday ended, I had given in to the idea and reworked my character’s entire timeline. The trickle effect started in chapter 4 and resulted in removing two chapters, introducing a character several chapters earlier, and taking three characters out of the book completely. It sucks because it’s a lot of work, but I’m confident it’s the right move. Now we’ll see how quickly I can put it all together to get back to my halfway mark.

How are your fitness goals going? How is your writing? What is making you feel confident lately?

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Separated, Together, Separated Again #IWSG

Egads! It’s March already. Since it’s the first Wednesday of the month, it means today is Insecure Writer’s Support Group day.

I have an event in my book (*gasp* who would have thought of that?), and it’s giving me grief. I’m presently working on my fifth version of it. Not revisions where it’s just tweaking and editing, but an actual, straight up different version. It should be simple. The ground breaks and the character gets separated from his friend. For versions one and two, it was an earthquake, which I had to remove. After removing it, I had the character’s power that ripped energy from the ground, destabilizing it. Then a beta reader told me she didn’t see the point of one of the earlier chapters. With a sigh, I tried a different version, where I combined two chapters into one and succeeded in making my critique group say WTF. I tweaked it some more, felt it was sufficient, and moved on.

Unfortunately, by combining those two chapters, I cut out time between events that was previously used to indicate a minor character was attracted to the POV. As I moved forward, I realized I’d lost my opportunity to bring it up in a natural way, therefore what I had planned for later in the book simply wouldn’t work. And gosh darn it, I want it to work.

So here I am, on version 5, breaking it out into two chapters once again. This time, it won’t be his power ripping up the ground, it’ll be something else.

*sigh* Am I insecure? Yeah. A part of me wonders if I should use the earthquake to separate the POV from his friend. But if I do that, I would have to throw out six chapters and reorder my timeline. I don’t want to do it, I don’t know how I’d do it, but that voice inside my head is nudging me in that direction. GAH!

Have you ever struggled with an event in your story? How did you get past it? Does your gut ever tell you to rewrite everything?

About Insecure Writer’s Support Group



You can find the sign up for the IWSG here. We owe Alex J Cavanaugh a huge thank you for thinking this blog hop up.

The post Separated, Together, Separated Again #IWSG appeared first on Squirrel Talk.

Brace Yourself

I mentioned my plans to design a wrist brace to support my daily activity.

Originally, I was going to go with a similar style as the decorative sleeve I made a while back. It’s simple, easy, and doesn’t take a lot of material. The only issue I have with it is that it’s like a glove, encasing my hand, which means I have to remove it every time I want to wash my hands. That’s annoying, so I envisioned having something I could easily pull back.

I looked at various examples online from weight-lifting accessories to gymnastic braces, and I found I liked the design of the Tiger Paw, because it covered the back of the hand and the wrist. I used the wrap around and attach idea with my first attempt at a support brace, combining it with my existing kickboxing wrist wraps design. My husband suggested I reinforce it with spines, and since I had some lying around from previous corset crafting, I sewed them in.

 

 

 

Unfortunately, the spine closest to my thumb was too close and rubbed uncomfortably on my wrist bone. Not to mention, it wasn’t terribly pretty to look at. I’d chopped up an old canvas bag I got for free to use as my straps because the pleather is stretchy and I felt it wouldn’t provide enough support on its own.

So I set aside that idea and mulled over other options. I wanted something that wrapped the wrist and stretched up the back of the hand to anchor it in place. I also wanted something that looked nice. I dug out scraps from old projects including brocade fabric, lacing that used to belong to my husband’s hoodie, and some fusible interface. The interface made the stretchy pleather not so stretchy and more supportive. I debated between using Velcro or something else to cinch it down. It took some thinking, but I eventually figured out a design that would work. Accent it with some fancy buttons, metallic paint (my husband’s idea), and–of course–gears, and you’ve got my finished project.

This model lets me slip off the lacing to easily wash my hands without removing the whole brace. Plus, in my opinion, it’s rather pretty. The strap is sewn to the backside, loops around the wrist, and then slides through itself to loop around again. The lacing at the wrist goes through a loop attached to the opposite end, and folds back around to hook on the button.

My mom thought it was nice enough that I could make a shop to sell them. Unfortunately, it’s tailored to my wrist and hand size, so it’d be hard to make it one-size-fits-all. Plus, my sewing is good enough for me (and my daughter who conscripted me to make her a skirt amidst all of this since the sewing machine was out already), but I’m pretty sure consumers might complain about the uneven stitching or where I missed the fabric on one of the folds. Plus, I think I’d rather be writing, if I’ve got time to spare.

What projects are you working on lately? Do you like steampunk-styled accessories? If you could design a brace, how would you decorate it?

The post Brace Yourself appeared first on Squirrel Talk.

Past Halfway

I’ve reached a magical moment in my life. I’m past the halfway mark. No, no, it’s not my birthday, and I’m not planning on dying at age 70. But I’ve managed to pass some milestones and wanted to share.

At the beginning of the year, I started the 10-week long Colonel’s Challenge at work. That entails doing situps/pushups, lifting weights, and getting aerobic/high intensity exercise in. Last week started us on the second half, and I’m making really good progress despite my inability to do pushups.

One wouldn’t think a group of programmers would be high on the charts when compared to a bunch of state troopers, but me and my cohorts are pinging the top ten lists. I’m only on the top 10 for my situp count, but still, I’m continually upping the amount of weight I lift per session. Last night, I logged 8100 lbs, my best yet.

Brief update on the wrist: the pain from the cortisone shot wore off, and my wrist is in better but not 100% condition. I’m presently designing a gymnastic-style wrist brace with a steampunk flare for everyday wear to avoid the occasional twinge I still feel. That way I can do stuff like pick up my kid or pull out a pan to cook dinner. As a positive, though, my wrist only hurts when I bend it too far, so the pain doesn’t often arise when I’m at my job typing away at code or working on my book.

And now, the book!

Most of the time, I don’t write chronologically. I’ve got four POVs in Isto, and I write where inspired and keep the momentum going as long as I can. This usually means I’ve got gaps where I’ve put chapter placeholders. It was last year’s goal to figure out all the scenes I needed to get me to the end of the book, and I successfully did that. But my “plan” constantly shifts as ideas branch off when I write and I leap from limb to limb. So what might have previously been one chapter becomes four and vice versa.

Last week, I realized I was past halfway. Out of my 64 chapters planned, I’ve only got 19 more to write. I was a bit floored by that. I mean, I’ve only been working on this book for going on five years now. But the real shocker for me was that chronologically, I’m past halfway. The first half of my book isn’t missing any gaps and none of the chapters are flagged for toss-out-and-rewrite. And based on this, my monster of a book isn’t going to be as huge as I originally thought. Sure, it’s still going to be over 200K because my written “keepable” content (crossing fingers there) is currently sitting at 147K, but with only 19 more chapters to go, I probably won’t hit that previously anticipated 300 mark. (For those of you who grow wide-eyed and boggled of mind at that, I do write long and edit down.)

Isn’t that exciting? It’s enough to get this squirrel’s tail quivering. I’m actually making progress!

What’s your progress looking like toward your goals? Have you reached any milestones lately? What’s making your tail quiver?

The post Past Halfway appeared first on Squirrel Talk.

It Has To Hurt #IWSG

If you saw last week’s post, you probably read about my wrist issues. I got the results of the MRI! There’s no cyst. In fact, the doctor doesn’t know what’s wrong with me, and can’t see anything in the scan or x-rays that he can fix or even address. (Thus is the life at the Town’s End, as it is the same story with my husband’s recurring foot issues, and no, they aren’t the same doctors.) The doctor’s only suggestion was a cortisone injection to see if it has any effect. Well, it had an effect–I got a cortisone flare that hurt worse than the actual wrist issue. The pain still isn’t 100% gone, so it’s too soon to tell whether or not the shot will do me any good. It did hamper my weight-lifting routine a bit because Monday night, I couldn’t even twist the lid off my tea, let alone lift a dumbbell. *sigh* Maybe it’ll be like they say in the Neverending Story — “It has to hurt if it’s to heal.”

On the writing front, today is Insecure Writer’s Support Group day. Had it arrived earlier this week, I would’ve told you all about my insecurity with what I was going to do with two characters for a five-day span in my timeline. I was uninspired, and anything I did think up was superfluous to the plot. But after a chat with my sis-in-law, I got it worked out, so I’m no longer insecure about it. In fact, I’ve written about 2K words in the past week, including 500+ yesterday. So no insecurities to report this month. I got through the hurt and managed to heal.

IWSG Question of the Month – What do you love about the genre you write in most often?

Right now, I’m on a world-building kick, from moons and comets to extinct dragonkin and the mortal races. Will most of this come into play in the book? Pfft, no! But my world is my playground, has been for the majority of my life, which is what I love about fantasy.

Have you ever had any undiagnosable physical issues? Do you ever get into a book-timeline funk? Do you love getting lost in a creative world?

About Insecure Writer’s Support Group



You can find the sign up for the IWSG here. We owe Alex J Cavanaugh a huge thank you for thinking this blog hop up.

The post It Has To Hurt #IWSG appeared first on Squirrel Talk.

Sock It To Me, January

Well crud. You might have noticed I hadn’t posted the past couple of weeks. Yeah, I figured I’d let my blog slide while I dealt with offline stuff. It’s the last day of January, and it would seem 2018 is following in 2017’s steps.

I had an MRI last Wednesday, and I’ll find out next Monday if my wrist pain is caused by a cyst. Hopefully it’s something that simple, because according to the doctor, it’s an easy surgery with a quick recovery time. In the meantime, I’ve been rocking my situps and increasing the amount of weight I’m lifting. I’m up to 6500 lbs per session, having added in tricep extensions, bicep curls, dumbbell presses, and dumbbell swings, each at 10 lbs for 20 reps. If I keep the weights light, my wrist doesn’t bother me.

Writing wise, I haven’t been doing so great. I’m a creature of schedule, and if something mucks with that (say skipping work to go get an MRI), then my productivity kind of goes down the drain. And there’s been a lot of mucking with schedules lately, thus my default has been disaster mode. I managed to get 680 words this past week, which is close to my 700 words-a-week goal, but still falling short of where I want to be.

I also recently joined a facebook group. This was a gamble for me. I don’t do well in a setting that moves faster than I can keep up. But I figured I’d take the plunge and try to make some friends. Cautiously, I joined the group, posted my greeting paragraph, and then later posted asking for specific suggestions regarding my mythos.

Perhaps I could have been clearer. My brain gets pretty wild when it comes to checks and balances with regards to my world. It’s a scary place to be actually. The responses started out helpful, with planets and meteor impact sites. My creative juices bubbled with glee. And then I got a comment that sent me spiraling into an emotional torrent.

Develop your world more fully and it may come to you.

It wasn’t a rude comment. It wasn’t an attack. It wasn’t meant to be hurtful. But it felt like a slap in the face, and I didn’t take it well. It translated to “You clearly haven’t done enough thinking on this, if you are asking other people for suggestions.” I’m sure that wasn’t how it was meant.

I can usually take critiques on my writing in stride. But when I get “advice” on what I personally need to do, I react negatively (as this example shows from 5 1/2 years ago). It’s a personal problem on how I perceive what’s being told to me, one I haven’t been able to overcome in years. But it does derail my joy in the creative process, which leads to me spinning my wheels over what’s been said rather than focusing on my story. I’m thinking it’d be for the best that I don’t try to interact with strangers in an open forum, and if I do, to keep it superfluous and impersonal. Of course, that negates my purpose for joining the group, which was to make friends with fellow fantasy authors.

*sigh*

I think I’ll stick to blogs.

On a positive note, Ken, who is in the group, did provide a suggestion that I ended up using. Comets! I’ve got the timeline for when they appear all worked out, including what their appearance means to the population, and even had the revelation that their last appearance coincided with when the humans destroyed their homeland. I’m calling them the Harbingers because every time they show up, it means something bad is going to happen.

How do you react to advice? Can you recommend any fantasy author bloggers? Do you go crazy with your world mythos?

The post Sock It To Me, January appeared first on Squirrel Talk.

Exercising Body and Mind

Well, it looks like 2018 isn’t exactly shaping up better than 2017, as we’ve already had one illness followed by an injury followed by another injury. And we’re only on day 10 of the year!

I seem to be mentally and emotionally stable enough right now in order to handle it all. I’m not the one injured, and my change in parenting strategy (that whole being empathetic thing) seems to be working to reduce the amount of kid whining/wailing, which helps keep my stress level down. But for the sake of my husband, I do wish Life would give him a pass and stop tormenting him.

On a positive note, I’m on track to meet two of my goals with the Colonel’s challenge. I’ve lifted 18,110 lbs so far, and logged 4 hours dedicated aerobic activity. I don’t count stuff like chasing my kids around because it’s hard to keep honest timing records with that. I’m behind on my sit-ups, but 60 every single day is a bit tough for this squirrel to manage. Here is the current lifting schedule:

T, Th, Sat – 2 sets of 10 reps for each exercise:

60 lb Deadlift

60 lb Lat Pull-Down

25 lb Leg Extensions

25 lb Leg Curls

15 lb One Arm Row x 2 because I have 2 arms

45 lb Squats

It comes out to a total of 4900 lbs per night, three nights a week.

Writing wise, I have found I continue to hone my skills in the art of confusing the heck out of people. I succeeded again this past week to make my local critique group say WTF is going on in this chapter (hint: I didn’t give any visual indications or written triggers to indicate that the character’s brain was getting flooded with memories that had been previously hidden from him). I rewrote it using italics and added in the character’s dead brother informing him that he was going to be getting all these memories back, so hopefully it’ll be less confusing this time around. I’m going to let it sit and return to it in a week to see if it still makes sense. In the meantime, I’ve been beta-reading and critiquing some truly excellent stories, so that’s a brightening of my spirits.

What hints do you have for staying positive? Do you enjoy exercise?

What thing do you excel at when writing?

The post Exercising Body and Mind appeared first on Squirrel Talk.

Let’s Try This Again #IWSG

As you might have seen in last week’s post, 2017 wasn’t great for me. But it’s a new year, and I’m off to a new start. This year kicked off with the Colonel’s Challenge at work, which will last for 10 weeks and include resistance training, push-ups/sit-ups, aerobic exercise, and weight loss. I’m aiming to hit the goal with all four sections, even though I’ll need to get all 3500 push-ups and sit-ups through sit-ups alone due to my wrist. Other areas include lifting 143,200 lbs worth of weight, 30 hours of activity, and losing 5% of my body weight. Since losing weight is also part of a longer term goal, it works out well.

In addition to the Colonel’s Challenge, I’ve set a goal to average at least 700 words written a week. I think that’s obtainable, even if I’m busy. And I also want to complete one good digital painting. Keyword there is complete, since I’m notorious for starting but never finishing most things.

Another goal is to build a better relationship with my children. Babyzilla whines a lot, and I think he wants attention. So I’m going to slow down when I’m around the kiddos, try to encourage my son to figure out how to play by himself more often, and really work on my empathy (I’m a terribly unempathetic person so it’s a forced change to my personality, but I think it’ll be better for my kids).

So where does the insecurity come in? I still have the fear that I won’t finish anything this year. It’s going on five years since Thanmir War came out, and I’m not even finished drafting the sequel, Isto. It’s been three years since This World Bites, and I haven’t even peeked at Murder Most Fowl lately. What if I fail yet again?

But it’s like I tell my son, whining about it isn’t going to get me what I want. So, I’ll keep chipping away at it, and maybe, just maybe, I’ll finish something this year.

IWSG Optional Question – What steps have you taken or plan to take to put a schedule in place for your writing and publishing?

This started last year, but I partnered up with a local friend to hold each other accountable with our writing. It might not be a set schedule, but it’s a weekly accomplishment that’s usually achievable.

What are your goals? Does the new year symbolize a new start to you,

or just another day? What’s your favorite weight lifting exercise?

About Insecure Writer’s Support Group



You can find the sign up for the IWSG here. We owe Alex J Cavanaugh a huge thank you for thinking this blog hop up.

The post Let’s Try This Again #IWSG appeared first on Squirrel Talk.

2017 #YearInReview

I’d have to say 2017 wasn’t my best year. In fact, I might rank it my worst so far. It was the year of injury and illness, of used-up sick leave and emotional bankruptcy. From January to December, it was filled with some ailment or another that left me despairing and sobbing.

But I kept reminding myself that there were other people out there with real struggles more intense than my own. Jeri Walker fought breast cancer and is still trying to make ends meet financially. Misha Gerrick faced a failing business and possible eviction.

So rather than focusing on all the terrible things that happened at the Town’s End (foot issues, torn LCLs, scarlet fever, etc.), I’m going to reflect on the good.

2017 was for art projects, rainbow hair dye, and virtual reality. I ran a 5K with my sis-in-law in April, went ziplining with my best friend, and explored the Discovery Center with my kids. I even convinced my husband to be my barber and shave designs into my hair.

2017 was also the year of cooking. I think I finally figured it out, folks! I managed to cook chicken with that golden brown, flavorful exterior and juicy inside. Not only that, I made buttery shrimp that wasn’t like chewing rubber, steak that wasn’t still mooing while being black on the outside, and mastered cauliflower fried rice that the residential grown-ups seem to really enjoy. This year took me into vegetarianism, low-carb diets, and experimenting with things in an effort to feed my family. I made beautiful, menu-picture worthy omelets, fun sprinkle-filled pancakes for the kids, and swapped out the cabinet-staple soy sauce for coconut aminos without much notice.

Despite life swatting me down, I am on track with my current weight loss plan to lose 30 lbs in one year (I started the first of November and am down by 8 lbs). I might not be able to lift weights due to a gimpy wrist that prevents me from doing simple things like pulling a pan out of the oven without pain, and my lungs send me into a coughing fit when I try to do anything more energy intensive than walking, but I can still do squats so my thighs should be in pretty good shape.

I might not have finished the writing projects I had hoped to, but I submitted a short story this year, and it was published in the benefit anthology FULL DARK! All proceeds for the anthology go to the Gary Sinise Foundation to help our active military, veterans, and first responders.

I got an awesome new laptop that has taken my artistry to a new level, giving me pressure sensitivity as I draw directly on the laptop screen. And much like I my cooking, I took the time to focus on learning how to be consistent in the art I produce, and managed to draw my characters the same way more than once. I’ve still got a long ways to go before I’m to a point where I can be really proud, but I’ve shown improvement over this past year, so I’m calling it a win. (These were all paper and pencil sketches. I’m still too novice with my digital painting to show it off.)

So yes, this year sucked (asthma issues, strep infections, house repairs…). And yes, I’m on antibiotics for my fourth illness in six weeks. But hey, this squirrel had some positive things happen this year too.

How was your year? Got any triumphs or tragedies to share? I hope you and yours are faring well. Here’s to a better year in 2018!

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