Saturday, April 30, 2011

Better Late than Never

Blog posts I enjoyed this past week:

How I Use Scrivener -- How Scrivener is made of awesome sauce.

Revenge in 10 Easy Steps -- Is four months too young to plan revenge?

On Inner Ages -- This was so refreshing to read!

Avoid the Obvious in a Query -- I didn't think my query did this, but turned out I was wrong.

Monday, April 25, 2011

No Choice in the Matter

Before JT was born, I watched lots of baby-related shows. I don't care to as much now because I know exactly how it feels to have a three-day-old at home and I don't need the television reminding me. But one thing that always boggled my mind was the phrases that came up while these brave women were bringing their little ones into the world:

"I give up."
"I'm not doing this anymore."
"Take me back home -- I'm quitting."

Of course, I'm sitting there all amused wondering what these women are thinking and how exactly they plan to quit. Not exactly an option, is it? Well, as it turned out, when JT was less than an hour from making his grand entrance, I turned to my other half and declared, "I want the baby out. I don't want to push anymore."

...yeah, I was a hypocrite. It's not often in life when you really have no way to back out and you have to move forward. But when it does happen, it changes your life. And this particular change was one of the best, right up there with discovering Jesus, marriage, and my first taste of sushi.

I should relate this back to writing, shouldn't I? All right, then. When plotting a story, one should try to create a situation where the protagonist has no choice but to move forward. But not by putting her through labor. There are limits of torture even for imaginary people.

Thursday, April 21, 2011

Favorite Blog Posts This Week

I enjoy this feature on other blogs, so I thought readers here might like it as well. Here are a few of the writing and/or baby blog posts that I found interesting this week:

http://www.google.com/reader/shared/katrinasforest

(Ice cream page of doom!)

Monday, April 18, 2011

Letters to Preborn JT

I uncovered some letters I wrote to JT prior to his arrival.

September 3rd:
I think when you arrive, it will be hard at first to associate you with "that person who was kicking me." It's hard to learn much about a person's personality when the only information you have is feeling that person through a bubble. But I know a couple things about you:

1) You do not hold still for the doctor. Apparently, your heartbeat is your own business, and we would all save ourselves a lot of time by taking that silly machine elsewhere.

2) You like your space. If Mommy puts her arm or a book in your space, you will let her know right away that it needs to be moved.

3) You like playing hide-and-seek with Daddy. You know it makes Mommy look silly when she says, "JT's kicking!" and then when Daddy comes around, you're barely moving. I like that you occasionally give Daddy a few hard kicks to make me feel better. You two are going to gang up on me when you get bigger, aren't you?

December 9th:
You are hard to wait for. I know God has a wonderful day set aside to be your birthday, but I'm an awful guesser about which day that is. You should know, right now we're trying to come up with cool ways to remember your birthday. If you're born today, the month, day, and year are all prime. If you're born tomorrow, it's "twelve-ten-twenty-ten," which sounds cool when you say it. On the 11th, your birthday is a countdown: 12/11/10. And on the 12th, you get a double number like Mommy: 12/12. We haven't planned past that.

(Incidentally, we did not have to plan past that. Also, incidentally, I either got the date wrong on that last entry or the baby ate my brain that day because none of those numbers are prime.)

Saturday, April 9, 2011

About the New Blog

Welcome to my newly relaunched blog. This blog will about two things: A (yet unpublished) book and a baby.

Blogs are great places to watch things grow, because each entry is a written snapshot. Which is great for things like novels, because let’s face it, if I photographed my manuscript day after day, it would look rather boring. But it’s also great for babies when you’re a new mom who isn’t quite ready to plaster her child’s face all over the internet.

So, let’s take a peek at the starting points.

The Book:
One glorious spring day, I held in my hands the coveted personal feedback rejection letter. The one from my one of my dream agents with detailed comments on exactly where s(he) – we’ll keep things gender-neutral – felt the novel had gone off-course. Sometime afterwards, I received another full rejection letter, also from a dream agent, detailing the same. The concerns about the novel were nearly identical, and when I paused to consider, completely accurate.

Both agents asked to see my future work. One expressed a willingness to look at the same manuscript again, if appropriate changes had been made. So I did the only logical thing. I halted future queries until this manuscript was back in fighting shape.

Enter the baby.

The Baby:
Also in the same glorious spring, I attended my cousin’s wedding. I’d suspected (okay, hoped and prayed) throughout the day that something was up. Among several other stereotypical pregnancy symptoms, I had called my husband from work the week before bawling my eyes out for no conceivable reason. I can get emotional at times, especially on sleep deprivation, but as my other half put it, “You’re usually not that bad.”

At the time of this writing, the countdown on our little miracle's arrival rested at about six weeks. We had something to bring him home in (except that it still needed to be installed in the car), and a place to put him when he arrived (except that it had a mattress and no sheets). Everything else, including my novel, got pushed around by exhaustion, nausea, and seasonal germs enjoying blissful freedom from any and all cold medications.

A quick glance over the old posts on this blog will reveal that the baby has, in fact, arrived, and shall be known henceforth on this blog as JT.

My goal is to chronicle the adventures of both these endeavors as they inevitably mash together. Maybe new parents will read this and think, “Yes, I’m not the only one!” Maybe seasoned parents will get a kick out of my naiveté. Maybe writers everywhere will just laugh at me butchering the English language in my sleep-deprived state of new motherhood.

Whatever your reason for wandering across this blog, I thank you for your visit and hope you enjoy your stay.

Links

Writing Friends:

Steam Trains and Ghosts

Without Really Trying

Kris Millering

Marie Lamba

Author Resources:

Writer Beware

NaNoWriMo

Fellow Moms:

Miss Topaz's DeviantArt
Playing around with the look of my blog/website. If I break anything, I apologize.