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I hate this economy. I've been unemployed for over 10 months now, my husband for almost a full year. Luckily the rest of the nation is so poor the government keeps extending our unemployment checks, but that just means it's even harder to find a job.

Especially around a full-time student's schedule. But I've been in school for SO long, and I've taken so many semesters off due to having to work extra hours, that I just CAN'T not graduate in May 2010. I'm already pissed that it's that far out instead of August like I was supposed to be :(

So, what to do? I'm applying for any part-time job or full-time w/ flexible hours I can find, and not hearing back at all. I'm posting ads for tutoring and office help, but not getting any takers.

Summer is supposed to be a fun time of cooking out and laying by the pool. We were going to buy a patio set and a trampoline, and a swingset for the kids. But instead, we can't get any of that stuff and the pool is too expensive. This summer sucks.

Here's to hoping things begin to look up!

Where does the time go?

Not only has it been two months (ok, 2 days shy...) since I've posted on here, but it's already almost the SEVENTH month of 2009!! I can't believe how quickly time has FLOWN.

I still have a gazillion things to do before winter hits. Namely, finish the Christmas stockings, teach Austin to ride a bike, work my ass off in school so I only have 3 classes left by the time 2010 starts, lose some weight, and get a job. That's a lot of big things, and I can't do a lot of the little things on my list until some of the bigger ones are taken care of. So, I guess I'd better get crackin'.

A couple other MUCHO IMPORTANTE things to add to my list: finish the 2nd draft/total revision of IE!!!! Finish the first draft of Vaampyr/A&G. Finish the first draft of Sawyer (untitled works tend to take on the heroine's name, in this case, Sawyer Jackson, Ph.D.).

Speaking of Sawyer, SuNoMriMos is not going too well. School is CraZy and I only have about 6K done so far; my goal is 60K by July 31. This could get ugly. Luckily, finals are tomorrow (woot!) so I will have almost 3 whole weeks of peace, where I'll only have one online class to deal with. I plan on getting LOTS of writing done, LOTS of working out in, and even working on my Christmas stockings ☺ Then, July 20, I'm going to be in class M-F from 1:30-5:45pm. Could be worse, but 4 hours a day sucks big-time. Oh, well. I'll get the class over with and be ready to apply for graduation!!

In other news.... no, that's about it. Life is dull. I'm watching my high school classmates post pictures from around the world, where they're living the single life or having a blast with their spouses, many of them having children, most of them loving their jobs (or at least having one)... and I feel left out. Gotta get on that, but not quite sure how. My bro is in jail, so I haven't been able to see Lillie in a while, which makes me SOOOOOO sad. I miss her so much :( She's getting huge, walking, and her hair is so curly it makes me want to just play with it all day. Hopefully I'll get to spend more time with her soon. That alone would make up for the left-out-edness.

That's it. Life is boring. Not much to say. If I get around to it, I may post an excerpt or two from my revisions. That could be fun.

Spring is almost over...

What to blog about? Not much has changed, hence the silence.

But finals are coming up (I have 2 papers due this coming week, 2 regular "not final" tests... then the week of May 4th I have 3 finals and another paper due), so I'm hitting the crazy part of the semester. I tried to stay ahead, or at least on track, for each class, but some classes have been easier than others to stay on top of.

So, we're going to Six Flags tomorrow for opening weekend and I HAVE to be ready for my Monday test AND have my Monday and Wednesday papers due. Oh, and read about 6 neuropsych articles by Monday's class. Yay, rah.

Writing? I don't have time for that! But as soon as the semester's over, Mandy and I are starting the plot-fest for SuNoWriMos, our own personal Summer Novel Writing Months. My goal is to write at lesat 50K on a NEW novel between June 1st and July 31st, and Mandy wants to write a whole first draft, though I'm not sure what her word expectancy is. It should be fun! Since I'm taking 12 credit hours this summer, I have to take a smaller writing load, but I seriously need to up the writing time this summer because I haven't ticked a SINGLE item off my 2009 writing to-do list :(

Reading? I probably spend too much time doing that. I've recently read 2 Jodi Picoults that I hadn't read before, and now I have read all of her novels and own half of them. I am reading 2 fantasy novels, as well as Certain Girls by Jennifer Weiner. And, of course, re-perusing my 3 extra credit books, My Lobotomy: A Memoir by Howard Dully, My Stroke of Insight by Jill Bolte Taylor, and A Long Way Gone by Ishmael Beah. They are all good books and I have enjoyed reading them. I probably should have started the reports back in February when I read them though! Just for fun, I am including a picture of my newly-acquired books, thanks to Half Price Books and the Doubleday online book club ☺ I seriously need to finish my schoolwork so I can get to reading. My TBR pile is HUGE!!! To be fair, I guess two of them are re-reads, but I'm still looking forward to them!!



I'm pretty excited for summer for other reasons, too, though. Swimming pools, sunshine, tanning, the end of my advanced neuro class... Angels & Demons (the movie), Star Trek (the movie), and My Sister's Keeper (another movie) all come out in May/June, and I'm stoked! I'm NOT so stoked about allergies, sinuses, and bugs.... but alas, I guess I'll take the bad with the good when it comes to weather. I just can't wait to graduate (May 2010 baby!!) and move to Florida where it will be a lot warmer, a lot more of the time. I'll just have to find a good allergist ☺

Thoughts on Writing

Not much exciting has happened in my world, hence the lack of communication. But I'm on spring break now, so I thought I'd share a couple of things.

I got to meet my favorite author, Jodi Picoult, on Friday. The place was packed -- I heard someone say over 300 people had turned up, possibly closer to 400 -- so there wasn't much personal time with her. But I got my book signed and a picture (which is on someone else's camera so I don't have it yet :( ) and had a great time on a mini-road trip with my niece, Katie. I was exhausted by the time I got home at 1am, but it was fun.

Jodi said some things about writing that I really wish I could remember... but I do know that she said that writing is like making a quilt. You don't sit down and try to make the whole quilt in a day. You work on one square until it's finished, then move on to the next. I thought that was a good analogy, and so true.

Some other words of wisdom I've come across (in the writing world) come from J.R. Ward (whose new book comes out in April! Yay!!). In the Insider's Guide to the Black Dagger Brotherhood, which is the name of her paranormal romance series, she has a chapter on advice for writers. Here are her main points, lifted directly from page 205:

I. P & R -- PERSIST AND REINVENT
II. WRITE OUT LOUD
III. OWN YOUR OWN WORK
IV. PLOTLINES ARE LIKE SHARKS
V. SWEAT EQUITY IS THE BEST INVESTMENT
VI. CONFLICT IS KING
VII. CREDIBLE SURPRISE IS QUEEN
VIII. LISTEN TO YOUR RICE KRISPIES

Not sure what all that means? I'm sure you'll figure it out, like I am. ☺

That's it for now. I just remembered a scene I had forgotten last night, so I'm going to go write it down before I lose it again. Then some spring cleaning, yippee!!

A Month Later...

Well, it's been almost a month since I've blogged. What have I been doing in that time?

School. Lots of it. I added a non-credit Mandarin class to the mix, so now instead of super-busy, I'm uber-busy! With the two little dottie things over the U. Uber.

And I had Lillie for a week, which was amazing. She's getting so dang big! And on Thursday my house almost caught on fire. So that was fun. I had to stay in a Motel 6 for two nights while the furnace got fixed, and I had to bring my two cats and dog with me so they didn't get stuck in a fire should the furnace NOT get fixed. It's been a fun couple of weeks!

I've been doing a lot of reading lately. Mostly Shakespeare and various psychology texts, but also a couple of How-To writing books I got from the library. I absolutely love (and subsequently purchased) Donald Maass' "Writing the Breakout Novel." Amazing. I'm looking into his workshop/conference dates to see him speak, and anxiously awaiting next months' "Fire in Fiction," which sounds promising. I'm also currently reading Howard Mittelmark and Sandra Newman's "How NOT to Write a Novel." I'm only 61 pages in but it seems promising also.

Here are examples of what to expect from the above-referenced books:

"Who lives in Unpublished Novelville? Many of its most prominent citizens have no traits at all... Even the protagonist has all the depth of a sock with a faec drawn on it in magic marker" (Mittlemark and Newman 61).

"While a revelatory moment at the end of a novel that causes the reader to think back and understand everything in a whole new light -- oh, it was the uncle telling the story the whole time! -- is a fine thing, you may NOT inform the reader after three hundred pages of quotidian realism that the scrappy puppy the hero saved from the fire in Chapter Two is really a magic, mind-reading puppy from another planet, who has just been waiting for the right moment to reveal his superpowers and save the day.. This type of ending is a special instance of deus ex machina, known as the folie adieu, which is French for "Are you FUCKING kidding me?" (Mittlemark and Newman 45)

How NOT to Write a Novel also includes things to avoid, such as "The Underpants Gnomes," "The Manchurian Parallax of Thetan Conspiracy Enigma," "The Second Argument in the Laundromat," and "The Benign Tumor." Intrigued? Then I recommend reading.

I've actually found two things my current WIP is guilty of (err, I'm guilty of placing in my WIP)... and since this is How NOT to Write a Novel, I don't think that's a good thing!!!

From Writing the Breakout Novel:

"To break out, simple plot structures need high stakes, complex characters, and layered conflicts" (Maass 162).

"Think hard. Be honest with yourself. Are the stakes in your current manuscript as high as they possibly can be? Can you define them right now? Can you point to the exact pages in which the stakes escalate, locking your protagonist into his course of action with less hope of success than before?" (Maass, 58)

"Conflict grows and grows until it seems to have no resolution" (This is somewhere in Chapter Six: Plot, and though it really inspired me, I can't tell you what page it's on at the moment).

"Interweave character relationships" (Maass 197) -- This means don't just let the MC have a best friend, a husband, a doctor, a lawyer, a realtor, and a dog. And have her husband cheat on her and her best friend have a breakdown and.... all this stuff. Interweave the relationships to make them more complex: The husband cheats with the best friend, who happens to be the MC's realtor, and the MC and her cheating husband are looking for a new house; even though the best friend/realtor knows this isn't the best time to look for a new home together -- hence the breakdown. And maybe the best friend's husband is the MC's doctor... you get the picture. This was a random, made-up example from my own crazy mind, but it's what I took out of the chapter on Multiple Viewpoints, Subplots, Pace, Voice, and Endings.

That's it for now. I have to study and read and drive myself crazy. If you're a writer, I hope you take a look at these two books. I really recommend them.