New Project Just For this Site!

All right, so awhile back I wanted to revamp my blog. I've gone through a load of different things I wanted to do with this page. Then, finally when I decided what I wanted to do: stress hit.

I am now working 3 part time jobs, and still writing. Unfortunately my writing is increasingly limited to non-fiction because that is what I can be paid for. Not that I'm currently making much, but it helps in the overall scheme of things. Also, even if it's product description s and web content it feels awfully good to get a few bucks for my writing.

A few months ago, before stress-out-craziness stole my life, I decided to do a fiction project for Writing Worlds. I had it all set, and then my map went vanishing into the chaotic swirl of paper piles on my desk.

So, I've rebooted. I have another project along the same lines. I am going to walk through the world-creation and then the writing. If I alternate between the two from post-to-post, forgive me. However, this will be my process, pure and simple.

Lemons and Photos

On top of working to improve my food-blogging, I am also trying desperately to use up the oodles of food that somehow ended up hanging out in fridge and cupboards. It's no easy task. And as fruits and berries lend themselves easily to breads, muffins, scones and desserts, that's where my time is being spent right now. These
lemons are a good indication of the stockpiles I'm working with...

My dad's coworker had a tree, you see. I visited my parents house (mine is in the same area as theirs) and there was a massive bag of lemons. Apparently, this is what my dad thinks when i say: "I love cooking with lemons!"

So I'll be trying out a variety of recipes. The rainy weather seems to lend itself well to excessive baking. I am working on improving my photography skills and I *hope* this helps my blogging as a whole.

I suppose my current writing efforts are to improve my interaction in this medium. As taking pics of my cooking has been the most challenging aspect of food-blogging, I'm hoping that putting effort here will lead to better writing.

Odd as that sounds, but I think that learning to take pictures and choose pictures for posts is an important skill. Focusing on Modern Menu and Saucy Choppers will help me better my own abilities in this.

With my trusty little point-and-shoot and not some fancy camera, I'll do my best to take better pics...

June Starts Dreary

I woke up not quite feeling well today, as if i hadn't slept well enough or long enough. Neither of which were true. I stumbled through my shower, the picture taking for today's blog posts and am slowly forcing the coffee down. I hate slow mornings, they make me feel lazy, even when it is nothing I can fight.

The weather, too, on this the 1st of June 2011..is very odd. Thunderstorms have descended. Winter still has Northern California in its grasp. But it should be getting on towards summer. The weather has been so odd...

Could my feeling sleepy and unwell be related to this weather? Do we react when the weather changes? Can we use this in writing?

Sounds farfetched...? But what if sunny weather gives one character energy, and makes another sleepy? Can this be used to influence actions, conversation, while also weaving in details about the environment? If the weather is odd, how the character reacts to the weather may well give us 1) insight to character, 2) insight to world, 3) time reference (something I generally have trouble including) and 4) Plot development (if the weather is a sign of something gone wrong, magically or other).

What do you think? Can you write a scene like this?

Writing What I Know

I used to have a problem with the phrase, "Write what you know," because many of the individuals who taught this ideology placed heavy emphasis on experiential learning. Only, not all of us "learn" that way, or go about life that way. I have to get my mind wrapped around a concept or some level of understanding before I can actually "know it." The result is, sometimes, that my "knowledge" isn't easily quantifiable, not even by myself.

Sure, when I plunge into something I start to see, through application of knowledge what "I know," --and what I don't--but all in all, there is very little in my life that I have learned by doing.

Cooking and Dress-up, are kinda the stuff I learned by doing.

Fantasy writing *could* fall in that category, mainly because I've wrestled with the proper story elements for so long and acquired increased understanding through analysis, that it has finally planted me on the right track. That said, those experiential-valuing instructors often indicated that writing fantasy was pure imagination. So perhaps by not *exactly* placing my fiction in the category of "what i know" I am validating them...

Whatever.

I am trying to write on topics I "know" to diversify what I *do* write. I want to be able to make a living as a writer (eventually) and that means writing topics (and exploring topics) which I know somewhat about and wish to explore more deeply. So I am!

I am trying to write recipes, and put all my knowledge of economical cooking into words. I am going to chart my progress learning to sew...

Just... on other blogs. But keeping prolific, while I can, and keeping focused--these are important. And so...I am :)

Planning. Drafting. Doing.

The hardest part of writing is writing. I never believed this when I was a kid and not even a surgeon was likely to remove a pen from my fingers. However, it seems to me that the main issue with getting to the point of writing has been (for me) the assumption that i can do it at any time.

I mean, if I can write literally anytime, just sit down and go for it...why should I choose this very minute? When the laundry is overflowing? If the dishes are climbing out of the sink, it isn't a good time for writing, right? When a high school friend calls me on a Friday night to say: "Hey, I'm gonna be in town this weekend, you free?" the reaction comes all too easily: "Of course!" and writing is put on hold for a morning, which ends up including the afternoon and then I'd return home to dishes and laundry.

The "not right now" turns into "not today," and can become, "oh...wait, what have I done this week?" all too easily.

Life intrudes, and not until the grumpiness sets in, and stress descends all too easily about things that really shouldn't inspire any level of frustration...not till then do I realize just how essential it is to write Now. For myself, my mood, and my life.

So I get caught up in the planning, when I'm out in the world. Walking down the street, or taking the train into town. My characters make themselves known in my mind when I'm not, that moment, able to write. It's their vengeance, I suppose.

I try to channel the thoughts into notebooks. I plan the world, the story, try out snippets of scenes and short stories. Bits of writing float about, unfinished, to collect on a messy floor.

But that chair. To sit and to write, to focus on this moment...sometimes it takes more will, more insight into self than I have anymore. Sometimes, I am caught up in so many plans, so many obligations, that sometimes keeping the simple pledges that I made to myself get set aside for longer than I mean to.

So here is to simplifying life, to cutting down and back on my obligations. Here's to renewing my commitment to myself, my writing--and my chair.

The Blog Reboot

I think I got a little lost in the trees. There are times that I see something that I want to do and I go after it, only to lose myself along the way. I guess I have a tendency towards obsession, and whenever I reexamine the road to which I have pledged myself, it gets larger. I'm just not good at paring down.

Most recently this has happened with SWS. In the past it happened with my novel--which is now requiring a ground-up rewrite because of just how unwieldy it became (see? stubbornness--I'm going to completely re imagine everything rather than shelf the thing). But, when I step away and kind of look at the whole thing through a new set of glasses, I find the essence of the thing--of me--enmeshed in the center (because, you see, the two are a bit allegorical).

Perhaps this is a major personality flaw. I mean--I also have a cluttered home.

I have a hard time paring down my stuff, my life, my novel, my non-profit scheme....

Geez...I *do* seem to over complicate things. So I spent the night cleaning, I picked more minimalistic blog templates, and I am going to try to prioritize the things I need to reach my goals, those that are personal to myself and those I share with the tall guy standing next to me in the picture above.

Character & Environment, in Honor of Earth Day

Myths and Legends abound with fears and stories of natural disasters. Humans have this ability to shove the natural world away, and forget it's out there. if it's too rainy, or too windy, or too hot, or too--whatever, we complain. As if the weather the world were constructed for our inconvenience.

But our constructs--like the fence in my yard--are alterations in a terrain that once belonged to the natural world. Our human constructions are...artificial...existing to validate our sense of self, society, world and so forth.

When creating fantastical societies, it's easy to create a terrain which your characters pass over. Sometimes weather is used to reflect emotion, plot tension, accent a scene with an appropriate ambiance. But the natural world can also be personified. Often gods in ancient myths are associated with natural features--mountains, lakes, the ocean.

In order to bring your environment and thus the setting of your world alive, imbue the environment with meaning in your characters' eyes. Populate it with myth that reflect an understanding of niche and ecosystem. Do not assume that because we dress up these concepts with scientific terms that people prior to industrialization lacked an understanding of them. They had their own way of interpreting the same information, and noting the relationships between animals, plants and natural features.

And in urban environments, have the natural world encroach. Wild turkeys wondered through my yard a few times this past winter. They came in from the river and based on Facebook statuses had been seen as far as midtown.

To think that our urban lives are untouched by wilderness is inaccurate. We just don't like to see it. And yet, seeing a particular bird overhead, perched in a tree outside a window, or a nuisance in the yard can place your city geographically, reflect your characters' biases, and provide details that make setting pop.