The Blog of Personality

The Artists

The gentle and compassionate type. They are especially attuned their inner values and what other people need. They are not friends of many words and tend to take the worries of the world on their shoulders. They tend to follow the path of least resistance and have to look out not to be taken advantage of.

They often prefer working quietly, behind the scene as a part of a team. They tend to value their friends and family above what they do for a living.

I think that's a pretty good description of me. I do worry a lot. I don't talk much. I prefer to do let my fingers do the talking on the keyboard. =)

You can have your blog personality type checked here.

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Honest Scrap Award

I've received a gift from jiggins @ con·tin·u·um for my blog "Ink in My Sweet Tea: The NaNoWriMo Journal of a Southern Writer". I'd seen blog awards on other blogs and wondered if I would ever be the recipient of such an honor. This is my first blogging award to be given to me by one of my peers in the blogging community. Thank you so much, Jiggins. You have been such an inspiration to me. Even though I've never "met" you, I count you among my friends, and I'm blessed to have you in my life. :)

Here's the guidelines as I received them from Jiggins:
1. List 10 honest things about yourself (make it interesting, even if you have to dig deep!)
2. Pass the award on to 7 bloggers (I hope I don't pass it to someone who already has it!)

Ten Truths About Me:
1. I will never get married again. Three times is enough. Done. Finished. Out of the game.

2. I wish my sister and I had some kind of relationship.

3. I wanted to be a singer before I wanted to be a writer.

4. I didn't submit my writing for twenty years because I didn't think it was good enough. To me good enough had to be perfect.

5. I have realized that perfection will never be attained in my lifetime, but good enough is totally possible.

6. I used to be a chameleon. I could adapt to any situation, any time, any place. Now I'm just me, take me or leave me. I'll still be me.

7. I can let people be where they are, how they are.

8. I can only change me. I am powerless over everyone else.

9. I believe happiness is a choice.

10. I am a person who is motivated by pain. When I get tired of hurting, I will make the necessary changes. Unfortunately it's usually not until I'm in a lot of emotional pain that I'm willing to change.

I pass this award on to those bloggers who have the courage to write and tell their stories with the scrap of honesty it takes to get down to the absolute, unadulterated truth. Such are the writers I admire most. This list is not complete, just a tip of the iceberg of the list of blogs I read on a daily basis. I wish I could pass out more than seven!
Thanks again. See you soon!

1. Shon Bacon @ All the Blog's a Page.

2. Carolyn Townes @ Becoming a Woman of Purpose.

3. Kim Smith @ Writing Space.

4. Lea Schizas @ The Writing Jungle.

5.Lyndsey @ Open Up Your Folding Chair.

6. Holly Lisle @ Pocket Full of Words.

7. Clesha Staten.

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2009 Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award

Amazon and CreateSpace are hosting the 2009 Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award Contest. I think I will enter my NaNo novel. So we know what that means. December is for finishing, and January is for editing. This change in plans means long hours at the keyboard and a lot of hard work in a very short time. But, hey, $25,000 for 3 months work is pretty darn good for a writer. And that's the Grand Prize.

If I don't win, I'm still a winner. It will be the first time in my life I've actually submitted my work so I'll be a winner either way.

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Post-Nano Depression

So I finally came out of the post-NaNoWriMo depression, and wrote 500 words on a new project yesterday. I can tell I haven't written in almost two weeks because those few words had me aching all the way up past my shoulders. I'm considering changing over to the Colemak keyboard. I would use the Dvorak, but the cut and paste shortcuts get lost with it and not with the Colemak.

Right now I'm working on NaNoPubYe, National Novel Publishing Year, to try to get my novel ready for submitting.

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My Pics from NaNoWriMo 2008

This is my inspiration mirror. I wrote different affirmations on it during November to help me get through NaNoWriMo. My favorite one was: Do you really want to experience the feelings you will have if you don't win? Write! You can do it!
I think it worked!





The other image is my NaNo Author page with my verified winning word count! I was so happy when it changed to purple and the big picture of the Viking ship came on the screen and said, "You Won!"
Now I know why NaNoers say, "December is for sleeping." I feel exhausted, and also feel really strange today. I feel like I should still be working on the novel. It's kind of like my best friends moved away, and I don't quite know what to do with myself.
Maybe I need to start working on a new project?

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We Had Joy, We Had Fun

Final word count: 50,580.
And for once in my life, I don't know what to say except that I am definitely doing this again next year. It was one of the most wonderful experiences of my life.

I've been up for 21 hours straight. I'm going to sleep now.

Congratulations to everyone who participated. Nanoers rock!

See y'all next November!

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Almost to 40k

Word count is: 39,558 according to yWriter, and 39,424 according to the word count validator on the NaNoWriMo site. GoogleDocs says I've passed the 40k mark. But I'll go with the site validator. Had a piece of chocolate pie waiting if I did hit 40k. Ate it anyway. Still taking Theraflu and still feel like crap, plus my throat started hurting today. Must finish by Saturday night. I do not want this going down to the wire. That's just too close for comfort for me.

Be on the lookout for a shiny new winner's badge here within the next 48 hours, hopefully. May my fingers fly over my keyboard like the wind!

Congratulations to all my NaNoWriMo and Twitter friends out there who have already won! I'll be joining you soon!

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Almost Where I Need to Be

Chris Baty, the founder of NaNoWriMo, put out a challenge: 20k by bedtime Thursday night. I busted my butt. I've written about 4000 words in the last twenty-four hours, and it's 5:30 am Friday morning. My fingers are stiff from typing all those words and my feet are swollen from sitting at the computer for hours upon hours. I haven't been to sleep yet. That still counts as "before bedtime Thursday", right? Ha ha. No, seriously. It had better count! Just kidding. Not.

I'm rambling. I'm going to bed now. ;)

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Playing Catch-Up

I'll be playing catch-up as family obligations had to be attended to this week. But it's okay, I can do it! Wish me luck.

I notice no comments on the excerpt posts. No thoughts, dear readers? I need your imput, please! If you're not busy writing your own NaNo novel, that is!

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Less Than Two Hours To Go!

Being filled simultaneously with excitement, fear, anticipation, and dread is a very strange feeling. I'm looking for word count widgets to post here.
I'm listening to Halloween stories to take my mind off of the excitement. Seeing all the Twitter updates with everyone starting in their time zones and coming back a few hours later with their word count achieved for the day is very inspiring.

Good luck everyone!

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Less Than 24 Hours!

So I got the pumpkin carved, as you can see. The NaNoWriMo site must be down. Everytime I log onto Blogger I get a NaNo sign-in box popping up on my computer. There's usually electronic goblins floating around cyberspace on Halloween anyway, so I'm running a virus scan just to be safe.

The teleconference with Lisa Gentile this afternoon went very well. She helped me see another angle to a project I wanted to begin. She's wonderful. Lisa is a NaNoWriMo winner, and we share a love of consuming large amounts of coffee while writing.

And that's about all I accomplished today. Due to an attack of sciatica I'm sitting on a heating pad as I write this, hoping and praying it doesn't get worse. If it does, sitting at the desk will be out of the picture. And I don't need that the first day of NaNo.

Still psyched, though. Lisa's suggestions have me thinking of taking my novel in a whole new direction, possible combining the two ideas into one. That just might take the emotional edge off the project I originally intended to write. That way it won't be so overwhelming. Some of my friends have a saying, "New directions, new connections." It sounds like a good idea to me.

This time tomorrow night, we'll be doing NaNo! Yea!

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Two Days and Still Counting

Anticipation and excitement are setting in, right alongside fear and apprehension. But I'm still psyched. I have a teleconference in the morning with Lisa Gentile, a writing coach, to see in what direction I want to go after November. I plan on submitting this novel for publication.

Plan for tomorrow:
1. Carve the pumpkin. Won't have time Friday.
2. More character development.
3. Outline scenes and chapter resolutions.
4. Start reading "No Plot, No Problem!" by Chris Baty (again!).
5. Break out the "Novel Writing Kit" my parents gave me for my birthday back in August. (Thanks Mom and Dad!)
6. Hit my regional forum on the NaNo site and check for write-ins nearby. (I can smell the Starbucks coffee already!)
7. Get out the supplies I bought back in September (notebooks, pens, candy! Yes!)
8. Watch a few more author bios on Biography.com to remind myself that at one time, they were unpublished, too. But they did it.

It's getting close! Are you ready? Am I really ready?

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Three Days and Counting

I'm still on the "vampire schedule" but I'm dealing with it. Did manage to do some playing around with yWriter4. It's a new program for me. My daughter loves it, though. I'm still working on character development. The forums on the site are really slow, and while it's frustrating, it helps me because I'll log off and write.

It's starting to look like I'll be flying by the seat of my pants more than I intended, but it's not something that will cause me much stress. I love writing, and this is going to be fun. And I've seriously got to stop with the contractions. Every one is a loss on the word count! ;)

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Four Days and Counting

After working nights in factories and hospitals for over twenty years, my body does not want to sleep at night. I did fairly well last week, and then over the weekend flipped back to what I call "the vampire schedule." I am more productive when I sleep at night. I'm not a happy camper today. I have a commitment this evening I can't miss, and then I will work on character development, and play around with Papel and yWriter4 to see which one I will use for the novel. I'm going to try very hard to get to sleep by 2AM, and get up at a decent hour tomorrow.

I feel like I've wasted a whole day of preparation for NaNo. Since I'm starting at 12:01 a.m. Friday night, I'm down to four prep days left. Today is a wash. That's not a good thing.

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Then Alice Sees Another Bunny

Image by jvoves via Flickr

I'm wrapping up the Muse Online Writers Conference today. Tomorrow is cut and paste day in the forums, thanks to a network failure that occurred Monday and lasted through most of Tuesday. I got behind on assignments, and then I just said that little phrase I say when it's all over but the crying. I downloaded the new handouts, snagged the freebies, read what I could, and that was all I could do. It's my own fault really. I signed up for too much. Moderation is not one of my strong points. I couldn't help myself. I was like a starving woman at a buffet when I saw all the workshops. You have to realize that I'm coming off a 10 year block due to grief and trauma. I just started writing again this past spring. I haven't been to a Writers Conference since 1994. Not writing a word in ten years was like being in a never-ending nightmare, and I woke up and tried to catch up on everything I had missed.

Since I was a teenager it's been my dream to be a novelist. That's really all I ever wanted to be. Insecurity and fear kept me from showing my work to anyone other than family. Fear of rejection kept me from submitting my work even in high school. I kept writing in my 20's and 30's, and shoved the manuscripts in a drawer.

I buried my high school sweetheart and the father of my children at 33. And I stopped writing. I remarried a year later. This husband knew I had written about every detail of my life prior to our marriage. He read my work in secret. He was an extremely paranoid person, and thought I'd write about him. In 2004, he burned everything I'd ever written. Over thirty poems, a dozen short stories, more than a dozen journals, and the beginnings of a novel all went up in flames right before my eyes. He was shot to death the next day, and I witnessed the shooting. And I lost my last husband on Sept. 11, 2007. (Yes, that makes three. Yes, the last one really was the last one.)

So, after all those funerals and a lot of therapy, I'm through being afraid. Life is too short. I have too much to say. The words will not be contained anymore. They want out, and I'm letting them escape.

I committed to NaNoWriMo back in the summer. I just want to finish. That will bring me one step closer to that dream I had when I was 14 and read "The Shining" by Stephen King. I was blown away. I looked over my shoulder for three days, and could not get the story out of my head. And I knew then what I wanted to do the rest of my life. Write novels.

I've got characters, a setting, and a plot. And now I've got another story in my mind, and I don't know which one to tell first. Now, which plot bunny to follow down which rabbithole? Someone said tell both. Maybe I will.

Hurry up, November!

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The Muse Online Writers Conference

So far this has been a wonderful experience. I'm taking notes and learning so much. I think I overdid it on the workshops though. I'm just trying to learn as much as I can as quickly as possible. And just a reminder, tomorrow is Blog Action Day, and the theme this year is poverty. I've experienced poverty, so I'll be posting again today about this event. Stay tuned....

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Inspiration. Some days it actually shows up.

The writer's life. It's not exactly what I envisioned it to be. On the days that inspiration actually shows up, I'll get three or four ideas for articles. Some days an idea or two for the next chapter of my novel will pop in my head. Or maybe a whole poem will suddenly start unfolding in my brain, and the next thing I know I'm scrambling for pen and paper, struggling to write as fast as my thoughts. Most of the time I don't lose the material. Some days I just can't write fast enough. Evidently my muse, Melpomene, is camping out in the back yard and I just didn't know it on those days.

Then there are days that there's just nothing there. I'll do my morning pages, hoping to shake something loose. The amount of time it takes me to fill those three pages of longhand lets me know if I'm going to have a productive day or not. I finally give up, and look out the sliding-glass door to see an abandoned campsite, with Melpomene nowhere to be found. Oh, well. I guess it just turned into a research day. Maybe tomorrow...

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