Tag Archives: Writing life

Coffee. An Unconditional Love.

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I love coffee unconditionally.

I enjoy everything about coffee. The smell. The taste. The color. The texture.

Though I prefer the beautiful smoothness of Kona coffee, I will still drink down the bitter dregs of cafeteria coffee.

I function well enough without coffee, but with it…I’m unstoppable.

This week, I stumbled upon THIS ARTICLE, which stated that “NASA scientists believe the research demonstrates that web-spinning spiders can be used to test drugs because the more toxic the chemical, the more deformed was the web.”

Hmm…

…of all the drug-addled spiders, the webs of the ones on caffeine lack the characteristic “wheel” of a normal spider web. In fact, caffeine makes spiders “incapable of spinning anything better than a few threads strung together at random.”

So, does that mean that a writer on caffeine would be incapable of anything better than a few words strung together at random?

(It’s like one of those Zen Koans…like, “If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?”)

Anyway, all that to say, even knowing that caffeine is more toxic than the average drug, wrapped up in coffee, it’s still my drug of choice.

And, you’ d have to pry my coffee from my cold, dead hands.

See? Unconditional love.

(Also, I know that NASA wasn’t trying to compare spiders and people. I’m not completely crazy.)

(Besides, people like reading random words.)

Photo credit: Coffee Love By Gordana Adamovic-Mladenovic

Photo credit: Superhero by Vegas Bleeds Neon

For the Love of My Laptop

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laptop

So, for about two weeks, my laptop has been sick. For some unknown reason (*coughcough Laptop is really old coughcough*), it choked and died on me, leaving me dependent on my desk top computer for any kind of progress on WIP2. Which wouldn’t have been a bad thing or an inconvenience, really, except that half of my house was still under construction. So, the husband and I had to sleep in my office while the master bedroom was being dolled up with new…well, everything. (No worries, my office is a roomy bedroom, so it fit our bed comfortably. It just happens to house my desktop computer, hence the term “office.”)

Anyway, because desktop computer was also in our makeshift bedroom, I couldn’t exactly make a lot of progress on WIP2. Or, any computer-ing, really, like blog posts and visiting other blogs. For some reason, the hubs can’t sleep with a glowing screen on at night, and waking up to the clickety-clackety-ing of a keyboard in the morning makes him kinda murderous. (Crazy, right?) But, since I love my hubs, I wanted to accommodate him. Therefore, I shifted my normal writing routine from crazy early in the morning (or really late at night, depending on your perspective) to around 7 or 8 PM (basically, when I get home from the paythebills job) till 10 PM (when we go to the gym).

I’m happy to report that as of a few days ago, we moved out of my office, and into the master bedroom. And, as of Thursday evening, I have my laptop again! ^_^  *frabjous day* *callooh callay*

Throughout all this, I learned a few things.

First, “save early, save often” is meaningless if the computer on which I’m saving my files dies of a heart attack and I have no way of retrieving those files. I thank God every day for Dropbox. I don’t know where I’d be without it. Thankfully, hubs was able to recover and save ALL my files, but what if he couldn’t?? ALL my work, all my files would have been lost to me. My only hope would have been that my alpha readers had *some* kind of copies of WIP2. Since The Incident, I’ve backed everything up on a flash drive, and have DVD backups, too, just in case.

Second, I learned to grit my teeth and make the most of the resources that I had, even if the situation wasn’t ideal. I hand wrote pages in the morning. I transcribed them onto the desk top at night. I made excruciatingly slow word count progress on WIP2. All the while, I kept thinking, man, if I were on my laptop, how many pages would I have finished by now? But you know what, I still made progress despite my cramped circumstances, and for that win alone, I will celebrate.

Third, I now have a new appreciation of the freedom that my Laptop gives me, OH SO MUCH. I appreciate the freedom I have to sit in My Chair in the living room and type type type into the wee hours of the morning (not unlike what I’m doing now…;) ) I appreciate having the screen right here instead of at an awkward height/angle like my desk top. I love how my fingers don’t freeze up because Laptop keeps me warm (helps with the typing speed, fo’ sho’). And, I love how FAST I can type on it. I wrote more than my required four-pages this evening without even feeling it.

Anyway, it’s a great luxury for my writing life to have Laptop back in my life again. (Heck, I’ve even made the rounds of my fellow campaigners’ blogs this morning.*) But, I’m happy to know that if a situation arises in which I *can’t* use Laptop again (please oh please let that happen a long time from now, when I have money to replace Laptop), I know that I can continue on with my goals, albeit at a slower rate, and be all right with it.

Speaking of progress, time to add more pages to WIP2. ^_^

*Thank you to all my fellow campaigners for your patience. I have subscribed to ALL the blogs in the groups I’m in via Google Reader, and will have my dystopia/post-apocalyptic group linked and posted with my YA All Genre group on my Campaign page by next week (most likely sooner, of course). Also to my non-Wordpress colleagues, I *just* discovered that I can be a part of that Google Friend Connect thing-y via my Twitter account (I know, kinda slow, but I never bothered to click on it before because I thought I’d need a blogger account!), so as I comment on new blog posts, I’ll be sure to “Join” your site.

**Still so unbelievably happy with Laptop. *pets Laptop* *loving sigh*

Full Night

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Funny thing happened last night. Well, actually, the last two nights.

I slept. And, I’m not talking my usual, “I feel so well-rested with only five hours” kind of sleep. I slept a whole eight hours. Yes. A. Full. Night.

I don’t remember the last time I had slept for a full night. Lately, my nights have been full of writing, and lots of waking up disoriented on my living room couch since I simply passed out in the middle of, well, writing (though, should I really admit that my own novel knocks me unconscious?)

Well, today (er, technically yesterday since it’s approaching 2AM), I’m happy to report that I had renewed energy to get back into words, though I don’t plan on working on my WIP2 for the rest of what’s left of the night.

Just like a full night (or two) of sleep did my body good, a full night of reading and living in other worlds will do my writing-life some good.

So, with my tea on my coffee table, and Wildefire (by Karsten Knight) on my e-reader, I have a full night of reading ahead of me.

*PS, I love that some of the recommended tags for this post included “Sleep Disorder” and “Conditions and Diseases.” :D

Write it Out

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Notebooks

Image via Wikipedia

Sometimes, I have trouble saying what I mean.  I either fumble my words or go into a meandering stream of “likes” and “you know’s” as I float toward what it is I meant to say.

Usually, I’m at my fumbliest when I lack proper sleep and rest.  You can imagine how bumbly I was at the height of the holiday season when sleep was at its lowest and the people interactions were at its highest.  It’s like my mouth was falling down the stairs.

All that to say…

This past week was more challenging than usual in terms of writing.  I know this may be contrary to say, but it’s like I had too many words.  I wanted to address so many things in my Work In Progress (aka, The Hot Mess) that the words got clogged somewhere in the assembly line that starts with my brain elves tinkering with ideas, and then shooting those ideas down through my fingers to become inked words on paper.

Most of the time, a morning session of stream of consciousness writing can get me to push past that clog and get the assembly line back in working order.  This time, though, was the first time in a long time that I found I had nothing to say.

I tried writing on my laptop.  I tried scribbling in my notebook.  I tried writing in different environments.  I even tried writing other things, like new pages for my blog.

Nothing.

The malaise in writing culminated to yesterday, when I had the day off to catch up on my writing, a habit I adopted from my NaNoWriMo days.  The only thing I seemed to have words for were crits for my friend, WookiesGirl.  Though I had plenty of comments in my crits for her, I could barely write the email that went along with those crits.  (I also owe Melissa an email about my WIP.)

Then, I encountered this post and just shook my head.

I was so focused on getting something for my WIP that I forgot the very reason why I started Novel-writing in the first place: to have fum.

Sure, I have goals, and I like to achieve them.  But the reason why I started my goal was the fun and joy of writing and creating new worlds and characters.  I enjoyed the challenge of it.

However, I became so focused on it, that I didn’t give my brain elves random things to work with.  Heck, I didn’t even give them time to rest and recharge.

And in the sweetness of friendship let there be laughter and the sharing of pleasures. For in the dew of little things the heart finds its morning and is refreshed.-Kahlil Gibran

So, yesterday, I read without guilt.  I tweeted without guilt.  I watched Firefly and Avatar: The Last Airbender, Book 2.  I had dinner with my husband, and laughed at how awesome we are.

And, when I got to my desk this morning, a torrent of words splashed on to the page.  I couldn’t scribble fast enough.

So, Tell Me: How do you revive your muse?