Category: Write Liza!

Snippets of my writing life

A Picture’s Meaning

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{So, I decided to start yet another series of posts for the best reasons of all: because this is my blog, and because I can. It’s simply titled, The Magic of Writing—that indefinable, ineffable relationship between the writer and the muse.}

A picture’s meaning can express ten thousand words.

So, thanks to Rebecca Enzor (and indirectly, Amber West), I became thoroughly addicted to Pinterest this weekend. I loved creating my pretty vision boards, hunting down beautiful images to “pin” to them. I’ve always wanted to create huge vision boards for my novels, and with Pinterest, I created one for each of my works in progress in a matter of hours.

The best part? Finding an image that resonated with a specific WIP so well, that new scenes and subplots emerged from seeing them. I also love that certain images captured a mood that I’ve tried to convey in the past, but couldn’t really grasp, and I’d end up losing that mood or forgetting what it was that I’d wanted to say. Now, I can just click on one of my boards, and relive the moment until I have the right words to express whatever scene I want to write.

(Sidenote: I love all my WIP boards, but the one that’s most precious to me is simply labeled “First,” with images that remind me of my first novel. It gives me hope that one day I’ll have the skill to execute WIP1.)

There are so many uses for Pinterest, and honestly, I have to be careful to remember that it’s a tool to support my writing, and shouldn’t take the place of my novel writing. (SO ADDICTIVE. Srsly.) But, I so enjoy being able to experience my works in progress in this way and keep my muses inspired to continue working (and by working, I mean playing ^_^).

Are you visual like me? Do you have other methods to keep your muses inspired?

(*If you want to see my vision board for my current work in progress, CLICK HERE.) 🙂

I’m Being Interviewed

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Fellow #WriteCampaign-er Michael McDuffee is interviewing several writers from the Campaign, and his latest interview is with me!

Michael: Liza, you have a very involved and interesting blog. I highly suggest that anyone who hasn’t already done so go check it out.

Liza: Thank you so much. Really. I appreciate it, since I blog mainly to keep myself accountable to my goals. So the fact that anyone else finds my blog interesting in any way is awesome to me…

Swing by HERE for the rest of the conversation! ^_^

Work In Progress

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Writer's Block

Image by thorinside via Flickr

Since my last Work In Progress post, I have cobbled together my re-envisioning of the story, including a semi-new beginning and tweaking what I wrote so far to create a semblance of cohesion. I also sketched out the next few chapters, and am honestly excited to see what happens next. It’s sort of thrilling to get to new territory, especially since I lived in the first part of WIP2 for a couple of months. I feel like I knew that terrain, and how my characters would react there. I like the familiarity of those older, more established scenes, and love being able to add details here and there with each read-through.

But, now that I’m moving toward this really new next part where MC will be facing new characters and settings and challenges, I’m feeling my “blank page” issues a little bit. No matter how often I feel like I’ve conquered that little anxiety (believe me, I’m set up with affirmations and action plans galore!), it’s still there, noodling around in the back of my mind.

I know that I’m not really facing a blank page, and that I have a lot of material to get out of my head and on to the page. I just wish that The Looming Doubts weren’t, I dunno, genetically hardwired to my Ideas of Awesome That Must Be Written.

Anyway, I read these posts this morning. In their own way, they lessened the Looming Doubts, and increased the Ideas of Awesome.

Work In Progress

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Writer's Block

Image by thorinside via Flickr

I haven’t been racking up the page counts as I’d expected to this past week, but then again, I didn’t expect to write much of anything in the month of August knowing how challenging my paythebills job would be this month. So, if I think about it, any progress I made this month is a good thing.

BUT. I still have a goal to get this draft finished by September so that I can get feedback on it from my dear crit partners (*waves hi*).

Seeing that I haven’t made a lot of forward progress in the storyline, I decided to summarize what I had so far, and really think about my MC’s motivations, backstory, basically, evaluating the characters’ goals, why they had them, and what’s stopping them from reaching those goals.

Admittedly, I started out with a lot of nothing.

http://twitter.com/#!/lizakane/status/108737159997042688

And then, Snow Patrol’s Olive Grove Facing the Sea started playing on my Pandora Radio station, which is the first song that I have ever associated with WIP2 back in January. I let myself be transported back in time, and relived the emotion that I wanted to capture. Soon enough, I was able to brainstorm a little and add in little details that I forgot about; I even added in little bits here and there to make the story more logical and believable.

I have a long way to go. Those little bits are not smoothed into the story at all, and I’ve added a lot of [insert something here], but even these little tweaks have helped me stop fixating so much on some issues I’ve had with the beginning, issues that were holding me back from making forward progress because I knew they were there, being all…wrong.

Anyway, I hope that in a few weeks, I’ll be able to report that I’m 85% done with WIP2. Until then, I hope you enjoy some Snow Patrol. I love their live performances, which are sometimes better than their studio recordings. There’s a long introduction here, but he’s funny and cute so please humor him. ^_^

 

Breakfasts

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Breakfast of rasperries, blueberries and oatmeal.

Image via Wikipedia

{I’m not an expert on fitness or anything like that. This is just me being accountable to my own goals. :D}

I love breakfast foods.

Probably because most of my life, the driving force that got me out of bed was my ravenous stomach. I ALWAYS woke up hungry. Even in college, when most people slept in on Saturdays, I still made my way down to the dining hall for Saturday brunch, which was served buffet style. Endless plates of scrambled eggs, waffles, sausage, bacon….delightful!

Anyway, since I started working in a retail environment, my shifts varied a lot, and some mornings (like today) I’m simply not in the mood for breakfast. Weird, but, it happens.

So, when I get wishy washy about what to eat, instead of skipping breakfast and risking the temptation of a fast food something, I make myself oatmeal.

As plain and uninspiring as it sounds, I love oatmeal because it’s quick to prepare and so versatile. I can put whatever topping I want on it. My favorite? One tbsp of natural peanut butter and one tsp of raw honey. The oatmeal ends up tasting like an ooey, gooey peanut butter cookie. (Yes, I’m eating it right now.) Along with my black coffee, I feel like I’m eating dessert for breakfast!

Do YOU have any healthy go-to breakfast meals?

*Special thanks to my friend Jackie of Girl With No Name for sharing this breakfast idea!