Weekly vocab word

vac·il·lat·ing  [vas-uh-ley-ting]
adjective
1. not resolute; wavering; indecisive; hesitating: an ineffectual, vacillating person.
2. oscillating; swaying; fluctuating: a vacillating indicator.

Which time? Writing prompt for all and stress relief for National Novel Writer's Month participants.

I got to thinking today, after watching NBC's Dracula, about time periods, historical figures, and buildings, landscapes and so on. There are so many time periods and places I wish I could be a fly on the wall of. I wish I could have seen Queen Elizabeth I and England during her reign or Queen Victoria during hers. I would like to have seen the kind of lives some of my ancestors lived, how they made ends meet, where they came from, what their views were. I wish I could have seen certain places of the world before time and war had crumbled them.

So I posed a question to all of my friends on Facebook, mostly because I am curious, but also because as I was writing it, I thought perhaps this would be a good time to convert the question into a writing prompt. I left it open for those who just want to give short answers and for those who want to take a break from Nano and write something short and easy. So here's the question or rather questions:

What time period/place do you wish could visit, if it were possible for you to go?
What would you most like to see and what would you like to do while there?
Who would you like to meet in person if there is or was someone you'd like to meet?

And to add another element to the questions, first write this as if you couldn't do anything to change history, because if you did, it would disrupt everything. Then, write it as if it wouldn't matter if you changed history, if you could change history, but remember there are consequences to every action. How do you think your changing things will shape the future?

Fighting with writer's block and killing it dead.

Writer's block is that nasty, greasy bitch who likes to come visit at the most inconvenient time and cause all sorts of drama and emotional upheaval. It likes to leave us unsettled and wanting a gods damned break, just a little bit of one, just for a few hours, so we can get our train back on track and chugging along. Sometimes we can back hand the bitch and shove it out the door but sometimes, even if we've slapped it and ourselves, we just can't seem to recover.

It was easier when we were younger. We didn't have as many hang ups. We didn't have as many worries or things that invaded our writing time or space. There weren't roommates, in-laws, and health problems, work, homework of the assumed 'higher education' levels and a social life. We weren't too worried about grammar and spelling, speaker tags, whether or not to use this word rather than that word. If we decided to share it with someone they would tell you how awesome it was because they wanted to encourage you and would forgive all the little mistakes and focus more on content. If we didn't share it, then it was our own little treasure. We only had to really focus on our story, play time, and the simpler things in life.

I have to say finding time to write hasn't really been an issue in some respects, it's getting things around me to settle enough so I CAN write. I have come across a problem where I live that makes it very difficult for me to write and trying to come up with compromises simply aren't working. Goting other places doesn't seem to help much either. Thus a lot of my writing drive has been squish-squashed. Health complications have also made it difficult to really focus on much of anything.  Which is very sad because writing used to be my coping mechanism for just about everything. Writing used to keep me sane, well saner.

So what does a person do when that's taken away and hindered? Fight for it! It's hard, so very very hard, but you have to fight for it, even if it's scratching at the surface and you just write blogs or letters to trusted friends bitching about someone or something. You have to write short stories and it doesn't matter if it is crap. Sometimes you need crap. Sometimes you have to get the steaming pile of shit out of your system so the good stuff that has been trapped can surface. If you're angry, write something angry. Take what ever you are angry about and turn it into a character and then torture it, make that character suffer. I know that sounds twisted but at least you will have written something.

I've read some opinions from published authors who say writer's block doesn't exist, that it's a writer being this or that, that they just don't want to sit down and write. That we basically just need to suck it up and just sit down and do it if we want to be successful. Whether it's all in our heads or there are some other problems going on, they all seem to agree that you have to write through it. If this is the job you want, then you have to treat it like a job.

Here is the blog from Larry Correia (he wrote Monster Hunter International) that has be of some help and inspiration to me. He doesn't hand hold. He gives it to you straight, which I think is what most people want and need. It's not a five minute read so read it when you have a few minutes. The second link is his post about time management.

Ask Correia: How to be a professional author.

Ask Correia: Time management for writers

I don't know if this is going to help anyone and this isn't some magical cure-all. These are just some ideas and harsh realities meant to help knock us all back into gear. We're probably always going to battle with this problem from time to time. I mean I've spent months dealing with and fighting against things out of my control. There were, still are, and will always be days where I'm far too panicky and emotionally raw (that happens when you live with chronic pain but that's for a personal blog) to set foot outside my room much less deal with all the noise and commotion in my house. I swear there have been days where I've actually wanted to break every TV in my house and wished everyone had a bad case of laryngitis. There were, still are, and probably will always be days where my back pain makes it hell to sit in a chair for short periods of time much less long ones. Sometimes I can make sitting on the sofa work if only because I can change my potion more frequently. Sometimes I just can't and have to squeeze in as much as I can for as long as I can stand it. But it has only been recently that I have actually really worked on my works-in-progress- novels. Before that, I was still writing, just blog posts, e-mails, and letters. But I was writing something.

The point is simple, you can't stop. You have keep writing something, anything. I'm not going to say 'if I can do it then you can do it too'. No, that's one of those cheap cop-outs self help and diet plan sales people try to get you to buy into their crap, good advice or not. This is entirely on you just as much as it's entirely on me. A story isn't going to write itself. So look that writer's block bitch in the face and have a fight it with, blow it up, torture it as much as it tortures you, but kill it dead and when it comes back to life, kill it again. 

Hannah's (Crimson Lantern's) new goal list.

The lovely Amanda LaFantasie last posted this blog's anniversary (which is amazing! Great job everyone!) and also about old goals and new. So here I am, reviewing my old list and compiling a new list. 

Old list: 

1. Finish a book

2. Improve spelling and grammar

3. Be more descriptive

4. Write more elegantly and eloquently 

5. Get something published. 

6. Improve writing habits/ setting word goals

All of those are a work in progress still. I feel like I will always be fighting with the grammar and spelling gods of writing. I will discuss my writing process, lack there of, and writer's block in a later post.

New List:
1. Finish a book! I get so fixated if something doesn't feel right that I end up derailing myself.
2. Work on letting go of the small stuff and moving forward in a story.
3. Be more descriptive but don't bash it in. Sometimes less is more and learning the balance is key.
4. Writing more elegantly, sure, but writing gritty as well
5. Improve writing habits. This is the hardest of all but I will explain that later in another blog. Setting word goals aren't really a concern of mine at the moment. I am happy to write a paragraph at this point. Again, I will explain later.
6. Balance out my reading list. I need to read more fiction and less non-fiction.
7. Getting feedback. Again this is another blog post entirely, but it is just as important as anything else. 8. Make it worse, make it hot! Something Amanda's current mentor from Pine Manor College, Sterling Watson, said. Some of the best advice I have ever heard.

Camp National Novel Writer's Month.

It's that time again! Nanowrimo is doing another Camp Nanowrimo for the month of July. I have already signed up and am excited to get started. It's strange, I kind of want to start ahead of time but that wouldn't really count toward the word count for the month of July. Besides, I still have to get all my notes in order so I can attack July with a fury! Rawr!

So, who is going to join me? 

Yummy or ick?

Perhaps you'll never mention anything in your story or writings about food. But what if your character is a food critic or a chef. What if they are a waitress or just going out to lunch or dinner. What if another character has a romantic evening planned with tasty things to set the mood or woo someone? What if someone gets knocked to the ground and gets a mouth full of dirt or sand? Or they get smacked or are in an accident and they get blood in their mouth? What if they are a Vampire or other supernatural creature? What does it all taste like? What can you liken what your character tastes to? 

Obviously I am suggesting that you have a day where you taste things, however I don't want you to go anywhere near anything that jeopardizes your health. And if you are a vegetarian, don't go eat meat. Actually don't do anything that makes you uncomfortable or will make you sick. The idea is to get an idea of what things taste like so if you are allergic to certain things or don't want to try it, just ask someone who likes those things and won't be hurt if they eat or have eaten them.

 

Start simple. You could go to a restaurant and order something new or one of your favorites and take notes about each thing you taste. Or try cooking something at home. Either way simply enjoy the food, feel the textures, concentrate on the spices, and how it makes you feel. 

Expand. Taste things that aren't food, that are safe. Don't go eat a fist full of dirt or sand, and certainly don't do yourself or anyone else any harm. Be safe about it. If you're going to lick a window or a rock, make sure there are no rough edges. BE SAFE! 

Apply what you learn or know to a character in someway. Does your character like TV dinners due to their simplicity because they have a busy life? Do they have any thoughts on if they taste good or if they are simply a means to get by because they don't have the time to go out for food? Are they just too lazy to cook? Do you have a character who only eats organic or maybe they will only eat meals prepared by a chef and don't cook? What if your character can cook and very well, what sorts of things do they like to cook? What if they don't eat food? What would you say a soul tastes like? 

YWriter

A couple of months ago my Dad sent me an e-mail titled "A free, no frills thing like Scrivener. (looks pretty cool)". Inside was a link to a review done by PCWorld that I found interesting.

YWriter is a distraction-free, free organizing tool for writers.

I've played around with it a little here and there and found it to be really interesting. I think it's going to be really helpful as far as organization goes. At the moment my notes and ideas are scattered about in various small notebooks, documents saved on multiple flash drives, and in no way organized. Even if I happen to have a set of notes all in the same notebook, they aren't in order, and there's a lot of 'oh wait,' on my part and a lot of page flipping.

Anyway, it is not as detailed as Scrivener, can't do everything that Scrivener can, but it does appear to be a good alternative to try. 

Hello from your 2nd Administrator.

Hey guys, I was recently made an admin so I could move some things around as we post them. Dani has been caught up in life and, for the moment, is unable to tend to the blog as she would like. So with that said, I have a brief update and a few small requests to make.

1. I've put the weekly vocab words on the vocab page, formatted it as best as I am able, some things still look a little off, but I am working on it. Eventually I will have the page set in alphabetical order. 

2. If you've done a writing prompt, in the past would you be so kind as to make sure you've labeled the post. This makes it easier for me to make sure that I can get all of the prompts to the right page. 

3. I heard mention of a Grammar corner page. I'd like to go ahead and make a page for that and thus need the same labeling from everyone who had made such a post. 

4. For those of us still interested in a writing workshop via Google hangouts, I'd like to post pone that until summer so our student contributors can get through midterms, finals, and Camp Nanowrimo this month if they are participating.

5. I have a question for the Contributors Page, do we want to post our pictures beside our profile descriptions? 

6. Finally, I am going to speak to Dani about possibly changing the appearance of the blog. If any of you have any suggestions or ideas of that you'd like the blog to look like, please let me know. I general tend to use free blog formats I find on the internet since I'm not an HTML wiz (I remember some things from my HTML class but not enough). So if there is a particular color scheme or theme you think would work nicely, let me know. But remember, I still need to get the okay from Dani.

***

Edit: I've Cleaned up and put together the Grammar Corner Page. I have also spoke with Dani and she's given the okay to change up the appearance of the blog. So any suggestions are welcome. 

Vocab word of the week

tac·i·turn

  [tas-i-turn]  Show IPA

adjective

1.

inclined to silence; reserved in speech; reluctant to join in conversation.

2.

dour, stern, and silent in expression and manner.

Origin: 
1765–75;  < Latin taciturnus,  quiet, maintaining silence, equivalent to tacit ( us ) silent (see tacit) + -urnus adj. suffix of time

Related forms

tac·i·turn·ly, adverb

un·tac·i·turn, adjective

un·tac·i·turn·ly, adverb

Synonyms 
1. silent, uncommunicative, reticent, quiet.

Vocab word of the week

keen

²  [keen]  Show IPA

noun

1.

a wailing lament for the dead.

verb (used without object)

2.

to wail in lamentation for the dead.

verb (used with object)

3.

to bewail or lament by or with keening.

Origin: 
1805–15;  < Irish caoine  (noun), caoin-  (v., stem of caoinim ) lament

Vocab word of the week

glow·er

  [glou-er]  Show IPA

verb (used without object)

1.

to look or stare with sullen dislike, discontent, or anger.

noun

2.

a look of sullen dislike, discontent, or anger.

Origin: 
1350–1400; Middle English  ( Scots ) glowren  to glower; akin to Middle Low German glūren  to be overcast,Middle Dutch gloeren  to leer

Online, long distance workshop idea.

One of my goals is to set up a workshop for writing. For myself as well as my writing friends, I hope to create and build a strong support group where we can bring our stories and ideas to the table. A place where we can relax, be at ease, set aside our egos and help each other with constructive feedback, creative brainstorming, and that pesky thing called grammar. 

  

My proposal is to start small and simple. Each of us picks a short story we want to work the kinks out of or need some help with. We send it to all members of the group by a certain date and we look over each story over the course of a month or four weeks. After the four weeks/month has passed e-mail our edits back to the story owners and we agree to a date and time to join each other on a Google Hangout, one I will set up, where we can discuss each story. After the session we can add new stories to be looked at while we make edits on the discussed stories and so forth you get the idea and I am really flexible so long as we keep some structure. 

Reason for Goggle Hangout. Not all of us are in the geographical location and using this service will allow us to get together without having to shell out money to meet. Also, I've used it before to chat with family and I've seen where you can add multiple people. 

The reason for meeting once a month: We all have other things in our lives that demand our attention aside from writing. I feel a month gives us enough time, without rushing us, to really looks at each other's work without scrambling to get it done along with everything else we have to do. With this I am also flexible. If someone needs to turn in a story or submit a story, we can bring it up with each other or we can also postpone the monthly meetings to give us more time. 

If this idea is something any of you are interested in, please comment below and we'll get something set up A.S.A.P.

Vocab word of the week

hal·cy·on

  [hal-see-uhn]  Show IPA

adjective Also, hal·cy·o·ni·an  [hal-see-oh-nee-uhn]  Show IPA , hal·cy·on·ic  [hal-see-on-ik]  Show IPA .

1.

calm; peaceful; tranquil: halcyon weather.

2.

rich; wealthy; prosperous: halcyon times of peace.

3.

happy; joyful; carefree: halcyon days of youth.

4.

of or pertaining to the halcyon or kingfisher.

noun

5.

a mythical bird, usually identified with the kingfisher, said to breed about the time of the wintersolstice in a nest floating on the sea, and to have the power of charming winds and waves intocalmness.

6.

any of various kingfishers, especially of the genus Halcyon.

7.

( initial capital letter  ) Classical Mythology , Alcyone (  def 2 ) .

Hesitation and new goals.

Once upon a time my Dad told me he didn't make plans because things rarely, if ever, go as planned. Part of that was because he was an on-call corrections officer. Be that as it may, it is nevertheless a truism. Things get in the way, stuff comes up, life happens. I have had a bit of a hard time with writing for the last couple of years and it's been really hard to get back to where I was in terms of being comfortable and pumping out as much as I would like to be pumping out. I've had a lot of set backs and sometimes, in the past, when I thought I had overcome them, I would find myself back in a rut a few days later.

I have very high expectations of myself. I never stop striving to improve and be better than my best. As much as that is a very good trait, I think sometimes that it hurts and hampers me. Last night Amanda even told me that I need to allow myself to write crap. More importantly I need to allow others to see that 'crap' along with the 'good'.

A good, working support system is something that I need to find. My parents, as much as I love them, aren't going to really cut it anymore. My mother is terribly biased and my father is afraid to give advice because it seems every time he does, things don't turn out so well within a story. His words, not mine. I can't possibly continue to rely solely on Amanda. So perhaps a workshop? I could be ready for one.  

Also, I need to quit holding myself back from writing. I've been afraid of it a little bit. I've kept telling myself that I can't write until I've researched this or that, until I know the layout of a house or the area that the characters live in. I'm stalling and poking about. I just need to do it. I already have the first chapter plotted out, time to get on with the show.

I think it is time to set some more manageable goals.

1. Write at least 1,500 words on a story, not on blogs, every day.
2. Work on setting up a workshop group.
3. Read at least 10-20 pages a day in any given book, but not let the reading take over writing time.
4. Actually write out the notes for my dragon story and my Kitsune story.
5. Spend at least ten minutes a day on vocabulary building.  

An anonymous search engine for the more... interesting of searches.

I would like to take this time to share something my Father shared on his own blog. Being that he is paranoid and extremely found of certain levels of privacy and that the apple doesn't fall too far from the tree, I present my writing friends with this anonymous internet search engine . Because as writers we all like or need to look up things that our government, as much as they like to protect us, just don't need to be considering as possible acts of terror. 

For example, I am a near 30 year old white woman with severe depression and social phobias and in my writing process, for some stories, I might look up rocket launchers, exploding gun rounds, gun types and where to get them, or even ways to poison some of my characters or devices that would cause chaos and harm. While that is all benign in nature for me and my craft, someone who is watching for those key words in searches might not look at them so fondly. 

So perhaps, like my father I am being paranoid. Or perhaps this is my inherent nature reaching out to protect my friends from possibly being spied upon and put on a watch list for the wrong reasons. Call it what you will, take it as you will, but it's here for your use.   

Vocab word of the week

bac·cha·nal

  [n. bah-kuh-nahl, bak-uh-nal, bak-uh-nl; adj. bak-uh-nl]  Show IPA

noun

1.

a follower of Bacchus.

2.

a drunken reveler.

3.

an occasion of drunken revelry; orgy; bacchanalia.

adjective

4.

pertaining to Bacchus; bacchanalian.

Origin: 
1530–40;  < Latin Bacchānāl,  equivalent to Bacch ( us ) + -ānāl,  probably as back formation fromBacchānālia;  see Bacchanalia

Synonyms 
3. saturnalia, debauch, spree, carousal.

Back on the writing wagon and with drive!

"I LOVE DOGS!"

About a month ago my father called me up and wanted to know if I would be interested in flying home for a visit while Amanda Lafantasie (a.k.a Skoora), was in Boston for her MFA Residency. I was more than interested, I was down right giddy and more than ready to brave flying alone. So we decided on three weeks in which I would relax and visit a few friends and some family and two days later I was home bound.

That trip seems to have been just what I needed. I didn't do too much, just had a few mostly quiet visits with friends and family, and played with my parent's dog, Kali. But somehow whether it was the comfort of being home and truly relaxing, the quiet of my parent's house, or both, my brain settled down, stopped running a million miles a minute and complete thoughts of stories and ideas started happening.

One night I got up to let the dog out to do her bathroom business and for some reason when I laid back down, I just couldn't sleep. I started thinking about a movie I'd seen that evening and, like with most movies, anime, TV shows, or books, I started plotting a fan fic. I'm not sure how I got from Narnia to a dragon story I only have notes for or even how I got from that to a vampire story, but an hour later I had some little notes written and I could finally sleep.

I can say that I didn't get to writing the next day, I was still in the middle of my trip and wanted to wait until I got home. When I arrived home, I was excited and really wanted to write but I was kind of scared. It took getting settled in, some venting time, and a serious brainstorming session along with some helpful plotting notes from Amanda's MFA homework to get me on the right track. Not only am I as excited as Roy Mustang is about dogs, but I actually have some confidence and the first chapter arc plotted out and ready to be worked on today!

Also, while I was away I got a letter from the Long Ridge Writer's Group. A couple of years ago I was doing their short stories for magazines program, almost finished it but moved and life happened. Their letter was basically stating that I only had one assignment left and I could still do it, for a fee of course. I would like to finish it and get the diploma. But I have to wait until I have the money and contact them to find out if I can get the material sent to me for the last assignment simply because half my things are still in Kansas and what I did bring up here, well, I haven't seen it in the garage.

Trickle Trickle whoosh!

Fire place

Thunderstorm

Explosion

What does the wind sound like? Or the rain on a tin roof, a fire, or an explosion? What kind of emotional feelings do you experience when you hear these sounds? What sort of emotions do you feel when you hear music, the phone, or the voice of a friend? How does a Ford F-150 sound when you start it up or the the sound of an old, rusty car door? What about the song a Cardinal sings or a litter of kittens playing in a wood pile? What about snow fall in the middle of the night? 

You can check it out online via some sound effect videos, you can get ambient sound Cd's, noise makers, and some things you can hear for yourself. Sound is another element of the five senses that you can add to a story or even journal writing to make your work a tad richer. Using it to help describe a scene or what a character hears and what emotions they feel can make it more real for a reader. Try listening to some different sounds and making a story around them. Or sit in a coffee shop, bookstore, in the park, or your home. Listen and write what you hear, see if you can recall a memory or make up a memory for a character. 

Seeing is believing

Look at the picture above, isn't it pretty? Do you like it? Would you want to venture there and have a day or even an whole vacation? What do you imagine when you look at the picture? Are you already creating a story filled with characters?

Visual elements are just as important to writing as taste or touch and other senses. Normally I would say go outside and spend the day looking around and observing everything, taking notes, and doing the same inside your house or where ever you decide to go and I still encourage that. But, sometime the places and sights to see that you want to set in your stories or ideas are impossible to get to or get your hands on. You may have a story in France and have never been nor have the money to go. Some stories might be set in the past, the future, or even on a different world or reality. There may be items you'd like to describe, flora and fauna, that you're not too familiar with.  For those stories books, art, and the internet are great resources. So in conjunction with looking at things at home and in your area outside check out the internet, go to the library and look at the books, and see if you can get into museums. Pay attention to all the details like color, size, and textures.
Look, really look!

Vocab word of the week!

This week's word is actually the word of the day from the dictionary.com website, if only because I love how it sounds in my head.

lagan

  \ LAG-uhn \  , noun;

1.

Anything sunk in the sea, but attached to a buoy or the like so that it may be recovered.