Collaborative efforts part II

My friend, we know deep within ourselves when the stars align in a specific design suited for ourselves. The trick is to listen to the call when we hear it and heed its voice. – as commented by writernubbin on yesterday’s part 1 post.

 

Writernubbin, your comment expresses perfectly the phenomenon that’s been moving my life lately! There’s another sort of collaboration going on these days.

Rob posts here on my blog in comments from time to time. He extended a metaphorical hand in his comment the other day on my Fear of Expectations post.  (And yes, I decided to knock down a wall or two…) We’ve been talking about things for a while now.

Turns out he and I have a lot in common. An incredible lot. He’s a writer, too, and so knows the importance of my own writing (very important). Some of his dreams are to build a sustainable homestead, become debt free and live a rural life (how interesting…those are my main dreams, except mine includes becoming a published novelist too, lol).

You might be seeing him around a lot more

Collaborative efforts part I

About ten years ago I began working on a novel with an artist friend. His paintings inspired a story and when I brought it up to him, he exclaimed that he'd had the same story line in his mind while he was producing the paintings.

We started attending writer groups for feedback and advice, and after about a year of effort, I had to put it on the back burner. It's still a great story and one day I might get to ressurect it. But I don't even know where my original files and notes are, and so it still simmers in the back of my mind. The effort of starting it over from scratch is more than I feel like doing right now.

Another  friend and I are going to work on a book we'd started together about six years ago. We live so far apart now that it's all going to have to be done via email and phone calls, but we're ready to give it a try. Not sure where I'll fit this project in with the other WIP's, but somehow I know it'll root out a spot for itself.

This year is a year of collaboration, I think. I'm finding my way in a writerly world, and in my ordinary world. Beginning to dream again, and realizing that I am not alone, after all.

 

Fear of Expectations?

I discovered something about myself last night.

I can set expectations for myself, and know I’ll strive to meet them. But I’m afraid to expect anything from anyone else.

It’s not a fear of expectations. It’s a fear of being disappointed.

No expectations, no disappointment. If I expect nothing, and gain anything at all, then I’m happy.

It’s a little like putting my heart on the line. If I do that, it could get broken. If I don’t it’s always safely tucked away behind stone walls.

But that wasn’t the discovery.

The discovery was that I am less afraid of having my heart broken than I am of being disappointed.

To allow myself to expect…anything… is very very hard.

A second insight came soon after the first one settled in. The first one just made me cry because I’d pinpointed something that’s been an issue for many years. The second was like sounding alarms.

How can I get what I want out of life if I don’t allow myself to expect to receive?

Then I realized, oh my God, I *have* been a dandelion seed all my life and I didn’t even know it!

 I’d better learn to get over this.

So it went a step further. To expect to receive isn’t the same as being attached to outcome, is it?

Flash Fiction Friday

Today’s Flash Fiction is 100 words. It’s called ‘Savor’.

 

If you’d like to post your own flash as a comment, or link to yours on your blog, feel free. Try to aim for 100 words. I find that a good challenge because it forces me to cut unnecessary wordage (Yes, it’s a made-up word… related to ‘baggage’).

Writerly stuff

SplinteredLands Splintered Lands The Splintered Daily is out! http://bit.ly/fSDWwk ▸ Top stories today via @ilona_andrews @kjhatch @madison_woods @tracyfalbe18 hours ago  Favorite  Retweet  Reply

 

Here’s a neat little online daily featuring lots of writerly things: http://paper.li/SplinteredLands/fantasy-writers

My blog just so happens to be mentioned. You don’t have to be on Twitter to read it. For the most part it’s a collection of blog posts to do with Fantasy genre writing.

Over a barrel

I’ve been wondering about the origin of this phrase.

I know what it means in context of my own life.

After a few Google and Bing searches, I found that this phrase originates from when sailors were tied ‘over the barrel’ of a ship’s cannon to be flogged for disobedience.

Disturbing Dreams

Last night I dreamt of vampires. Not the sparkly, sexy Twilight sort, but thirsty, cold killing sorts.

Ordinarily my dreams don’t scare me, and I don’t find the off-the-wall twisted worlds I write about scary.

But these guys scared me. And they were like the elephant in the room. Everyone knew they existed, but no one talked about it.

That was probably the ingredient that made the whole dream so tense. I remember it in detail and it was long like a movie, so it might be worth writing down.

Writing of any sort

I debated tonight whether to let this day go by without a post. But then I decided not. Just because I have nothing to say is no excuse.

This morning I didn’t wake up early enough to both cook breakfast for the boys and write for my blog. Lucky for Garrison and his friend, my parental instinct kicked in, and they got to eat before heading out for school.

Today my day job was intense and I didn’t even leave for lunch, so no chance there to post.

And now, here I am nearly brain-dead and deciding I’d better do it before it gets much later and my thoughts run even less coherent.

This is the extent of my writing effort for this day. Nothing got done toward Symbiosis either, and I don’t even believe I wrote an email – oh wait, yes I did.

I had to do quite a bit of technical correspondence about ICP-MS and background contamination… so all was not a loss today, haha. It wasn’t fiction, but it was still writing. That’s better than none at all.

#amediting this morning

The more I edit, the more I am rewriting what I’d previously written. I’m hoping as I get farther along, the extent I have to do this will decrease.

The first draft was an adventure. The editing process is turning out to be quite an adventure in itself, too. I think polishing will be the easiest step, but I’ve been wrong about the other two, so we’ll see. The editing isn’t hard so much as it’s tedious.

How long does it generally take you to edit (including rewrites) the first draft of your novels? Mine is around 100K words.

Another question. How long are your chapters and does it matter? Some of mine are short, around 1500 words. Some are twice that, but 3000 words is about the longest. Generally, I break chapters at the end of scenes, but am thinking I’ll need to combine some of the earlier ones to make longer chapters.

Confusion (via Spiritual Crossroads)

This was a recent post at Janet Sunderland’s blog. Until she posed the question, I might have had an easier time finding an answer:

  Today’s prompt for a blog post is “What confuses you the most?” What??? It’s more like What Doesn’t? The second possibility would be, “What confuses you the least?” That’s easier. Rain. Rain doesn’t confuse me. I understand rain comes from clouds which have picked up moisture as they track from somewhere or another. But as for the rest of it? I’m not sure there is a “most.” How do you rate good, better, best – or many, most, when the answer is … Read More

via Spiritual Crossroads

After reading it and thinking about it, I narrowed down what confuses me most and least are myself and nature.