Mountain Girl

It's Writing Tip Wednesday - on a Friday!  (Because I forgot to write it when I should have...) Which brings me to my tip:  Schedule Shit. Weekly Disclaimer Thing :  Writing, like all art, is a subjective experience.  Stuff that works for me won't necessarily work for you...though I hope it does, since I'd love for everyone to succeed.  Can never have enough books to read!  Either way, take these tips with the giant grain of salt needed to season it to your liking, since I could very well be talking out my ass. Scheduling is Like the Outline of Your Life. I know.  So deep. But it really is.  I don't know why this didn't occur to me ages ago, since it's so damn obvious, but I think the perspective shift is good.  It is!  Because outlines are important, as we know (even if they're loose ones), so scheduling shit is important too.  The level of it is, of course, up to you and what you're comfortable with....

Miscellaneous Monday Wherein I Babble About Random Things THE BOOKS HAVE GONE WIDE! Well, at least two of them have.  The third is still waiting out its term in KU, but as soon as that's done...Woo!  So, Snowed In  and Smoked Out  are both available on multiple platforms now!  Including Kobo SUPER PRETTY LINKS: Snowed In Smoked Out So yeah.  Check them out, if you want.  They're both still available on Amazon, of course, as paperbacks as well. Cherry Update I've washed, pitted, bagged and frozen...40 cups of cherries so far.  Which is approximately 10 L of them.  I'll use about 4cups/batch of whatever it is I'm making (jam or pie filling or whathaveyou), so I'll have a lot of canning to do.  Especially since I've still got another ~10L left to pit. And apples to pick. Speaking of jam, I used the raspberries from the garden and some blueberries from the store to make jam today.  I friggin love the col...

Oops...almost forgot to do this ;) I took this one because of the colours.  There was a campfire going and stuff, but I've always loved trees against a sky this colour...super soothing. This is the end of a hiking trail.  Trees have been beset by goddamn pine beetles, which is why they're so red.  There was a storm blowing over, which is why the sky was so dark, and perfect lighting elsewhere... There's another trail a few meters to the "left" of this pic that has been closed all summer due to bear activity.  Fun times. Hope you enjoyed!

Weekly Disclaimer Thing :  Writing, like all art, is a subjective experience.  Stuff that works for me won't necessarily work for you...though I hope it does, since I'd love for everyone to succeed.  Can never have enough books to read!  Either way, take these tips with the giant grain of salt needed to season it to your liking, since I could very well be talking out my ass. So, last week was a little bit about Fiddling, and the bare bones of my editing process.  This week will be...Outlining.  (Dun dun duuuuun!) I know people hate outlining.  It can be frustrating.  But you really should outline your stories.  Really.  Even if you're a born Pantser, you should still outline just a little bit.  It makes things so much faster . Which reminds me, I really need to re-outline my current WIP, since I'm getting lost in the middle. And that's the thing - the outline can change.  If you're in the middle of writ...

Trudie Rowland (c) Aug 8, 2017 Cherries, Cherries and...More Cherries! So, Hubs has a boss who lives near by, and he has a cherry tree in his yard.  He also doesn't have time/energy to pick the cherries, or know what to do with them, so for the low, low price of All The Cherry Pie He Can Eat, he lets me do it (I also get to keep whatever I make out of them, which this year is going to be mostly jam). This year, we got ~ 20L of cherries - again.  That was about the yield we got last year.  It's a lot of cherries.  I also used last year's pic, since the lighting was better (this year, everything's smoky and gross owing to forest fires out west). Now I have to pit them all, so that's going to be fun.   Last year it took me about a week solid, by myself, one at a time.  This year... Will probably be about the same, actually.  Which is going to be such fun, because by the time I'm done pitting and canning all of these, it's time for apple...

So, I got it into my head to do something for Fridays too...so...Photo Fridays.  I'm normally all about the alliteration, but...well, I'm also all about spelling and I can't bring myself to spell 'photo' without the 'ph', so...it's...yeah. Anyway, please enjoy these pictures of my "backyard". Note, it's not actually  my backyard, but it's still within a five minute drive of my house, so that counts. Pics by me, unless noted otherwise. A beautiful mountain lake.  Also the background for the top graphic thing with the words on. It's a good, quiet spot to sit and contemplate life.  Also where I got married, so...yeah.  Very tranquil.  Late evening is the best time for lack of other people, worst time for bugs.  It's a trade off.   Axe in Firewood So, this one has a humorous backstory in which I was trying to get a "noble woodsman" shot of my brother chopping wood.  Which wasn't working...

For this Wednesday, I thought I might go over my editing process. The Weekly Disclaimer:   Writing, like all art, is a subjective experience.  Stuff that works for me won't necessarily work for you...though I hope it does, since I'd love for everyone to succeed.  Can never have enough books to read!  Either way, take these tips with the giant grain of salt needed to season it to your liking, since I could very well be talking out my ass. So, last week it was Finish - then Fiddle.  This week it's the Fiddling Bit. I do three passes: 1) Read It Through - I will sometimes fix little typos I find along the way, or at least make note of them so I can get them on the second pass.  But mostly I just want to get a sense of whether or not the scene/chapter is complete. 2) Add What Needs To Be Added And Fix What Needs To Be Fixed - Sometimes it's just a sentence or two, sometimes its whole paragraphs of exposition or dialogue or whathaveyou....

Because why not...? Inane Stuff First: I have discovered that I can indeed make good sandwich bread, using this recipe .  Before, I'd been struggling to get the damn thing to rise a second time, so while it was tasty it was also squished.  But, not any more!  I made four loaves yesterday, and another batch today to (hopefully) become buns.  We're already down to  three loaves.  It's that good. So, I couldn't be more pleased with myself.  It's fluffy, and light, and doesn't fall apart when you look at it sideways, and smells AMAZING. Someday, I'll be brave enough to make sourdough. Writing Stuff... WIP is...well, I'm working on it.  Now I've got family visiting on top of having 3 kids to watch, so my writing time has...diminished.  Still plugging away at it, though.  I'll get there!  Eventually.   I feel bad, thinking that it's not going to be done when I'd wanted it to be (I really should be ...

My first one!  Yay!  I did up a little graphic thing and everything.   The Weekly Disclaimer:   Writing, like all art, is a subjective experience.  Stuff that works for me won't necessarily work for you...though I hope it does, since I'd love for everyone to succeed.  Can never have enough books to read!  Either way, take these tips with the giant grain of salt needed to season it to your liking, since I could very well be talking out my ass. My Tip For This Week:   Write.  Just write it out.  Get the bare bones down, and when you come to the end, go back to the start and add in the flesh.  The details and the adjectives and the rewording of awkward sentences.  You get to do as many passes as you want. The other side of this is, of course, that you need to know when to stop obsessing over every phrase.  Otherwise, you'll never move on to the next bit and you'll get stuck fiddling with details tha...