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October 31, 2005
Making Way for NaNo
The last few days I’ve been clearing the decks, getting ready for NaNoWriMo.
Today I submitted my next three columns so I don’t have to worry about that until after November. This weekend I finished Paladin of Souls because I knew I wouldn’t have time to read much once NaNo started. I’ve also got caught up on reading submissions, balanced the checkbook, stocked up on chocolate and other necessities, and taken care of any looming chores.
I’ve successfully cleared large chunks of my schedule. Tomorrow I begin writing my first NaNo novel. We’ll see how it goes. Wish me luck.
Posted by Selena at 09:59 PM | Comments (0)
October 30, 2005
Three Quotes
"Sometimes it just feels good to run."
This is from one of my all-time favorite episodes of Deep Space Nine. The episode is called "Second Sight" and the quote is from Fenna.
I guess the quote came to me because there seemed to be more runners out today than usual.
I’m not much of a runner, being especially exercise-averse, but I hear people enjoy it. Fenna seemed to.
"I remember. I remember, don't worry."
This is from an old song I happened to hear today, "In the Air Tonight" by Phil Collins. Whenever I hear the song I picture the scene from "Miami Vice," driving fast down a street at night.
I guess the quote means sometimes it’s enough just to remember and be remembered. Or if it’s not enough, then at least it’s a comfort.
"I hope God thinks I’ve done the right thing."
That was me as I handed $10 to a stranger on the street today. I don't usually give money to people I don't know, but he had a good story and seemed like someone who didn't normally beg for money. He said he was just trying to get home but couldn't use his ATM card because it was defective. He showed me the card and everything.
I don't know what made me do it. I just hope it was the right thing to do and that I didn't get conned yet again.
Posted by Selena at 09:04 PM | Comments (0)
October 28, 2005
Quote of the Day
I’ve been reading Paladin of Souls (in case you hadn't already guessed by the multiple blog entries on the topic).
It’s all wonderful but I read this part that night and it particularly struck me. Ista, the main character, is having an internal conversation with one of her gods.
"I’m not getting it all sorted," she worried, "I’m not getting it right.""You are brilliant," the Voice reassured her.
"It is imperfect."
"So are all things trapped in time. You are brilliant, nonetheless. How fortunate for Us that We thirst for glorious souls rather than faultless ones, or We should be parched indeed, and most lonely in Our perfect righteousness. Carry on imperfectly, shining Ista."
Wow.
Posted by Selena at 07:23 PM | Comments (1)
October 27, 2005
Increase Exercise-Uggh!
Isn’t it ironic and unfair that I was just complaining about how much I hate to exercise and only a couple days later I hear from my doctor that I need to increase my exercise, as well as watch my diet, and come back in three months (instead of six) to have my cholesterol checked again.
Uggh!
The universe sure has a twisted sense of humor.
My cholesterol is up 20-something points from six months ago, all in LDL (the bad cholesterol) which just makes it worse. It’s still only 202 total, but with all the heart disease in my family, that’s too high. I’d like to believe it was all that really stressful workday I had the evening before the test, but truth is that it’s probably also related to the cheese nachos, junk food, pizza, and ice cream I eat most of the time.
So today I took one long walk (1 hour) and one short one (30 minutes). And last night I did that dreaded exercise video workout again. It hurts less the second time around, I discovered. I even got fruits and vegetables at the store today. And ate healthy for 2 out of 3 meals today. :weak smile:
Still I hate exercising and I miss Ben and Jerry’s.
Posted by Selena at 08:47 PM | Comments (0)
October 23, 2005
I Hate Exercise
I remember now why I can never stick to an exercise regimen: Exercise hurts!
Yesterday: A 15-minute exercise video. That hurt bad enough.
Today: a day later it still hurts. Bah humbug.
"No pain, no gain," you say? Yeah whatever.
You take the exercise video. I’ll take the Ben & Jerry’s.
Posted by Selena at 10:12 PM | Comments (0)
October 22, 2005
Show Me Your Soul
Lately I’ve found myself wondering what people’s souls look like.
A weird thought I admit. I blame it on a book I’m reading, Paladin of Souls.
In it, one of the characters has the ability to see the spirit world, including people’s souls. It’s interesting to see how each character’s soul is different – this one bright and centered, this one in tatters and shreds (from being demon-gnawed for a long period of time), this own with the faint purple glow of a demon curled up and hiding within, this one a faint white light that hovers about the person’s body because the person is dead and being kept life-like through sorcery.
It makes me wonder what my soul looks like to someone who can see those things. It makes me wonder what other people’s souls look like.
Truth be told, you can’t tell much useful about someone by looking at them.
And that’s kind of a shame. But it's also a blessing.
Posted by Selena at 05:35 PM | Comments (0)
October 20, 2005
Quote of the Day
"Be kinder than necessary, for everyone you meet is fighting some kind of battle."
-from a forwarded email
Posted by Selena at 09:45 PM | Comments (0)
The Power of One
I am a huge fan of "Babylon Five" but I haven't watched an episode in a long time.
Tonight I decided to watch the pilot episode again. I was struck at first by the strangeness of it, the familiar and unfamiliar, the things that would change as the series continued, the things that would stay the same.
But what really spoke to me was the scene early on when Delenn and Sinclair are sitting in the garden. Delenn admires the Japanese stone garden and comments how well it represents "the power of one mind to change the universe." She also takes a dangerous, unsanctioned action. When Sinclair asks why she would risk it, she replies that clearly he has not spent enough time contemplating the stone garden.
The power of one...good lesson.
Posted by Selena at 07:45 PM | Comments (0)
October 19, 2005
Whew.
Wow! Today was especially challenging – unbelievably stressful and downright ugly in places.
Still I managed to get through it without yelling at anyone, losing my cool, breaking down into hysterics, giving up and walking away, or reaching for a drink, chocolate, junk-food or other pain-numbing substance. Instead I stayed calm and focused, and dealt reasonably with each of the many ugly problems that presented themselves.
How did someone as tired, stressed-out and grumpy as me manage that amazing feat?
Easy. I didn’t.
It was divine intervention, plain and simple. The strong, steady hand of God got me through. Nothing else could have done it.
I am so grateful. And the end of the day never looked so good.
Posted by Selena at 09:50 PM | Comments (0)
October 15, 2005
Aaaah. So Relaxed.
After three-days off I feel so rested and calm and relaxed.
Now if I can only manage to carry that feeling with me into the next few days…that would be great! A big help.
Why hasn’t someone figured out how to bottle a feeling?
Marketing tries to make us believe a feeling can be bottled and sold, but so far no one’s really managed it.
I mean really and truly bottle a feeling so that when you’re relaxed you can store some of it away for a stressful day, then when that day comes you just open the bottle and breathe in the calm and you’re right back in that relaxed, rested state of mind?
Now that would be a useful invention!
Instead, we get TiVo. No disrespect to anyone who likes TiVo. I hear it’s useful. But I want something bigger and more useful; I want to be able to carry my calm around with me and use it at will.
Could someone get to work on that please?
Posted by Selena at 09:04 PM | Comments (0)
October 13, 2005
Signed Up
Well, I did it. I signed up for my first ever National Novel Writing Month. (You can too at http://www.nanowrimo.org/).
It’s a little overwhelming. I went to the Coffee House thread Keesa (at TSR and DKA) mentioned and there were 18 pages of replies in it! I didn’t even try to read all of them, just looked for one from Keesa.
Then I noticed there were over 200 people currently online browsing the forums. Whoa! I tried to see who was online but stopped reading after a few pages.
This morning I found the total number of people currently signed up for NaNoWriMo. It’s 20,096. !!!!!
Of course by the time I’m done posting this it’ll probably be another 100 people.
Wow.
Posted by Selena at 09:30 AM | Comments (0)
Three Days Off
I have the next three days off and it’s a lovely thing.
I needed some downtime; I was getting crispy fried.
Hopefully I’ll be able to get some writing done on my mini-vacation.
Posted by Selena at 09:13 AM | Comments (0)
October 12, 2005
Reading Right Now: Paladin of Souls
Well, I finished the part of No Plot? No Problem that I can read before the actual novel-writing month so now I’m back to reading Paladin of Souls by Lois McMaster Bujold.
The book is every bit as wonderful as Phy (at TSR and DKA) says.
Click here for a thread at TSR with more information about the book (and others work checking out).
Happy reading!
Posted by Selena at 09:55 PM | Comments (0)
October 11, 2005
Reading Right Now: No Plot? No Problem
I’m currently reading No Plot? No Problem: A Low-Stress, High-Velocity Guide to Writing a Novel in 30 Days by Chris Baty, the founder of National Novel Writing Month.
The book is fun and helpful.
I can hardly wait for November.
Guess I better head over to www.nanowrimo.org and sign up. I encourage you to do the same.
Posted by Selena at 10:01 PM | Comments (0)
October 10, 2005
Bad Eating Blame
Finally I have someone else to blame for my terrible eating habits, especially my love of french fries, chocolate and all things bad for me.
Don’t believe me? Check out this article:
Jonesing for Fries? Blame the Cave Men
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4618562
(And yes I found this article when I googled "jonesing" to make sure I was spelling and using it correctly in that blog entry a couple days ago.)
Posted by Selena at 07:27 PM | Comments (0)
October 08, 2005
Debating about NaNoWriMo
I’ve been debating about whether or not to sign up for National Novel Writing Month. (Don’t know what that is? Check out http://www.nanowrimo.org/)
One of the reasons I’m considering it is that I think it may help me focus on writing instead of constantly obsess about my pending submissions.
Getting published is addictive and lately I’ve been jonesing for a yes. It’s not like it’s been all that long - a couple months for my last short story, less for that bit of flash fiction for Flashshots. Still I’m obsessed. It seems I spend more time submitting, choosing markets, checking for responses than I actually do writing. That's not good. Not only is it pathetic, it’s unsustainable. If I don’t spend time on writing I will fast run out of writing to submit.
I’m thinking NaNoWriMo may be just the thing because last year when I was working on my first novel ("Vatral") I was totally absorbed by it. I rushed home from work each day to see what would happen next in the story. It was my fun, my entertainment, the best part of my day. I didn't submit anything for almost a year and it was OK because I had bigger fish to fry.
So NaNoWriMo. Maybe.
I’m just not sure I can do it. One month isn't much and 50,000 words is a heaping lot.
Plus I have only the vaguest of ideas for the novel. I don't even have a single character. I barely know what happens. All I’ve got is an idea, a question, a possibility.
Is that enough? Don’t know. I’m still thinking.
Posted by Selena at 11:48 AM | Comments (0)
October 07, 2005
Loving “Lost"
Recently my husband bought the first season of “Lost" on DVD. He bought it on a whim, knowing next to nothing about the show.
We were quickly hooked. At the end of each episode, we’d look at each other and ask “One more?" Sometimes we watched as many as three or four episodes in a day. The show is like a book you just can’t put down.
The show reminds me of “Firefly" (another favorite) in several ways.
First, based on the advertising of the show, I never would have watched it. I didn’t watch a single episode of “Firefly" when it was on TV, only giving the show a chance when a friend handed me the DVD set and said “trust me."
The marketing of “Lost" didn’t appeal to me either. It looked like a reality show, like a knock-off of “Survivor" or something. I didn’t realize it wasn’t a reality show until I was flipping channels and recognized Mira Furlan in an episode. (Furlan played Delenn in “Babylon Five," another favorite show.)
The marketing of “Lost" didn’t give me any sense of the many things I would love about the show, which brings me to the second similarity – the brilliant writing.
It wasn’t until I actually watched some episodes of “Lost" that I realized it had these things going for it:
• depth of story-telling
• an intricate web of connections between a seemingly random group of people
• a strong ensemble of characters/actors with complex characterizations
• an island that itself becomes a character in the story, one that may even at times be orchestrating or manipulating the story, one that has moods and perhaps a will of its own
• strong themes of faith and love and loyalty and sacrifice
The only good thing I got from the ads was the mystery. And frankly that wasn’t enough.
I’m glad I found the show and I can hardly wait to get to season two.
I also wish the marketing people would do a better job.
Why is it that the marketing of a show or movie so often doesn’t match the actual product?
I wish someone could answer that for me.
Posted by Selena at 04:47 PM | Comments (0)
October 04, 2005
It’s 2 a.m. I must be sick
It’s 2 a.m. but I can’t sleep. But it’s not just the usual insomnia returning for a reprise. This time, it’s something I ate.
I feel so sick to my stomach that I’ve spent the last few hours just lying very still and hoping the nausea would go away.
It hasn’t worked and the lying there doing nothing was starting to make me agitated. So now I’m up and sipping chamomile tea, hoping the nausea will go away.
Posted by Selena at 01:59 AM | Comments (0)
October 01, 2005
Small Successes
Today has been a struggle and it’s not even noon yet.
So, I’m grabbing hold of today’s small successes and not letting go.
Small Success #1: an hour-long walk. That’s good exercise, something I don’t do enough of.
Small Success #2: thirty minutes of writing practice even though I didn’t feel like it. True I wrote most of it with my head down on the table next to the page, but I wrote nonetheless and that was the point.
I don’t know what’s wrong with me today. I feel like I just want to go back to bed, sleep a while, then start the day over this afternoon. Maybe I’ll do that.
But first I’ll try a cup of caffeinated tea and more writing. Sometimes that works.
Posted by Selena at 11:37 AM | Comments (0)