happy vladurday!warrior dash edition (I'm doing the Warrior Dash today!)

the good news in bad news

I love The Bad News Bears. this version. not that crapbag version with Billy Bob Thornton. if you've never seen the original with Walter Matthau and Tatum O Neal, put it in your Netflix queue. it's worth it. anyway, I got some bad news in my email today but it was so awesome. it made me sad but at the same time, it gave me the most empowered feeling. it was like yin and yang dropped into my GatorLink Webmail. it had to do with my writing but that's all I'm saying. oh I will say thanks to the awesome person who sent me the email. you totally rock! I did the whole fist pump YES! thing after I read it.

6 days until Warrior Dash and about 1k words until done

yep 6 days until "the craziest frickin day of my life" next saturday is the Warrior Dash. I'm running with a pal from high school and it should be a blast. if you are unfamiliar with races like this, basically it is a run combined with hellish obstacles designed to test your endurance both mentally and physically. there's barb wire, mud, climbing and fire among a few of the perils. at the end, there is free beer, a medal and a nifty hat.I AM STOKED. it looks like a giant fraternity party with running so I should have no problem. they thing that drew me to it was it's name. the WARRIOR DASH.  WARRIOR. lately I've felt warred upon so I plan on making this the angry zen warrior dash where I vent all my frustrations. if all the things that have gone wrong in the past 5 months haven't beaten me then no 3 mile run will. I know the top pic looks kind of benign but you end up looking like this.

well that after you do

so yeah it's awesome!and I'm getting excited. even more so than with triathlon! this is a whole different thing. and there was never beer at the finish line of triathlons!
in the mean time, I am closing in on the finish of my ms. about 1k words to go. like one more scene.good for me!

happy vladurday

research is fun

I always love the research part of novels. even though I grew up in Tampa, I haven't been there in quite awhile so I had to do some research. it was awesome and it made me appreciate the history of Tampa and Ybor City that I basically blew off when I was younger. I had to relearn all of the cool areas and bars. when I lived in Tampa three thousand years ago, I loved Ybor because of the awesome new wave/punk music and vintage clothing stores. I can remember one of the stores, La France. it was like Mecca for a wannabe new waver like me. so cool. as a teen in the 80s I never had money for cool stuff from there but it was fun to take a day off from school and go explore. yeah, I took a lot of days off. I got good grade though. I had AP classes and did just fine thank you, even with my days off. but doing all my research, I saw how much things had changed, some for the better and how much things had grown. wow. I only live like 2 hours from Tampa and I keep telling myself I'm going back and reacquaint myself with the area. I'm drawn to it now. It has a homey feeling that it didn't have before. I want to go back for the Gasparilla Invasion which is like a big pirate fest in february named for a real pirate named Jose Gaspar but I don't think I'll make it. next year, definitely!

little sir echo and the dreaded word echoes

does any kid still sing this song? I loved it as a kidling! I asked Maddy about it and she looked at me like I was crazy. I guess they're too busy learning songs about not liking candy corns and so on. but I am already off track. this morning fab author Allison Pang was on Savvy Authors sharing her wisdom about word echoes. you know what those are. the words that we apparently love so much that we cram them all over our manuscript and don't realize it until we analyze our manuscript and see them. they weaken a manuscript and show a skimpy vocabulary. my big word is like and all of its benign forms. I though I was being mindful of echoes but I wasn't. go figure. I've got like all over the place. I'm in like with like. (echoes!) but when I go through and weed them out, my manuscript works much better. there's less Shaggy Speak (with all the likes) and more evocative dialog and prose. although Shaggy Speak is kinda cool, just not in my manuscript. I have another word that I love to stash in my draft like a hoarder so I'll be busy getting rid of them. it's work but definitely worth it. go check out Allison's tips for echoes at the link above!

so what's up with Putin?

a bunch of people have asked me what the deal is with ol' VP. honestly, I don't know. probably part of it is his name is Vladimir. anyone named Vladimir is gonna get my attention. also, when I was a theatre student, I did a Scenic Design project called Mr. Putin's Neighborhood. it was all very creepy and evil and steampunky. LOVED IT. doing the research for the project, I had to research the guy and just found him interesting in a despoty and sinister way. consider that he probably killed people for the KGB back in the day but still loves to cuddle with a puppy. that's character dichotomy. I WISH I could write a character like him.
God, I hope he doesn't have some sort of tracking device so he knows all the people who say stuff about him. what am I talking about? I know he probably has Google Alerts so I'm so very screwed when he takes over the world. maybe I'll retitle my saturday posts to  Happy Vladurday, he's the uber emperor of the universe. hmm.

happy vladurday

the pain of moving

I have always wanted to find an old historic house and move it onto a bunch of acres. for some reason I have a fascination/ obsession with house moving. maybe I did it in a past life but anytime I see a poor old neglected house I immediately think "Man, I could buy that and move it." just like this house. but the moving I'm talking about today isn't house moving (I wish). it's chapter moving. I hate doing this and I often think moving houses is easier. I've been trying to rewrite a new first chapter because while my current first chapter is pretty awesome, it's not really in the right place. it should be the second or third chapter. so I've been killing myself trying to find a new hook/ catchy opening that is more appropriate. ha. finally today I had an idea and tried to crank it out. I think it will work or at least I'm hoping it will. it better because I can't think of another way to open the novel lol.
I still think house moving is easier. and more fun too!

fighting the fight (scenes)

well, it's that time again in my writing journeys. the fight scenes. I hate em and have put them off until I can't anymore. I forced myself to write two of the required scenes. I have two more now to do so I am half way through my hell. let's face it, they just aren't my thing. I would rather write anything else. anything. I just have no knack for them. they're boring to me. not to read I guess but to write. so I'll continue my battle and write the dang things even though it feels like torture. it's the only way I'll get the manuscript finished.

holy hell I love history

I love history and would have majored in it if administrative forces hadn't crushed my dream. they wanted me to finish what I originally declared as my major. sure I was a senior with about 20 hours to go but still. and yeah, probably part of the problem was that my college years were sort of like the picture above but that is unimportant right now.
my point is history is so cool. it's proof that very little changes in the world. that's not why I love it but it's true. I love history from a more sociological and personal standpoint. I love finding out about people and customs and everyday life. unfortunately those things are the hardest to find out about because sometimes those details are left out in history. I used to do home health nursing and I had a patient WAY out in the country on land that had been given to her grandfather after the civil war. this patient was so awesome.she would tell me stories about growing up in our county (she was black) and I was spellbound. she told me things that I never heard in books or classes. Or if I did hear them they didn't register. my patient was a living historian. she always wanted me to come so I could do her medications and then talk and watch a bit of her favorite soap. many times I would stay past my visit time just to talk to her. I gained a new insight to that era in history thanks to her and I miss her. she passed away several years ago, long after I stopped doing home care and started doing labor and delivery.
so I'm a history geek. I've said it before. history isn't just a dry collection of names, dates and places. those dry facts are actually rich stories of real people.

happy vladurday

working on work is not working

Love Christopher Waltz!I think he's an awesome actor and I'm dying to see Water for Elephants. when I read it a couple of years ago, I fell in love with the story. then when I heard they were making it into a movie I was a bit afraid of the casting until I heard he had signed on. did you know Water for Elephants was a NaNoWriMo novel? or they say it is. that could just be an urban legend among aspiring writers but it sounds good. and speaking of nano novels, mine is creeping by at a snail's pace. that's one reason I have been the most craptastic blogger ever. I've been struggling with finishing Blood of New Beginnings. I find it sad that I could write 50 k good cohesive words in 30 days but I'm only at 88k now in Jan. part of the problem is I tend to edit as I go. I have Text Aloud so I am constantly monitoring for flow. also, I have rewritten large chunks of it so I've probably written about 100k words. one thing I'm struggling with is the big epic fight scene. I've written around it as much as possible and soon I'm going to run out of things to write and be forced to do it. damn it. there's like a 12 page gap. haha. I wish I could just write AND THEN AN EPIC FIGHT HAPPENED but I don't think that would go over very well. I doubt anyone would pub it then.

Happy Vladurday! New Year's Day Edition