Yay!

From a friend ...

Take the Quiz here!

Another "yay!": During the next two days, there's a Medieval Symposium on campus, and I'm totally going to go and geek out with my friend NM.

more noveling troubles

Last night, Erin and I traded and read each other's novel beginnings. I was almost surprised at how good Erin's was. I say "almost" because I would expect Erin to be a good writer, with lots of humor and a no-nonsense attitude about her subjects, and she is; it's just that after hearing her lament over her writing during that first noveling session we had together, I began to wonder whether it was, after all, as horrible as she thought it was. It wasn't though -- quite the opposite. She gave me hope for my own writing as well, claiming that enjoyed my first chapter. I trust Erin's opinion, and I hope we know each other well enough at this point that if it really was tripe she would tell me so. (Right, Erin?)

So last night I went to bed feeling much more hopeful about things and spent about half an hour considering the rest of my novel and how I wanted things to shape up, before I got to sleep. This morning I got up and spent about an hour writing, and got a good 800 words out, feeling quite happy with how they were working out. And then ...

After making some lupper, I sat down just now to get going again and discovered that I had somehow neglected to save what I wrote this morning. All of that 800 words of genius, gone!

I could cry salty tears. (25 points)

By the way, the last quote was from The Unknown Ajax by Georgette Heyer.

let the noveling begin

So, Erin and I started our novels yesterday. We're shooting for about 2,000 words a day. Yikes, it's hard! We spent a lot of time griping about how horrible our writing was, and getting blocked because we got frustrated with the tripe we'd written so far. Erin suggested last night that maybe we need to have other people read our stuff and see whether it really is as bad as we think it is.

Last night we also discussed how many books we've read that were absolutely awful, and I decided (long ago, actually) that anything I write has to be better than Romancing the Nephites, and at least as good as The Scandalous Miss Delaney and A Lady in Disguise -- preferrably much better.

As we talked last night, I tried to describe Romancing the Nephites to Margo, and I made it on the prestigious Quote Board! My awesomeness is now no longer a matter of opinion -- it is a fact, corroborated by a large piece of cardboard covered with the most exclusive collection of quotes. Here's how I made it: "He kept using, like, pseudo-Hebraic pick-up lines!"

The last quote was from the song "Ruby Blue" by Roisin Murphy -- thanks, Erin, for introducing me!

"I'm not talking nonsense, lass. I'd give you the whole of the moon if I could, and throw in the stars for good measure. You couldn't be content with less?" --42 points