Portrait

I am a word person. Art is difficult for me, yet I am drawn to it. (As in magnetism, pun not intended.) Every once in a great while, I try to draw something and I don't have much training, just the advice of my husband and one drawing/painting class in college.

I like to exercise the other half of my brain. Today I drew my werewolf, Jules. Though he's not a werewolf in the picture. Maybe that will be next.

Sometimes, when the creativity reaches a certain place, it's good to indulge in something outside our natural talents. It's flexing different muscles and leads to inspiration.

The windings down of January

This blog, for some reason, has always tormented me. I'm a writer, and a prolific one at that, but for some reason it's easier for me to write 50,000 words on Algerian-French relations that write 200 words potentially every other day for this forum.

My return to journaling has been a success. I have managed to write in that every day, every once in a while twice a day. Does it make sense that sometimes I need a sense of connection and reflection in my own life? I think that the technological advances and the speed with which everything changes and is communicated to use might be more detrimental than helpful. Our lives keep speeding up, and I don't want to barrel forward like a speed train. I need more stillness.

January started on very uplifting notes. I won an attendance contest at work and got a $250 Target gift card. My grades came in higher than I expected. I had a really awesome job interview with a nonprofit that supports work I really could support.

But the last week or so seems very bogged down in real world worries, the kind of stuff you can't control. I know I should be thankful that our credit with our fuel oil supplier has covered two fuel drops so far this winter, but instead I worry about how I'm going to pay for the next one. Okay, so maybe not really, but that's the logic my mind follows.

This was back-to-school week for Lafayette College. This also seemed bittersweet because it's my last semester. I don't have classes, only my honors thesis. So I registered for NCUR and looked at the other accepted abstracts from my school. There's someone else doing a presentation on the veil and France. My adviser is trying to facilitate a meeting between the two of us.

I printed out a draft of my honors thesis yesterday and am working on a line by line hand edit. I hope to hand something in to my adviser Tuesday.

I also attended a workshop via the Greater Lehigh Valley Writers Group on POD with CreateSpace. I'm tempted to publish a werewolf novella as a test. I certainly know the people who could make sure we develop a quality product. I've been against various forms of self-publishing for many years. The two main reasons are that many authors publishing their work independently don't have the skills to create a quality product and the idea that independent publishing can imply that an author does not work well with others.

I have a background in newspapers and some experience in desktop publishing. I went to the workshop interested in the technology. While I sat there I realized two things:

1. I have not done anything with my work for almost two years. No querying, so serious research. I've done some writing and some editing but none with a goal in sight. I've been busy with school and life, but I've also been watching the trends of the publishing industry to understand where I might best succeed. Or perhaps fit.

2. I have a distinct vision of how I want my books to look. I know the artists and graphic designers and even editors that I would love to have working with me.

So, if I'm not doing anything anyway, why not try a POD project?
And if I know what I want it to look like, any other publisher won't allow me that control.

Worth pondering.

Hey, It's January!

I neglect this blog terribly. Maybe that will change now that my only academic obligation is my honors thesis. Maybe not.

I'm working on a coming-of-age werewolf story where a teenage boy defeats the school bully. It's a short story, but the main character, Jules Zweigenbaum, grows up to be a player in some of my other novels. Plus, I've already gathered enough info on his past to give him his own novel. As it is, he makes his debut in Courting Apparitions. Although I do mention him briefly in Manipulations...

I recently completed another review for Hippocampus Magazine. This one explores Anthony Shadid's memoir, House of Stone. Rooted in Lebanon. Very cool.

I also have 150 pages on my honors thesis done.

And I have finished four newsletters for the Greater Lehigh Valley Writers group.

So my writer/editor muscles have flexed.

Pondering

I'm supposed to be doing homework.

But I haven't written in this blog for a while and I have something brief that's been on my mind.

Do you give yourself permission to free write?

Every once in a while, when I have the urge to write and either my current projects aren't turning out or I don't have a project (like now), I write something random. And these pieces all start with random questions.

They always end up being pertinent, either in a new or an existing story.

A couple days ago I wrote two pages on the early days of marriage between Basilie and Étienne. I was thinking about their sex life 20 years ago, but it turned out that I wrote a nugget that showed me his feelings when he found out she was pregnant the first time. I felt something for these two I had never felt before.

I have two more questions running around in my brain:

1. If Étienne and Basilie had met before they met as I say they did, when he was 18 and she was 20, what would the encounter be and where? As if they ran into each other as strangers but never knew... what happened? Was it in a museum? A store? What did they think of each other?
2. My secondary character of Jules the Chef... Need to explore his backstory. What was his life like in the immediate months before he enters my story?