Just Jen

Since I haven’t been writing much lately, I’m going to officially take a brief hiatus from posting here. I’ve also been busy getting ready for my vacation in 2 weeks (which I still haven’t entirely decided where I’m going,) so that’s been taking up time as well. How does preparing for a vacation take up so much time? One of the ideas is canceling Florida and riding to Deadwood, SD, so it takes research to make a long motorcycle trip like that. I’ve never done it before, so need to be sure I’m mentally prepared, and physically prepared with all I’ll need along the way…camping gear, and a list of inexpensive hotels as backup, as well as getting familiar with the route, and how much time I’ll need overall.

I’ll be back here the week of Sept. 20.

Today we (my parents, John and I) took my cousin out to Dave and Buster’s for his 8th birthday. To my surprise, he had never been there. It had been over 2 years since I’d been, and we had a blast. We played games for about an hour, ate dinner, then played some more games. Between the 5 of us, we won enough tickets for my cousin to get a remote control car – a red Challenger, one of my favorites. Then it was back to his house for cupcakes and presents. It was a great day.

Last night I got together with my Kung Fu classmates (even though I’m on an extended hiatus – my teacher said it’s beyond hiatus, he’s now calling it purgatory) to watch the UFC fight. It was a blast catching up and watching the fight, and I admit I’m very happy BJ Penn lost to Frankie Edgar. Penn is a good fighter, but he’s a sore loser and a whiner. If he could lose gracefully, I might like him a little more. I wonder what his excuse for losing this time will be.

Throughout the week I’ve been catching bits and pieces of The West Wing as John re-watches the entire series. I’m not a political buff, and political shows and movies don’t often interest me all that much. The West Wing has some of the best writing I’ve ever seen, and is a series I would watch again and again. I suspect if I was crazy enough to do a marathon I’d need an entire box of tissues to get me through…it has some extremely poignant moments, and probably every other episode makes me cry, at least a little. Granted, I cry easily, but never that much at a TV show. It also has great wit, and often makes me laugh out loud. I highly recommend the series to anyone. I was watching the last episode of season 3 tonight (if you’ve seen the series, you know which one I mean.) There’s a tropical storm raging outside the White House, and I was so caught up in the show that when the episode ended, and I got up to take my dogs outside, I was surprised that it wasn’t raining. Yes, it’s that good.

Sadly, because of the busy weekend, I didn’t get to ride at all. I rode to work Friday, and stopped by to show my parents on the way home to show off my bike. My mom agreed to let me take her on a ride around the neighborhood – JUST THE NEIGHBORHOOD, she stressed – sometime when I bring my spare helmet. I was floored. I think that will have to be soon; I can’t wait to see her reaction. My dad agreed as well, but that wasn’t as shocking, and I suspect he may want one of his own after he has a taste of 2 wheels.

I’m looking forward to the 3 day weekend coming up. The weather is supposed to be gorgeous. I might go camping, though I wonder if it will be too crowded with the holiday weekend. No matter what, I certainly plan to get a lot of time in on the bike. I likely will even roll the 1000 mile mark.

Or at least trying. I still haven’t gotten back to work on Ravaged Heart. It’s still very realistic that I finish it before NaNoWriMo, but even if I don’t, I have enough written, and a good enough idea about what isn’t written, that I can start the third novel for NaNo before #2 is finished, if necessary. I’m trying to go easy on myself and not beat myself up over not writing, and not meeting my self-imposed deadlines. I know when I’m published I won’t have that luxury, but right now, I’m taking a short break. That’s why I haven’t posted lately. I haven’t had anything writing related to say. Bike related – that’s another story. I’m thinking of starting another blog for my motorcycle adventures. I’m definitely going to chronicle them for myself, and I enjoy blogging, so why not?

Until then, I keep reminding myself to be nice. Don’t berate myself. It’s okay, the book will get written. Just not as soon as I originally planned.

It was a week busy with non-writing and non-riding activities. Saturday was filled with errands and cleaning, and relaxation. Today was a day for ME. I woke up at 8:30 and hopped on my bike for a ride to Hannibal, MO. I took 61/67 North up there, which was pretty boring considering it’s basically a highway, and I’m all-too-familiar with Missouri landscape. I took 79 South going back home, which is a much prettier, twistier ride. There was a detour at one point that took me on a narrow state road with no shoulder. That was kind of nerve-wracking since I couldn’t always see around the curves, and narrow road + oncoming traffic could spell disaster. But other drivers all played nicely.

I rode a total of 269 miles today, about half what would be necessary to ride to Florida over the course of 2 days. With the addition of my windshield and some highway pegs (the Shadow is a bit short for me), I’m confident the ride would be no problem.

I really missed having a motorcycle. It’s wonderfully relaxing to get out on the road and just clear my mind and think of nothing. Focus on the road takes precedence over all else, and helps me clear my head better than anything else I have tried.

Now that I have a new toy the writing is still a bit slow. Last night was Creative Meetup, but I didn’t get much done. I’ll regain my focus soon, though. The new plan does not include GothNoWriMo, or rewriting Ravaged Heart. As I’ve aid previously, I’m going to edit what I wrote last year and add new chapters. I’ll have plenty of time on vacation to make a lot of progress, and will still have an entire month to finish it before NaNoWriMo.

I’m going to do some freewriting on the general plot of the 3rd in the series, but I don’t plan to do any serious planning for NaNoWriMo. I have my world and recurring characters, so I just need to figure out a loose plot idea, and who the bad guys will be. I have a very general, high level idea for both of these. It’s not much, but it’s more than I had to start with for the 1st in the series, and that one practically wrote itself.

In the meantime, I’ll be enjoying the heck out of my new bike.

I got a new toy Friday that is sure to provide plenty of fodder for writing.

That’s a 2006 Honda Shadow Aero 750. I’ve been wanting another bike for 3 or 4 years now, and finally decided to buy it. What I really want is a Triumph Speed Triple, but I can’t afford that right now, so this will do. I put about 200 miles on in the first 2 days.

I’m so happy to be on 2 wheels again. I really missed the excitement of riding and the camaraderie with other bikers.

So this is what’s been keeping me away from posting the past few days. I’ll be writing about all my 2 wheeled adventures and maybe someday will publish them. This Wednesday is Creative Meetup, and I hope to get back into the swing of writing and editing my novels then.

The writing is still slow going. I’ve only written a few short pieces the past week. For whatever reason (ok, I know the reason is momentum) when I have a long break from writing, it’s so much harder to get back to it. Even though I know how much I love it and how happy it makes me, it’s still hard to put my butt in the chair.

It also doesn’t help that work has been hectic. There are a couple of new guys on the team, and I’ve become the go-to person for all their questions. There’s momentum again…just as I get in the flow of a task, an interruption throws me off. So I’m pretty mentally exhausted by the time I get home. Vegging with a book or TV has been appealing the past 2 weeks rather than using my brain some more.

Short writing is good though. I’m happy with a couple of the pieces I’ve written, so it’s all worth it.

I don’t have much to tell you about today. Aside from the short writings I mentioned on Tuesday, I haven’t written anything this week. I’ve been reading more than writing lately. A week or 2 ago I finished The Wednesday Letters by Jason F. Wright (you can see my review here), and started reading Greywalker by Kat Richardson. I’m about halfway through that book and am thoroughly enjoying it.

In the next week I’m going to get back to Ravaged Heart, and will begin adding the all-new stuff I wrote for JulNoWriMo into my original version. I’ve also been tossing around ideas for new titles for this and the first book Divided Heart. “Heart” makes these sound too much like a romance series, which it isn’t. Yes, there is romance in the story, but it isn’t the main theme. I hate thinking up titles, so this is hard for me, but I’ve had some suggestions from people in workshops, and have some ideas brewing. It probably won’t be too far off from the original title, but time will tell.

I also need to work on adding more description to Divided Heart. I thought I had done that, but still don’t have as much as I’d like, so it’s another round of editing, at some point.

I have officially decided to call JulNoWriMo quits. I’m going to continue with Ravaged Heart, but will use what I wrote last year, edit it, and add more, rather than trying to rewrite the entire novel. The rewrite from scratch wasn’t going well, so no use continuing with it when I know I’ll just delete it and paste in the old version.

I also decided not to work on the novel from 3 years ago right now. I’m just not feeling it. I finally realized I’d rather keep working on my urban fantasy series, so that’s what I’m going to do.

I haven’t worked on it in a couple of weeks though. I wrote some last week, but it was short writings, poems of a sort. I don’t do short writing very often anymore now that my writing group doesn’t meet weekly as we once did. That’s where I did the bulk of the timed writings. I always say I’m going to make an effort to do that more often, but then I never do. Usually my novel is calling more loudly than anything else. I still want to do a bit of tweaking with Divided Heart (which I’m working on a new title for) as well. So I’m going to temporarily scrap my writing plan and just see where the Muse takes me. I still want to finish Ravaged Heart by the end of September so I can use October to plan for NaNoWriMo (I don’t think I’m going to do GothNoWriMo…the novel I want to write for that requires a lot of research that I’m not sure I feel like doing right now. I want to do it, because it interests me, just not now.) So for now, short writings it is.

Here’s a list of writing challenges I’ve gathered, there’s at least 1 for each month of the year if you are that crazy (which even I’m not, but I’ve seen people online who are. Good luck to them!)

Jan – JanNoWriMo – write 50,000 words or your own goal
Feb – FAWM February Album Writing Month – 14 original songs
Feb – FebNoWriMo – 40,000 words in a month
Mar – NaNoEdMo – 50 hours of editing your NaNo novel
Apr – Script Frenzy – write 100 page script (sister program of NaNoWriMo)
Apr – April Fool’s – set your own goal
May – NEPMo National Epic Poetry Month – 5000 lines of an epic poem
June – WriDaNoJu – Write a Damn Novel in June – 50,000 words
June – Southern Cross Novel Challenge – 50,000 words of fiction
July – JulNoWriMo – 50,000 any WIP or new work
Aug – AugNoWriMo – Write a novel, no word goal
Sept – 3-Day Novel Contest Labor Day weekend – write a novel in 3 days
Sept – SeptNoWriMo – Set your own word goal, write, edit, or both
Oct – GothNoWriMo – write a Gothic themed novel in a month. various word count goals from which to choose.
Nov – NaNoWriMo – 50,000 words, all new novel
Nov – NaPlWriMo National Playwriting Month – 1 play in 30 days
Dec – NaNoFiMo – finish your NaNo novel 30,000 words
Also:
(date changes annually) 24-hour Comics Day – write a 24-page comic in 24 hours
Book in a Week – Begins on the first Monday of each month and lasts 1 week
Year Round Challenges
NaBloPoMo – Post every day for a month
NaNoPubYe – get your novel published in a year (details here)