My friend, Patti Stafford, has featured me on her Writing 101 blog! Check it out here. :-D

I've finished the Lucky Raven outline...for now. I still might make some changes to it by the time November rolls around. It's funny. At one point the story kind of went haywire and Lucky wasn't the center of it anymore. I had to make some changes and it got back on track nicely. :) It's nice to have it finished. Now if I could just find someone willing to read it and look for holes or inconsistencies or anything else that doesn't feel right...

Now I'm getting ready to start work on the outline for Fox and Sawyer Redman's story. I want to have a good start to it so I can begin writing it on Thursday for 10K day. I want to put the whole day into their story. I'll work on the "Cottage" and Zane Greywolf novels tomorrow during Wednesday Writing Sprints day.

But first I've got to check my e-mail and the writing forum. I've also got to see about getting a character journal started for Fox and Sawyer. :)

Have a great day! :D

Lois

Thank you for the birthday greetings! I had a big wide grin on my face while reading them. They made 13 July for me all the more special. :D I really appreciate it!

I celebrated it mainly with my parents the day before. I'll let pictures do some of the talking. ( Read more... )

On the actual day itself it was supposed to be a quiet me-day. I was stoning normally over an episode of Ryuusei no Kizuna thinking how hot Nino is, when the lights were suddenly dimmed and my family came in singing Happy Birthday with a beautiful cake in their hands! I was surprised and so so SO happy I could cry. I didn't expect this at all because I'd told them I wasn't so much of a cake person. T___T

( Cake! )

I know I shouldn't be choosing favourites, but I received the best sms from Yuting-san posing as Aiba, complete in Engrish and spelling mistakes. It was so adorable! She also flew me the Arashi 10th year anniversary photobook all the way from Japan! I nearly choked on my tempura udon trying not to spazz too much. XD Second cutest has got to be this:



IT'S PRETTY AIBA. WISHING ME A HAPPY BIRTHDAY. CRIES T______T

WANLIN WONG PORK RICE ah, faster end work so that we can go karaoke leh. 8DDD

WINNIE SEOW TING TONG, I am so glad you're still in Singapore and that was a false alarm. I'm going to miss you TONS. If you ever feel insecure or lonely please come online to find me. I can't do much but I'll definitely listen to you! Please stay safe and come back in one piece! I LOVE YOU!

( Other Y SO SRS aka stuff nobody wants to read. )

I know most of my entries lately have been about my writing. I'm on a roll and can't help it! :P

I'll be participating in 10K Day on Thursday again. It's a late day for Jeff and Eric at work, too, so I should have no problem reaching 10K. Hey! If I could reach 15K last time, 10K ought to be a piece of cake, right? :)

And tomorrow is Wednesday Writing Sprints, where you just concentrate on your own writing. I'll be doing that, of course, now that I don't have writing exercises to do.

So, I'll be outlining and writing today. I am so loving this! :)

Lois

If anyone wants to join us in writing on Thursday, you can find the RSVP page on the Fear of Writing blog's July 2009 10K Day RSVP page. There are links near the bottom of the post for the "Rules of the Game," "Recommended Preparations" and "Survival Tips, Productivity Tricks" to help you get to know a little more about the event.

It's a lot of fun. Anyone who writes should come join us! :D

Lois

Eric and Chelsey took Josiah to the emergency room last night. He had a fever of around 100 and the doctor wanted to see him. Turns out he has a slight case of pneumonia. The doctor gave them something for it, but I'd like extra prayer for him because that's the best medicine of all.

I babysat him earlier in the day and he didn't seem to be sick, so it must have hit him pretty quick. Poor little guy! :S

Thanks for your prayers!

Lois

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Well, that "durn" mouse got the treat and didn't get caught. This time we decided to put one of the sticky traps inside a large live trap (in case we have anything bigger than a mouse!) I think the critters have made the discovery that we no longer have a resident cat.

Well, all my mousie landmines set. Now it's time for bed.

I did make dinner tonight. I guess the vitamins with iron are starting to kick in. :)

Happy day.

"congratulations   dad just got a tick off his head"

i love texts from my parents ;)

I've come up with names for the brothers in my epic: Fox and Sawyer Redman!

Needless to say, I am very, very happy to finally have names for both
of them. :)

(  View a larger version of my userpic showing the two actors under here...  )

I must have spent an hour and a half looking for names (first and last) on the BabyNamesWorld site on ParentConnect. They don't seem to have very many American Indian names, but I still found perfect names for them. I'd already chosen Fox for the youngest brother, but hadn't yet come up with a name for his brother or a surname for them both. Now I have and, as I said above, I'm very happy with my choices. :)

Well, now that I have the names, I can do a little character sketching and start work on that scene...

I've also made one minor change: Fox will be the one to take on the Indian way of life, being his Cherokee mother's favorite son. Sawyer will be the one who adopts the white way, the ways of his father.

Note The photo of Jay Tavare and Gil Birmingham is a compilation of photos I found online. I do not hold the copyright to either image and I don't know who does.

After much struggling to move Lucky's story into the past, I've decided to keep him in the present. It just began to feel all wrong having him in the 1870s. I'll take whatever research I get and add it to what I had of the outline. I might use them in a different story someday, but I'm keeping Lucky firmly planted in the here and now. :)

I'm liking where it's headed now, but I've spent so much time on it today that I feel a need to do something else. So, I'm going to work on that first scene from the epic.

Maybe I'll work on one of the other stories after that.

I don't have any writing exercises to do today, so I'm going to work on outlining and writing. I may work in an hour of drawing, since that has to be done (although when I twittered, I said I would only be outlining and writing...my bad), but the day will mostly be spent on my fiction.

I never wrote any snippets from that opening scene to the epic, so I may work on that today, as well as character sketches of Fox and his brother.

I can't wait to get started! :D

But first, I've got to wrap things up online.

Have a great day!

Lois

And then there were two ............

I passed the 200 Jury.  97%.   This means I only have one more subject in school.

Q&A.  um. Yeah.  

I'm not freaking out. nope. not me! 

( read more... )

Maybe a blue
noon haze
is soon lifting>
Beside a slowing
lullaby
of an
early cricket,
the black
eyed susans 
seem nearly
asleep.

7/12/2009

Just a quick note to let y'all know that 10K Day for July is coming up this Thursday. I'm not sure if there will be a specific entry to reply to, but I'll try to find out before then in case anyone wants to join us. You can read more about it on Milli Thornton's Fear of Writing blog. :)

Basically, what it is is that you devote as much time as you can to your writing that day. Reaching 10K words isn't as important as reaching your own personal writing goal, and your goal doesn't have to be word count related. Some people might want to try a new genre or just to work on an idea they have in mind...or in one woman's case, they might want to work on some fiction after writing nothing but non-fiction for a long time. It's really up to you what your goals are as long as it's about putting time toward your own writing.

You take a break every so often to update your progress in a comment and to read the comments of others. We encouraged each other a lot. It was great and I had a ton of fun last month! :D

Anyway, I'd better get off here. It's our bed time.

Have a great evening! :D

Lois

We saw a mouse last night. My house is now a landmine of mouse traps.

I'm supposed to be in bed. Good night.

I know I can't give in. I haven't even started researching yet, but I'm itching to do something...anything...to feel like I'm working on it.

Maybe I should work on some character sketches. That would be a start. After all, I need to know all about Fox and his brother. Yes! That's what I'll do! :D

I also have a first scene that keeps playing out in my mind. I don't think I need to do all that much research for it, but I'll need to do some. I guess I'll have to wait a little bit before I can work on that, no matter how badly I want to begin writing it. ;)

Oh! But it's okay to write little snippets of an idea, isn't it? Even before the outline is even started? I would love to write a snippet of the opening scene. I can add it to the outline, of course, and make changes later on.

As far as the novel, itself, ah, well. Good things come to those who wait!

And here I was, earlier, wanting to do some more outlining for Lucky's story. ;)

Have a great evening,

Lois

Ike was crying this afternoon about his life, about not working, etc.

He'd like to work full time. Sigh, I know he wants at least to be able to go back to working two days a week. Two problems. 1. I don't want him to go back before it's certain he'll succeed.  2. Everything he wants to do, I have to do...(For him to go back to work, I have to get up early on Saturdays, drive him, wait around and  bring him home/have to stay late on Thursday nights, drive him, hang around Rome with nothing to do for 4 hours, get to bed late, then up for work at 4 A.M. the next day)...and the problem is I'm exhausted.  Wish everything didn't hinge on me. :(  I hate to hold him back, but the problem is: He might be ready, but I'm not.  :(

I need energy. I'm trying adding B and C vitamins with iron to my diet. I've been too exhausted to even make dinner lately.  Even though I take something out of the frig in the morning and thaw it out, I come home and collapse in front of the TV. We just eat whatever.

Eeks!

I finished two writing exercises today and did some work on my Lucky Raven outline. The majority of what I've done, though, has been searching for information for the Lucky Raven outline.

See, Lucky's from the fictional town of Mayville, Arkansas (which may be changed to Van Buren or Fort Smith, but I'm not sure yet) and he goes to Joplin, Missouri to find his real father. Things happen and I needed to know about banks and law enforcement in Joplin during the 1870s. I found the name of a bank, but not much information about it. I couldn't find anything about law enforcement in Joplin during that time, either. It was extremely frustrating, like hitting a brick wall.

But, to my delight, I discovered that I can e-mail the Missouri State Archives with a request for historical research. It could take eight weeks before I hear back from them, but I don't plan on beginning the actual writing process until November anyway, so I'm okay with that. :)

It's too late to work on the outline more right now, so I'm going to get off here and take a shower and start dinner. If I'm lucky, I'll be back a little later to work on the outline a little more. Otherwise, I'll work on it tomorrow.

Internet research frustrations aside, this has been a great day! :D

Have a great afternoon and evening!

Lois