Random Thoughts

I asked Chloe the cat whether she was going to help me find a topic for today’s blog. She said “Meow” and jumped off the couch, which I took to mean “No.” So I’m on my own for today’s topic.

I’m listening to the “Always Sunday” chill mix on iTunes. It has 35 hours of music on it, which means more hours than Sunday has. I’m impressed with someone’s attention span, that’s for sure. It makes my thirteen hundred words a day look much less impressive.

Even though I have grading to do, I will not start it till Monday. I am jealously guarding my weekend, and as I already gave up part of it for a school function yesterday, I feel justified. I might regret it somewhere toward Tuesday, but I need this weekend for myself.

This is my 84th day straight of posting on this blog. I thought it was more, but apparently the timer had a glitch in it and finally righted itself. Or it’s wrong now and I have more posts than that.

Coffee and chill makes for a perfect Sunday.

Torturing a Metaphor

Blank notepad on a wooden surface. Top view

I wanted to write about the blank page I face every morning, but I was afraid it would devolve into some inspiration glurge about how every day is a blank page that we write on, and we have the choice of what to write on it every day. A little cliche for me to start the morning with.

Every day is not a blank page. It’s another page in a never-ending story, complete with themes, plots, and foreshadowing. The theme for this week has been “People at work do nice things”, which has been almost magical. One of the plots has been “Lauren is starting to write again, but slowly.” We often do not see the shape of the story except in retrospect, which makes the metaphor very limited.

I don’t like the page as a metaphor for life, unless it’s one of those “Choose Your Own Adventure” books, where your life branches when you commit to a certain activity. With unlimited choices, there are infinite branches. Sometimes the plot doesn’t make sense, even in retrospect.

I’ve tortured this metaphor enough. Time to write the story of my day.

Slow Progress

I’ve been writing, but slowly. I’ve gotten an average of 1400 words a day for the last three days, which is much less than my previous goal of 2000. But I’m writing, which is better than I had been doing for a while.

I’m not sure why the flow isn’t there. I’d like to blame the book and the fact that it’s coming out too compact, but I think it might be me. I still worry about whether I am still a writer or another phase of my life is coming in. I have been writing for over 10 years. What would I do with myself if I were not writing? Probably nap a lot. I feel like I would nap really well. Can I be a professional napper?

I know I’ve talked this way before and come out of it. I also know I’ve been much more prolific with my quick-reading books than I have had any right to be. Should I panic? Probably not.

Yesterday’s Writing Session

I wrote 1450 words yesterday, which is good for not having written for a little while. It’s going slow. I hope I have time to write some today, because I need to get back into it and this story is at least somewhat motivating.

I’m a little scared that maybe I’m done with writing and just don’t know it yet. It’s been a couple months since I’ve done any serious writing, and for some reason I don’t seem to have the time for it. i write the blog every day, sure, but have I run out of novels? Lost the temptation to write something new?

I need a solid session of writing today after classes. That should give me a couple hours of writing time. Wish me luck.

What I Wanted to Be When I Grew Up

Daily writing prompt

What alternative career paths have you considered or are interested in?

View all responses

When I was a child, I wanted to be a poet. I remember announcing this to my mother, who said, “Do you like to eat? You’ll starve as a poet.” She didn’t know about academia, where someone could get a Ph.D. and teach in composition and creative writing while getting paid for writing poetry. It’s just as well I didn’t take that path, though; I might have taken well to that unit in poetry as a third-grader, but I’m not enthused with my poetry now.

Then, in Junior High, I wanted to be a doctor. Then I had some medical issues, and I realized I didn’t like doctors. They were abrupt and rude. They didn’t explain things to me and I was the patient. I wouldn’t have made a bad doctor, because in college I loved my physiology and microbiology classes. Chemistry, not so much. I still love medical stuff and try to diagnose people on reruns of Emergency! (American TV show, circa 1972) all the time.

The common wisdom is that the average college student changes majors seven times before they graduate. I think this is a gross exaggeration, but I did change my major three times from dietetics to food and nutrition to foods in business. Still, that wasn’t my final destination.

I didn’t want to become a college professor until college, because I hadn’t been exposed to the job. I had a friend in college whose father was a college professor, and I liked the way he had been brought up. It was only a matter of figuring out what I would be a professor of. My senior year, I discovered family economics and my career path was clear.

I joke sometimes that I still don’t know what I want to do once I grow up, but I have been a college professor for over 30 years, so I guess that’s what I am now.

Finally Feeling It

This new novel is got me looking forward to developing it, which I will do more of today in my spare time. I didn’t know what I was writing would make such a difference.

It’s another Christmas romance. Low spice, cozy with some humor.

Jacquie Ames goes back to the hotel she spent her honeymoon at 15 years ago, trying to find closure after her recent divorce. Only to find her ex-husband with his much younger fiancee there for the holiday. Barry Trout, the executive chef at the hotel, sees Jacquie’s distress and makes a deal: Let’s show your ex that you don’t need him. What could it hurt? The ex definitely has it coming to him. The two become a fake couple, but genuine feelings grow. If Jacquie could just find closure from her divorce and Barry could give up his solitary existence, maybe they could make it work for real.

This is another of the novels I write during the Christmas season so I get the full feeling of the season funneled into it. (To be truthful I will start it November 1, so a little early for the Christmas season, but WalMart will play Christmas carols anyhow).

I write to write. I publish just in case someone wants to read. I hope to be discovered, because I promote as much as I can, but it’s not enough. But the books will never be read sitting in a drawer somewhere.

The Long Hiatus

I haven’t started writing yet. It’s been that kind of semester, where I don’t feel like writing at the end of the day. This is not to say I have been completely devoid of writing-related endeavors. I have been waiting for Reclaiming the Balance to come back from a sensitivity edit. I have been working on Kringle All the Way‘s plotting and characters so I’m ready in November. I made a poster for Reclaiming for my office (and have yet to print it).

I haven’t felt like much of a writer lately. Fewer stops to Starbucks, fewer days writing, less inspiration. Neither of my open novels are doing a thing for me inspiration-wise. Not much flow when I do write. I feel a bit foolish now talking about flow and how well I had been doing.

I will go to Starbucks tonight to work on Kringle All the Way. I need some plotting and character sketches before I start writing in November.

Wish me luck.

A New Book on the Horizon

A sure sign that I don’t like where a book is going — I lay out the bones of another book.

I just made a sketchy outline of the next Kringle book, which I traditionally don’t start working on until November. Oh, wait, it’s only three weeks until November! This is about the time I start laying out the next book!

Traditionally, I write my books during NaNoWriMo, the international writing movement which takes place during November. I will write in November, but I will not be using NaNo’s infrastructure, due to the controversy around its support of AI for writing. I will have to find other motivational tools. Maybe Written? Kitten! or Pacemaker. Or maybe I’ve outgrown the need for the graphs and awards of NaNo.

I’m also working on the playlist. I make a new playlist for each novel I write, not necessarily to listen to while writing, but to get the feel for the novel in my head. This year’s, for some reason, is tending toward bossa nova, even though it’s set in one of my favorite places on Earth — the alternate version of Starved Rock. There’s a lot of bossa nova Christmas music out there, by the way.

But it’s time to work on prepping the Christmas novel, at any rate.

AI Steals My Words

I’m tempted to have AI blog for me today, because I’m tired from lack of sleep. But I would never do that, because I know what generative AI is: a plagiarism of what’s available on the Internet.

Artificial intelligences such as Chat GPT are “trained” on Internet content. That means the AI studies composition, word usage, style, and content. It captures the writing itself and uses it in other combinations for its own work. What makes my writing unique is my choice of usage, style, composition, and content.

I’m a writer. I don’t like that generative AI can take my work and make it theirs. It seems like an appropriation of my creativity and that of others. I especially don’t like what it does to visual artists, because stealing pieces of images seems more blatant than just stealing words.

Somewhere, an artificial intelligence is scanning this and putting the information in with other writings it’s scanned. And maybe it will spit it out verbatim into someone else’s writing. I don’t know, and maybe that’s the worst part.

Stalled Stories

What do I do when I don’t like where the story is going?

I have this problem with the two works in progress that are not currently in progress. One of them has a main character problem. The main character is a cipher, which is as it should be, as he is keeping a big secret. The thing is that the progression of their relationship seems vapid as a result. Which it might well be, given that he’s keeping a secret, but it’s not good storytelling at the moment.

The other book? The plot got so convoluted that not even I know what’s going on. Why are they going to the planet where they expect the bad guys to be waiting for them? I’m not sure I’ve given them compelling reasons to do something this stupid.

So what do I do? The first thing I do is avoid writing for a while. This is obviously not a good strategy, but this is a blog post about what I do, not what I should do. I’m edging toward the end of my writing hiatus, so I have to try the next step.

Next I start doing some writing exercises. I need to interrogate the two characters in Walk Through Green Fire, explore where they’re at right now and how they feel about it. Interrogating the character is interviewing the character, except for the tricky part that they don’t exist. It helps me get into the character’s motivations.

Then, hopefully I’m in the space to write. If not, I abandon the book and start on another project. I’ve already done this with Walk Through Green Fire once. It may be a fundamentally flawed work, I’m not sure. Or something I’m not willing to write because reasons. In which case, I need to find a new novel. Maybe it’s time to do the Kringle novel for this year.