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Thursday, 29 December 2011

A Writer's Year

Posted on 14:37 by Unknown

Been quite a gap since my last post (I'm giving you my sheepish look, it's really very adorable). Time melted away from me, but I did wind up my school year and managed to sell our Yass home.

With only a few days until I make my New Year To-Do List, I thought I'd reflect on the past year to see what achievements I've made with writing and how I may be able to improve my productivity over the next year. New Year's resolutions are common this time of year, we all think about how this will be the opportunity for us to pursue forgotten dreams, shed our bad habits and connect more with those we neglect. But it's also a good time for reflection. What were your resolutions, goals, ambitions at the beginning of 2011? Did you make any progress? What worked well, and what did you neglect to address?

I'm pretty happy with 2011, Not only did I finish MY ZOMBIE DOG, but I had an interview with an editor from a children's publishing house. Like most years, my productivity was condensed at the beginning of the year and tapered off the last two months to almost non-existence.

What was your best achievement this year? What do you need to work on? 

Now to celebrate my return to blogworld, I'm gonna go visiting my favourite blogs!
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Posted in productivity, writing goals, writing time | No comments

Saturday, 19 November 2011

When you don't write...

Posted on 15:09 by Unknown
NaNoFail. I know, I know, it's not over yet, but somehow I can't see me getting in 44,000 words in ten days while teaching full-time and presenting my house for sale. This is my first fail year after three NaNo wins. Am I disappointed? Not a bit, and that surprised me.

I'm usually pretty hard on myself about getting stuff done and about priorities. I've posted before about the need to prioritise your writing in your day and not saving it for 'spare' time, spare time doesn't exist, you need 'writing time'. But every now and then we fall off the literary wagon and instead of wallowing in self-pity, I think you have to just give yourself a break. And then move on. Pat yourself on the shoulder for not being 200% perfect, do what you need to do at the time and then plan a near future date that your writing will restart. For me, it's the school holidays. 

I'll probably start  dipping back in before that, but I've also got to display my home for prospective buyers in the next few weeks, organise the sale of our other property, shop for a home in Brisbane, do the conveyancing for our purchase, pack up our belongings, teach, do up my paperwork for my next teaching accreditation, etc, etc, etc. So now is the time to pace myself.

How's November looking for your writing? If you've slacked off, what will be your 'get back into it' date?

Here's what I've been doing this month instead - painting my house:

From this:
To this:
And I've painted inside too:



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Posted in | No comments

Wednesday, 2 November 2011

Ready, Set... What was I saying?

Posted on 05:33 by Unknown
NaNoWriMo has begun! Actually it began on the 1st of November, but I was having issues deciding which story to begin. After running through all the possibilities, I decided to go with my original idea of book 2 in the Dog Show Detective series.

Kitty Walker continues to chase those elusive show ribbons with her best friend, Miniature Schnauzer, 'Spade'. Unfortunately, Spade happens to be the worst show dog ever. While Kitty tries to mend Spade's naughty ways through obedience school, she stumbles upon another mystery. Someone is breaking into the cars of the obedience school members while they are busy on the field. Things escalate to house break ins. It starts to become obvious that one of the obedience school members are responsible for these thefts. But who? 
Surely not Kitty's mother? 
Mrs Walker tries to prove her own innocence, after all, Kitty is banned from solving mysteries after she put her life at risk when got involved in the last mystery. Sadly Mrs Walker is as bad at detecting as Spade is at dog showing. Ultimately, Mrs Walker will need Kitty's help, especially since the crimes have escalated from theft to murder.

Day two, I've managed 1632 words. Opening with a show, Spade nicks a scarf off the judge and makes her chase him around the ring until he gets bored. Now Spade has been sentenced to dog obedience school or his showing future is over.

Schroeder, my less naughty, more sooky Miniature Schnauzer
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Posted in detectives, Dog Show Detective, mystery writing, NaNoWriMo, novel writing | No comments

Wednesday, 26 October 2011

NaNo - when now????

Posted on 18:05 by Unknown
I was so cool about NaNoWriMo this year. Planned way ahead. Figured I'd do a sequel to my children's mystery novel DOG SHOW DETECTIVE. Plotted it out, have character sketches and a few little plot twists all mapped out. Now I've changed my mind.

After much feedback from beta-readers, both writers and kids in the targeted age group, I've decided DOG SHOW DETECTIVE is not as completed as I first thought. I need to juice up the start and add something more to the main character to push us into caring about her. Knowing this may change other aspects of the story, I'm not sure I should be jumping into the sequel.

The big question is what project do I focus on for NaNo. I could do another kids' horror story like MY ZOMBIE DOG, or I could go with a Science-fiction YA piece, or a teen spy-thriller. No rush there's still two and half days before I need to begin writing. No hurry.


How are your NaNoWriMo plans coming?

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Posted in NaNoWriMo, plotting, writing a novel, writing advice | No comments

Monday, 24 October 2011

Writing Secrets

Posted on 20:32 by Unknown

I've been keeping secrets. Nothing too exciting, but the cover up and sneakiness has gotten me thinking about characters. I love having secrets in stories, either the main character is covering up a secret or they learn the truth about a long-kept secret. Sometimes I'm forced to wonder why they go to so much trouble. They can't swim? Big deal, why would that be a secret? I'm terrified of hairy spiders and am happy for everyone to know. I have abandoned a classroom of children in my frantic fleeing when a huntsmen has made his evil entrance - more than once. Even the big boys over 6ft tall know they can not intimidate me, but will squeal like a squeaky toy if a spider is anywhere near.

But there are some things I've hidden.

At school all the teachers know I'm moving to Brisbane at the end of this semester and won't be back next  year, but I find I just can not tell the kids yet. They keep quizzing me about classes next year and I've been very evasive, on the edge of lying, because I don't want to hurt their feelings. I'll miss the Yass kids.

There's another secret.

I'm scared of zombies.

Terrified.

I know, I wrote a teen story called MY ZOMBIE DOG, and yes, it has lots of zombies. But I'd never sat through an actually zombie horror flick because they give me the jeebies. I LOVE horror films, my favourite being HALLOWEEN (the original). I'm not squeamish and I find the slasher flicks funny. But there is something just WRONG about those glazed over eyes and the slow shuffling. 

I have so many ideas in my head for more zombie tales that I want to overcome this prejudice against the un-dead, so, in my quest to better understand zombies (sometimes called the living-impaired), I've started watching THE WALKING DEAD. Many brain-nomning fans will remember this as a pretty well known comic book series. Now we get to watch it on tv. I got so scared I kept running out of the room and all night long I dreamt of worm-filled zombies.
I have a couple of suspension of disbelief issues with this show - when shot in the head the zombies bleed. Many of them have been dead a long time and are rotting - where's the blood coming from??? And there is a scene where the cop comes across a home where the occupants committed suicide rather than become infected - on the wall above their bodies in blood is the message 'God Forgive Us'. Um, ok, maybe... but this would mean the guy shot his wife and then before completing the double suicide pact, dipped his hand in his wife's head and used her blood to write the message before shooting himself - probably having to re-dip several times. Surely a permanent marker would have been better???

So what is your character hiding? And most importantly - WHY is it a secret? Or is someone keeping a secret from them? Is it BELIEVABLE?

In MY ZOMBIE DOG, Zane's mother keeps a secret from Zane. She didn't get his dog from the pound. She didn't want him to know she got the dog for free... from a voodoo witch doctor.
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Posted in motive, My Zombie Dog, the walking dead, writing a novel, writing secrets, zombie | No comments

Saturday, 8 October 2011

Apples and Zombies

Posted on 17:50 by Unknown

This week has been huge.

The Apple populated world suffered the loss of an inspiration and innovator, Steve Jobs. It has been an amazing experience seeing people respond to this incident in such a big way. Interesting to see a corporate leader admired and worshiped as much as a mega-movie star. I'm starting to think it would be disrespectful for me NOT to buy an iPad now.

But on a more cheerful note, October 8th was World Zombie Day. Queensland Emergency Services tested out their QLD Alert website with tweets and updates on preparing for a zombie apocalypse. 

It was lots of fun, you can see the conversation in Twitter by searching the hashtag #zombietest - even QLD Rail got involved so you'd know which escape route to take once it was already too late and the city was overcome by zombies.

I've been on school holidays and spent most of that time working on our house (getting it all pretty to sell, then I can pick out my next house in Brisbane, hopefully outside of the zombie-zoned areas).

Edits on MY ZOMBIE DOG are coming along, with the protagonist jumping from 11yrs to 14yrs old. I need to get more of a move on with that and send the revised MS back to the publisher for consideration. But school goes back tomorrow and I MUST finish marking about 80 newspaper articles written by Yr10 students. Ugh, I hate marking - anyone want to do it for me?????

I will not be distracted, I will not be... I wonder if I can find a cute little sign saying 'Beware of the zombie dog' online?
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Posted in Apple, iPad, My Zombie Dog, Steve Jobs, zombie | No comments

Sunday, 2 October 2011

Unrequited Love

Posted on 17:22 by Unknown

Amazon broke my heart.

I was so excited about the new release Kindles, even though my latest Kindle is only 6mths old I was keen to jump in with a new e-ink touch screen Kindle. 
Then I read the small print.
US only.

Kindle Fire then?
US only.

It seems the only new Kindle they will ship internationally is the cruddy cheap model that has no touch, no keyboard and no robot to read the ebooks to me! I had grand plans of a Kindle Fire giveaway with the release of my first ebook (still a whiles off) but now I feel like I'm sitting by the phone making up excuses for why that guy didn't call. The truth? Maybe Amazon are just not that into me.

I could retaliate by switching to the iPad as half my family have, but I don't want to act too rashly - maybe I could just move to the States?

Or, I realise, I could just keep reading on my current Kindle that I was more than happy with a week ago (Nah, that's just crazy talk).
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Posted in Amazon, ebooks, Kindle, reading | No comments
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