Under The Dome

This is definitely more On Reading than On Writing, but still...it totally relates, promise!

For Christmas this year, my fabulous hubs got me Stephen King's new book, Under the Dome. As a fan of Stephen King, (have I mentioned I have everything he's every written?), I was so far from disappointed that I was...well, ecstatic. It was King at his best, right up there with The Stand, Lisey's Story, and The Dark Tower series.

As a writing, I inspired. Under the Dome is an example of King at his finest, in character development, plot, pacing, and conclusion. It's eerie how totally he gets the small town mentality, and takes it to such deep, dark places. Places I have no problem seeing; I could totally see the town I live in now paralleling his story.

And that's what I want to write. That reality, but in the richest form possible. The type of writing that takes you past the surface, and into the deep. The kind of writing which may have come from the Myth Pool, or the Language Pool, to steal one of King's more magnificent concepts...which I understand he learned from a teacher very early on.

If you haven't read Under the Dome yet, what are you waiting for?! Just to tempt you, here's the awesome cover art:
source

You can only see half of it here, so click on the picture to see the awesomeness in it's entirety.

Stew, Bread, Pizza, Portishead

Hello there friends! And strangers. And anyone else who might be reading this.

After a few months of pure insanity, I've been working on getting life back on track, and lemme tell ya...so far, so good.

As far as writing goes, can I just say that I'm so in love with OpenOffice? Seriously, I'm having a major love affair with it. The fact that it's COMPLETELY FREE also makes me smile. Just a little bit. :)

I've been working on transferring all my hand-written pages, from the week my computer crapped out, onto OO, and in the process, getting back into the groove. The story's been marinating, and I'm almost ready to reach back into the stew and pull out some more awesomeness. A big meaty piece of fantasticness. And now I'm hungry again! (big surprise right?)

I've been on an epic journey of music collection as well, and at this exact moment, I'm listening to Sea Wolf. I love playing their music while I write, and when I clean, and when I drive, and...well, you get the point. Also Sia, girl has one of those haunting sopranos that isn't obnoxious at all, Bon Iver, Grizzly Bear, The Drums, Hurricane Bells, and of course, Portishead. Writing and music are like bread and butter to me; like ham and cheese, or pizza and beer, or....dang it! Always with the food/drink comparisons!!!

The Pen Is Mightier Than The...Computer?

After a few weeks of not writing at all, I sat down to get back to it. Unfortunately, my computer had other ideas. After taking it to the geek-shop for repair, I sat down on my porch with my notebook and a pen to jot down some story ideas. Fortunately, my pen had other ideas.

I think I've said this before, but there's something cathartic about writing longhand with a pen on sheets of notebook paper. For me at least. And when I opened my notebook to a fresh page, something took over and I just wrote and wrote.

My story, which I'd been unhappy with because something just wasn't clicking for me, took an entirely different turn. And while my characters are largely the same, (because I love them just the way they are), the plot itself decided to go running off into a new world of intrigue, love, mystery and trust. And I couldn't be happier with the outcome. Whereas before I was struggling to come up with the next thing, now I can't write fast enough to get it all down. It's like the real story was there, buried way down deep, and my original draft was just the outside layer. I had to get all that icing out of the way to get to the cake underneath. And now I'm, well...covered in cake! :)

Now that my computer is fixed, I'm working on transferring my 20 pages of longhand into my writing files. And as soon as my kids get to bed, I'm going to pick up where I left off...I seem to remember an unfinished conversation between my reluctant hero and my possible antagonist...or is he?

Guess I'll have to wait and see!

Lightening Strike

Holy cow I have so much to say, and no time! I'll be back with details soon, promise, but for right now all I can say is that sometimes lightening strikes, and it's a good thing!

A Quick Note...

It's been a while, I know. It's funny how that works, isn't it? I mean, the way time passes at the same speed, every second of forever, and yet we feel like we're swimming in molasses some days, and others are just a blink of the eye.

Recently, certain parts of my life have been fast, and others, slow. Life always tends to intrude on my better times with a little dose of harsh reality every now and then, so while things are definitely pretty good, there's always those things that are a little less good...or just downright bleh.

I've spent so much more time focusing on other aspects of my life right now that my computer has basically been abandoned for a few months. I probably get on it once every 5 days or so, as opposed to 5 times every day. I feel a lot better about that, but it makes me a little sad to because I miss being able to just write it as it comes to me, during the day (or night). But even though I have to put it off now until I get to my designated time to write, I think it's better like this. Less focus on the whole wide (& mostly unimportant, and unrelated to anything I'll ever be a part of) world the internet opens for me, more focus on the reality of my day-to-day life.

Even though I'm writing less here, I'm writing more "there", in my life. And that's great, because there is something so cathartic about writing longhand, to me at least. A good ball point pen, and some blank papers and I'm off, free-falling into whatever universe I want.

Lately I've been getting to the "wine" of the story. The part where the exciting newness has worn off, and reality has more or less settled into it. Now it's work. But it's better now, like wine, because I've got that inital flash down, and a clear-eyed strategy is exactly what's needed to clean it up, and make it work.

Sadly, now that I'm back, I'm leaving again. I'm going on a vacation of sorts, back to the beach, which is currently under thrall of a howling nor'easter, while I'm living in that best part of summer; the last few days of pure sunshine, almost cool air, and freshness.

I'm really excited about going home.