What Now?

This week and the previous, I've been in between writing projects. I finished up Dark Earth and sent it out to be reviewed by my critique partners. Now I'm like ... hmmm .. what now? I've started the superhero romance story and I'm excited by the first chapter. But I'm taking this time to do some research and I'm finishing up Story by Robert McKee, which I highly recommend any writer read no matter what your level. Definitely puts things in perspective and if you're stuck in writing your story, it'll help you find out what's wrong and needs to be improved. I have an idea of what happens to my two main characters but I still need to flush it out by doing research. My hero is an archeologist (think Indiana Jones my first real crush ... ahhh), so I want to do some research into ancient civilizations and myths and legends.

I'm going to upload an excerpt from Dark Earth in this coming week and edit one of my short stories to put up as well. Miss Snark talked about how she likes to see excerpts on the site of writers in whom she's interested, so I thought it was a good idea.

I only saw two of the movies up for Oscar but I definitely want to see The Queen and The Departed. I love Martin Scorsese!!!! I'm so happy he finally got an Oscar. And kudos to Jennifer Hudson and landing an Oscar for her debut role. She deserved it. Here's a link to the Oscar winners.

Weird Baltimoreans

Another proof that no idea is totally original. You just got to get it out there first—or do it in a unique way. I was reading in the Romantic Times Book Reviews about a heroine who can kill using her mind. Ugh! That's my main heroine's ability. Did I think I was being unique? No. It's been done before: X-Men, Scanners, Carrie. But gosh darn it, I never saw it in a Romance book. At least not to my knowledge. Though the story was different from mine, so I believe that mine's unique enough to stand on its own. It can be so disconcerting to see all those books out there and wonder how the hell I can break into the biz with so much competition. But people do it all the time. It just takes awhile. There's a market for everyting. And with talent and determination, anyone can make it.

So I keep telling myself.

Anyway, Sybir got me hooked on this cyber "me" site (www.meez.com). I spent about 30 minutes doing this less-than-productive thing this morning. Why am I avoiding work? I played all weekend, so now it's time to get down to business but I just can't concentrate. Anyway, here's cyberspace me:



Also, I read a great article about my fellow Baltimoreans in a magazine called The Urbanite. The author talked about the strange people living on her city bock. Particularly, one older woman who would throw water into open car windows as people sped down her street. Ahhh ... leave it to a Baltimoreans to wait on their stoop all day for just that chance to soak a speeder. In the last paragraph, the author quoted John Waters, who lives and has set most of his movies in Baltimore. Someone asked why he had never moved to LA or New York but stayed in Baltimore. He said,

"New Yorkers are weird, and they know it. Baltimoreans are weird, and they have no idea."

I love it! When I think back to all the colorful characters who used to grace the doorway of the East Baltimore Guide (my first job) all I can say is "so true, so true." Especially when I remember the man who announced with great sincerity to all of us working that he had an awesome idea to sell used matresses. I kid you not. He was serious and he wanted to begin adverstising his matresses that day in our newspaper.

Now to get some work done ...

Moving Right Along

Been a fun week despite the snow.

• Saw Wicked . Awesome! Acting was superb. Singing was phenomenal. Only problem was that I had read the book and the play is sooooo different than the book. I had read the book over a year ago so I didn't remember what was in the book and what wasn't. The whole time I was like, "Did that happen in the book? Who is that character? Where is so and so?" I should've taken it as a totally separate story and not tried to compare. Would've enjoyed the story much better. However, Victoria Matlock (Elphaba) and Christina DeCicco (Glinda) totally rocked. They had wonderful voices and really gave life to the characters.
• Saw Dreamgirls. Loved it! Jennifer Hudson is absolutely amazing. Stole the whole movie. And to think that she had no prior movie experience before this is just astonishing. Her voice, attitude, and look reminded me of a young Aretha Franklin. (I grew up listening to Motown as a child and love all those old singers. They had so much soul.) Music was awesome. I kept wanting to jump up and dance in the theater. I'm buying the soundtrack this week. Hudson deserves the Oscar nomination. This movie pulled me in from the beginning and really showed how great characters can drive a story. Go see it!!!!
  
• Got the last of my first chapter edits done from my hubby. Yeah! Passed on the story to Sybir to begin reading in between the bazillion other projects she has going on. I am printing copies now to send to the Copyright office and my other critique partner in New York. Then I will send out a few other copies to some other critiquers who are interested in giving my story the old read through (and probably bloody it up a little in the process -- ugh!).
  
• Met with Sybir and Melena, who is an event planner (corporate and private). We had a great discussion about how best to market our businesses. Learned so much. Awesome to be around such business-minded, kick-butt women! Very inspiring!
  
• Going to begin work on new story. Have the first chapter down pat but not sure where it's heading. I'm going to read over my books on myths and folklore to plan what will happen.
• Started using a small black book that Sybir had given me years ago for Christmas. I've been collecting thoughts, inspirations, and dreams in it to help cultivate writing ideas. I've been taking it everywhere I go. I can't tell you how many times I've been out and had a great idea but didn't write it down in time. Ugh!
• Check out Claws in Creativity which Sybir has spearheaded. It is a site dedicated to all things creative: music, writing, art, and a slew of other articles to get your creative energies flowing. She's done a wonderful job pulling this site together and I'm happy to be a contributor. Yippee!!!

Now, back to writing!

Finding My Way

This weekend I finished the rewrite on my first chapter. I don't feel a sense of imbalance when I read it anymore. Of course, I put it aside. I can't look at it again just yet. My hubby is reading over the first chapter for me before I send it out to critique partners. He's going away for ten days starting on Thursday for business and I'm so totally bummed. It wouldn't be bad if it was just a few days but we haven't been apart for more than five days in about six years. Ugh! Sure I'll get a lot done and make lots of headway on my latest story idea. Despite the fact that I'm an only child (used to playing alone) and I enjoy my time by myself, damn it, I'm going to miss him. When I think about all those military spouses separated for a year or more, it breaks my heart. I don't know how they do it.

He's taking my last five chapters with him to mark up on the plane. Next month when I receive other feedback from my critique partners, then I'll consolidate all my edits which will probably take me another month to do. IF, and this is a big IF, there's nothing majorly wrong with it. Fingers crossed. It is what it is.

For the past six months, I've been working for about two hours every morning on my writing before I began work. These past two days I've gotten up and wasn't sure what to do. Do I start on my superhero romance? I have one chapter written and I'd like to clean it up and send it off to a contest, just to get a feel for if it's right.

Okay, so that's what I'll do. Write through the superhero story and get a first draft done on that. Though I did have a really scary dream last night that woke me this morning and so disturbed me that I couldn't go back to sleep. I'll have to describe that in the next post. Very freaky...

Getting Things Done

I've gone through all of my husband's edits. I was having lots of difficulty with the rewrite on the first chapter, but I made lots of progress on that this morning. Yeah! And the good news is that my weekend is totally free, so I will have the rewrite done by Monday. Yippee! I'm so excited.

On another note, I was reading an article in Self magazine at the gym when I just about dropped the magazine and swore allegiance to Rebecca Romijn. She said how frustrated she was at tabloids getting her weight wrong. Back in the early 1990s when she did the Sports Illustrator spread, she weighed 140 lbs! She said that a tabloid reported (in error, big surprise) that she had weighed about 120 lbs at the time. She's 5'11"! At 120 lbs, she would've been a stick. Just look at all those waifs on the runway now! She had gained weight during her hiatus from movies and television and the tabloids recently called her fat, but, as she said, "I looked like a normal woman." Unfortunately, in her business you need to stay lean, so she's back down to her normal Hollywood weight, which is not in the 120s. I wish more healthy actresses would come clean to what they really weigh. I get so frustrated with this whole weight issue and the media. I see so many women struggling with anorexia and young girls are constantly being fed the wrong information and believing that if they need to weigh around 110-120 or else they're fat. Ugh! It makes me so angry. I remember playing the Mortal Combat video game back in college. They had the stats for all the chacters (weight, height, ability) and the Sonya character was apparently 5'11" and 120 lbs. I was like WTF!!!! She can't kick ass or have anykind of muscles at that weight. Apparently, that's what the guys who designed it believe a lean woman should weigh. Argh!

Research

One of the comments my husband, who loves science, made about my story is a quote where one character says that we only use a small portion of our brains.

Wrong!

He used a particularly large amount of ink to cross that statement out and drew a little frowny face by it. Okay, okay, so I got the point. But that's what I always remembered being told and hearing on TV and reading in the media. Of course, sometimes the media can be skewed. Especially when it comes to psychic abilities. The idea of only using a small portion of the brain definitely supports the probability that we could be way more advanced, psychically speaking, if we could tap into these unused sections.

I spent about two hours online this morning trying to figure out a plausible, scientific explanation of how my character got her abilities. Since my story is based more on science than the paranormal, I wanted to base it in some fact, considering that one of my characters is a scientist. I didn't need to go into major detail. But I needed to have a basic understanding so my character said the right things and noone would draw anymore frowny faces next to it. Hmph!

Snopes.com had a great article discrediting the 10% theory. Of course, this doesn't mean that psychic phenomena can't exist, but that there are different explanations for what could cause it. The Institute for Noetic Sciences is trying to use credible research to detect the potential powers of consciousness. They claim to have found people with the ability to heal from a distance, and people who acan pick up on stimuli placed outside a room in controlled quarters. It'll be interesting to read more about their findings. All this research just gives me more ideas for stories. I love it!

I found another website which greatly helped me called How Stuff Works. I was able to learn a lot about the brain and give me ideas about where my heroines psychic powers could stem. They have lots of information on the body as well as machines, heath care, computers, electronics, etc. I don't know what I'd do without the Internet.

Okay, back to trying to pull all this together.