Hello, hello! How’s everyone this lovely Wednesday? I’m tired and have no good excuse not to blog, but I just don’t want to. So, I’ll be back next week with the end of the month book review!
No Good Excuse
Lazy Writer
New Year, Old Me
Howdy, howdy! How’s everyone doing this first Wednesday of the year? Not much going on here. Vet trips and an upcoming doctor appointment. Things are pretty boring, which is good. I’ve failed miserably at goals the last few years, so I only have a couple this year. It’s late in the day and I’m tired, so I figured I’d share those and then go read or watch TV or whatever.
Reading Goals: read 35 books in 2024. I’ve had good luck with this number, so I’m sticking with it. Somehow, I made it through 45 books in 2023. I still don’t know how I did it. But it’s hard for me to even get through 3 books a month, so 35 it is.
Writing Goals: write something. I’m not even going to pretend to make a good goal for this. I don’t care what I write as long as I start writing again. Short stories. A book. Whatever. I don’t even care if I finish anything as long as I write more often than not this year.
It’s not much. They aren’t even good goals. But it’s all I can come up with that doesn’t feel useless or overwhelming. What are your goals for 2024?
I’m Obsessed
Howdy, howdy! How’s everyone doing this wonderful Wednesday? Things here are okay. My writing is still only coming in spurts, but I’m reading a lot and trying to do other things besides stupid games. But I should be writing. I know. Anyway, I’ve been trying to figure out what to blog about today, but nothing is coming to mind. Ugh. So, since it’s getting late, I’m just going to share some songs that have been rotating through my head. I don’t know why. I just get obsessive sometimes and have to listen to certain songs. It’s weird.
1. I’m So Tired by the Beatles. One day, I thought “I’m so tired” and was going to tell the dog, but I ended up singing it at her instead and now it’s been stuck in my head for days.
2. Shut Up And Dance by Walk the Moon. I have no idea why I even know this song, but I’ve been listening to it far too much lately.
3. Labyrinth by Oomph. I go through cycles where I either listen to this one obsessively or forget it exists. Spotify only has the English version, so it’s not as fun as this one, but it’s still good.
4. Moonlight Escape by Buck-Tick. Sakurai Atsushi still makes me swoon. This one has subs if you turn on the closed captioning, so you can see how morbid it actually is.
5. Adam’s Song by Blink 182. This one randomly gets stuck in my head. It’s one of those times.
Surprisingly, I haven’t been stuck on Blue October lately. But yeah. These are most of the songs currently taking up space in my mind. The rest of the songs are basically some dudes screaming “fuck everything” because it’s super cathartic since I can’t do the whole primal scream thing myself. What’s currently stuck in your head? As always, feel free to leave your thoughts or questions or whatever here or on my social media pages!
March Is Here
Hello, hello! How’s everyone doing this lovely Wednesday? Things here are okay. There’s some old lady neighbor drama going on, but things will eventually work out. Other than that, there’s not much going on. It’s late as I’m writing this because I procrastinated, so it’ll probably be a short post again. I haven’t made a goals post in a while, so I think I’m going to do that. These are just March goals. I’m not planning too far ahead because I’ve been really bad about keeping goals anyway, so what’s the point? Fingers crossed I can at least keep up with this stuff.
1. Write 4,000 words a week. Since the beginning of the year, I’ve met this goal five weeks out of eight. I need to buckle down and stick with it, but I’m lazy and haven’t really found the desire to keep up with it. It’s a me thing. I know. I’m enjoying the story and know where it’s going. When I do force myself to write, it’s not particularly hard and the distractions are minimal. So, it’s not that I need to switch projects. I just need to focus and find the reason I write again.
2. Read at least two books. I’ve already read seven this year, so I don’t foresee any problems meeting this goal. And only one of those was a book of poetry, so no… I’m not reading super short things and counting them. Though I do have a couple of novellas lined up for this year. But I also have a couple of 500+ page novels on my shelf. My reading varies. A lot.
3. Submit DS1 to another publisher. It’s been a couple of months since my last kindly worded rejection, so I should probably get it back out there. I still have a couple of places I want to try before I decide whether or not to trunk this one too.
4. Keep up with my miscellaneous stuff. Write blog posts. Post on my author profiles. Order groceries as needed. Try not to forget little things that pop up. Text people. The usual stuff that I do between mindless games and crossword puzzles.
That’s all, really. I was going to include socializing more, but I honestly just don’t want to. I’d rather listen to loud music. Don’t get me wrong. I love my peoples. But I prefer hermitting right now. Anyway, what are your goals for March? As always, feel free to share your comments and questions here or on my social media pages!
End of Year Stuff
Hello, hello! How’s everyone doing? Can you believe it’s already December? The year just slipped right on by. I’m still stuck somewhere back in March. But seriously, it wasn’t a very good year productivity-wise, as you very well know if you’ve been stalking me. I don’t really know what happened. I just got lazy and everything spiraled out of control. But I really need to get back on track for next year, so I’m just going to ramble a bit about my goals for this month. They aren’t much, but hopefully enough to get me back on track for being productive in 2022.
1. Read two books. This is pretty much the only thing I’ve kept up with this year. My goal was to read 35 books and I just started my 34th of the year. As long as I can finish that one and pick/finish a book to review by the end of the month, I’ll at least have my reading goal done. It shouldn’t be a problem.
2. Research publishing companies and how to query them. I’ve given up on finding an agent for the current book I was sending out, but I do want to try some publishers before I decide to put it away for a while. I just don’t know how different the querying process is for publishers vs. agents. So, I’ll have to do some Googling and/or pester people for advice.
3. Read through the current novel-in-progress. It’s already fully outlined and ready to be written (I believe it’s about halfway done, maybe a little less), so I need to at least finish the first draft. It’s the sequel to the novel I was querying, so I think I just got a bit discouraged and disgusted with the whole thing. But I still love these books and want to work on them, so hopefully I can drop back into that world and finish the draft. We’ll see how I feel after I re-read what I have.
4. Write words. It doesn’t have to be good words or even a lot of words, but I do need to get back in the habit of sitting here, opening a document, and writing something at least four days a week (five if you count blogging). I’m not even going to worry if it’s all part of the same story. Just practice for getting back into the novel-in-progress. When I start that, I’ll decide whether to focus on a specific word count or just time staring at the screen. And whether I want to establish a daily goal or weekly one.
That’s my plan for December. Nothing too demanding or exhausting. Just something to hopefully set me up for a better writing year in 2022. Forcing myself has failed miserably this year, so maybe easing myself into it will work better. But I really need to start trying again. Being lazy is only an excuse for so long before people start accusing you of being depressed. What about you? What are your plans for the last month of 2021? Are you wrapping up current goals or starting to plan for next year? As always, feel free to share your thoughts or questions here or on my social media pages!
Didn’t Realize It Was So Late
Howdy, howdy! It’s pretty late in the day for me to be writing a blog post. My new laptop arrived this afternoon, so I’ve been adjusting settings and signing into things and transferring files and not paying attention to the time. It’s one of the cheaper ASUS ROG STRIX G17s, but it’s supposed to be more powerful than anything I’ve ever had. Also, it’s super rainbow-y and I love it. I bought it from XOTIC PC and will post a proper review after I’ve had some time with it. Anyway, instead of writing a proper blog post, I’m going to keep fiddling with my new toy. I still need to hook it up to the printer and download some things and decide what I’m going to do about Word and that kind of stuff. I’ll be back next week with my monthly book review and probably a brief update on my second Pfizer dose (which I get tomorrow). Toodles!
Writing Cripple Characters
Hello, hello! I hope all of my US and Canadian friends had wonderful independence days! Mine was quiet. It was spent writing this and playing mindless games, because I was a little tired and didn’t feel like doing anything else. But that’s not what I’m here to talk about today. I wanted to tell you all a bit about the protagonist of my current series-in-progress and why I chose to make her cripple (this is my preferred term, so if it offends you… sorry, not sorry).
Garnets and Guardians is the first book in my Demonic Jewels (working title) series. The series follows Bailey Donovan, a thirteen-year-old who has recently been diagnosed with Limb-Girdle disease, as she struggles to cope not only with her illness, but also with moving to a new town and the dark discovery she makes there. Despite everything, she remains fairly stoic, which occasionally causes drama within her family. And yes, unlike many protagonists in the fantasy genre, Bailey’s family remains whole and supportive.
So, why did I choose to write about a young girl who is newly cripple? I’ve actually heard a lot of theories on this in various workshops. The one I get the most is that I’m writing what I know, or that Bailey’s a fantasy version of me, or similarly weird things. In a lot of ways, she is like me. She doesn’t do well with emotional displays and she likes to handle things her own way. But her disability is nothing like mine, so she has to cope differently, which really means she’s a completely separate person from me. There’s also the theory that I write cripple characters because they are few and far between in genre fiction and I want to see myself reflected in these genres I love. I’ve covered that before: yes, diversity is important, but I (personally) don’t need or want characters to be cripple in order for me to identify with them.
All of that is great and I’m sure it’s why some people choose to write cripple characters, but it’s not why I did. Honestly, I just wanted to write about a hospital full of demons. What better way to do that than to give my protagonist a chronic disease that forces interaction with such a place? Yeah, I chose a disease within my realm of understanding, but that’s only because I hate doing immense amounts of research. So, for me, writing a cripple character has less to do with crippleness itself and much more to do with what fits the story and me being too lazy to look stuff up.
Have you ever written a cripple character? Did you do so for the sake of diversity or was it just something you wanted to try out? Have you wanted to write a cripple character but chose not to? Why? No judgment here, so feel free to share your thoughts and stories and reasons below or on my social media pages!
Shawna's Blog of Doom 