What’s Up Wednesday? The freakin’ Polar Vortex!

What’s Up Wednesday is a weekly blogfest to share the answers to a few simple questions… Join us!

What I’m reading:

Well, I just finished the ‘Lockstep’ serial in Analog magazine, loved the ending, but I’ve still got lots of magazine stories to read. Also finished ‘Vampire Diaries: Shadow Souls’ from the library, and been catching up on podcasts, but I just bought me some new books at Audible: The Handmaid’s Tale, Dune, Samdman Slim, and Thuvia Maid of Mars.

What I’m writing:

Finished the draft synopsis of “Alien Love on a Kitchen Scale,” and started getting back to revisions of  “Gotta Have that Look.” Once again having issues trying to figure out how much critique feedback to take and what to ignore, sigh.

What inspires me right now:

The Kitchen Scale soundtrack, Castle, Stringing Words, and the new Odfellows newsletter.

What else I’ve been up to:

Not very much. We drove around looking at new office locations for my day job team yesterday; looks like we have to be moved by March at the latest. Calling around to family making plans for my sister’s birthday. 🙂

What about you? Click here to join the hop or check in with some other great writers.

What’s Up (is finally back on a) Wednesday!

What’s Up Wednesday is a weekly blogfest to share the answers to a few simple questions… Join us! After skipping Wednesdays for the holidays, and fudging the date last week for IWSG, it’s great to be back on Wednesday.

What I’m reading:

Still plenty of magazine stories on the Kindle. Catching up on F&SF’s November/December issue at the moment. I didn’t really follow ‘Success’ but rather liked “Through Mud One Picks a Way” and “Hell for Company.” Still listening to the library digital audiobook of “Vampire Diaries: Shadow Souls.”

What I’m writing:

Finished the revision of “Orpheus and the Cameraman” I’ve been working on, yay! Also finished my Making Magic exercises with Kitchen Scale, and started the synopsis/outline.

What inspires me right now:

Soundtracks and collage! Odyssey Team Ambitious friends, and talking about conventions and markets and local workshops.

What else I’ve been up to:

Made it into Toronto for the Buffy Fan club dinner, which was a lot of fun. The cold weather has me mostly hunkered down and working on creative stuff, which is definitely a good thing.

What about you? Click here to join the hop or check in with some other great writers.

Generating creative magic

So, I’ve been working for a while at the Storywonk Making Magic class. It’s taken me a little while to get into the magic groove, actually, (odd since I’m such a fantasy fan,) but there’s some great stuff in the course. I totally recommend it, especially for the encouraging tips Lani has about different ways to go out and hunt your magic; activities to help you get in touch with your muse, and sort out the inspiration you need for this particular book.

The first big exercise was the soundtrack. I love using music to fuel my inspiration, and Lani had some good tips for how to pick a good soundtrack, and avoiding the dangers of using something with too many memories that don’t really fit the book. On the other hand, I found I had some problems with her approach of going out and finding brand new music, because it takes me too long to figure out how I feel about a new song. So for my ‘Alien Love on a Kitchen Scale’ soundtrack, I ended up going through the ‘mid-tier’ of my music collection, considering a bunch of songs that I kinda liked but hadn’t rated with high numbers of stars. A few B-list songs snuck in there, mostly because I couldn’t shake the fact that they’d shown me something important about my characters, and I had to work for a few days cutting the list down to a length that seemed reasonable. Here’s the final soundtrack, more or less in the order of priority I was using to axe the last few stragglers:

• Love Is My Witness, by Amanda Marshall
• Clueless, by Billy Gilman
• If My Life Was a Movie, by Steve Fox
• That Was Us, by Alexz Johnson
• Clocks, by Coldplay
• Not That Different, by Collin Raye
• Variations 1-4, by Andrew Lloyd Webber
• More Love, by the Dixie Chicks
• Snow Globe, by Chely Wright
• Benefit of Doubt, by Chris Cummings
• I Just Came Back From a War, by Darryl Worley
• Waiting For Angels, by the Ennis Sisters
• Haunted (Acoustic version) by Taylor Swift
• Life For Rent, by Dido
• I Wonder, by Aaron Pritchett
• St John’s Waltz, by Ron Hynes
• Blown Away, by Carrie Underwood
• Summertown Road, by Brad Johner
• Must To Be Free, by The Watchmen
• Reasons Why, by Nickel Creek