What’s Up Wednesday? Lecture crazness…

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

What I’m reading:

Umm… a Buffyverse graphic novel, Elizabeth Moon’s “Command Decision”, an Escape Pod podcast, and some more Analog stories via the library and Zinio on my tablet.

What I’m writing:

Reached 10k for July Camp Nanowrimo, didn’t quite finish the  Brain transplant story. Haven’t written in a few days, because I’m busy with other stuff… Maybe I’ll finish the story while I’m at the workshop.

What inspires me right now:

Character growth and transformation! I’m finally digging into this lecture I need to have ready for TNEO, two days before I leave, and it’s great stuff, even if I’m a little frazzled.

What else I’ve been up to:

Catching up on some Vampire Diaries and Revenge. I’ve got a replacement credit card already, and the scam charges will probably get straightened out in due time. And I’ve been getting ready to leave for New Hampshire, though I still have packing to do…

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What’s Up Wednesday? Odysseys on my mind…

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

What I’m reading:

Let’s see. I already finished the latest Iron Druid book I borrowed from the library, “Hunted”, and I’m on hold for the most recent one as soon as the library ebook is available. Loving those stories! I’m still reading stories off my Zinio copies of Analog, and I got back to the Elizabeth Moon Vatta’s war series recently.

And I’m still listening to podcasts a lot, but I did get to a nice PodCastle story in my playlist the other day: “Gazing into the Carnauba Wax Eyes of the Future”, by fellow Codexian Keffy R.M. Kehrli.

What I’m writing:

Finished the Neural Rewiring story, and started another idea from my April A-Z challenge: Brain transplants!

What inspires me right now:

Well, it just occurred to me today that this is the last week of Odyssey 2014, and I wonder how the new class of Odfellows are feeling at this point and what I’d say to them if I had the chance. I’m going to be leaving for “The Never-Ending Odyssey” workshop in a little over a week, and I’m really excited about that. Also, Storywonk podcasts, Star Trek Into Darkness, and the Vampire Diaries.

What else I’ve been up to:

Dealing with a scam on my credit card, (I’m on hold with the bank disputed charge hotline as I type this,) and hanging out with my family over the weekend. Also, exchanging critiques with my Team Ambitious buddies for the first time since April or so, whoo-hoo!

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IWSG: Writing without a long-term plan

Hi there! Since New Year’s Day fell on a Wednesday, the January meeting of the Insecure Writers Support Group got pushed back a week. Welcome everybody!

I’m actually feeling pretty secure about a lot of writing stuff right now. I got a story draft finished during the Christmas holidays, and I’ve been making some good progress on revising short stories. I’m even up to three Race Points!

However, after reviewing my progress on my 2013 creative goals, I’ve been procrastinating on picking my writing resolutions for the new year. I’ve just come from a great writing year, but some of the most amazing parts were things that I hadn’t planned or anticipated. Maybe the thing that’s tripping me up is that setting concrete goals seems to trivialize or minimize the value of that kind of serendipitous side-journey.

I’ll probably put some kind of 2014 goals down before long; as well as the crowd over at Stringing Words, a few of my Odyssey Team Ambitious friends have been sharing their lists. But right now I’ve set some targets for January and that’s as much looking forward as I’m ready to indulge in.

 

What’s up Wednesday: Nano’s Eve

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

What I’m reading:

Finished ‘Engaging the Enemy’, still listing to audio-books for “Heechee Rendezvous” and “The Ringworld Throne.” Read a little more of ‘Jumper Cable’ in the Kindle app on my iPhone, and gone back to reading some magazine stories; I finally finished off the October/November issue of Asimov’s magazine, and just this afternoon I started a fun serial from the latest issue of Analog: “Lockstep!”

What I’m writing:

Well, I’m trying to finish one more round of revision on “Return to Civilization”; the critters.org feedback has been very encouraging, so hopefully I’ll be able to submit it somewhere tomorrow evening! I’ve also done some more discovery work on my new Nano idea, which I’ve tentatively named “Measuring alien love on a kitchen scale” 🙂

What inspires me right now:

Nanowrimo is only days away! It looks like we’re going to have a crapload of local write-ins this year.

Also the heroic Agents of SHIELD; very inspiring!

What else I’ve been up to:

Got my Hipster PDAs put together in time for the Wrimo Kick-off party, and getting ready for a Doctor Who convention that was inconveniently scheduled for the first three days of Nanowrimo. Still trying to keep up with Team Ambitious critiques; this round I only have one story to critique, so that’s a bit of a relief.

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

What’s up Wednesday: This Space for Rent

Well, it’s Wednesday, and I’ve been busy posting nano spotlights and eight-sentence snippets on the blog all week, so what else is going on in the life of Kelworth, you may ask? What’s Up Wednesday is the weekly blogfest that gets you the answers!

What I’m reading:

Still in the middle of the audio-book version of “Heechee Rendezvous” on my iPhone, and loving the science fiction business dealing of it. Started another library ebook on my new tablet, “Engaging the Enemy” by Elizabeth Moon, number three in the great Vatta’s War series. Also did some shuffling of ebooks, trying to get things organized so that all of my pocketable gadgets have one good book (or a few good books) that I haven’t already read cued up and ready to go, so that I don’t need to stare at the library list and go ‘Duh…’ if I’ve got my Palm TX and a few minutes to read on it. In connection with this, I’ve started reading “Jumper Cable”, out of the epic Xanth romps.

What I’m writing:

Not much. Finishing Steampunk Roswell 51 took some of my creative steam. I did get some good revision done on “Return to Civilization”; the new draft is out to the critters.org readers today, so hopefully I’ll be getting some good feedback on it. Also done a little prep-work for a new Nano idea involving an alien love triangle, and an Earthling city on an alien planet facing a threat of eviction.

What inspires me right now:

Wrimo gatherings! There were actually four of us at the Evensies write-in this weekend, and RSVPs are coming in for the Hamilton kick-off party next Sunday. Also, ‘Castle’ playing around with the notion of time travel. 🙂

What else I’ve been up to:

Trying to find time to practice drawing, like copying a preacher in perspective after Charles White. Doing critiques for Team Ambitious. Still reading slushpile for James Gunn’s Ad Astra. Working on ML stuff, like rounding up Nano swag I can give away as prizes, and delving into the ancient lore of assembling hipster PDAs.

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

What’s up Wednesday, mid-October version

Hey, everybody, I’m not sure how often I’m going to be participating in What’s Up Wednesday over the next month and a half; probably depends on how many more Nano spotlights I get. But I’m here this time.

What I’m reading:

Finished “Tricked” from the library, loved the ending. Sometime soon I’m going to have to start Iron Druid #5; there was a teaser for “Trapped” at the end of “Tricked” and Granuale is finally finishing her druid studies!

Trying to catch up on Asimov’s magazine stories now, and listening to “Heechee Rendezvous” on my iPhone. Love me some Robinette Broadhead and Heechee alien adventure.

Still rereading one of the incomplete drafts that I’m going to be finishing in November: “A Witch of Arion” has been read, and I’m nearly at the awkward cliffhanger in “The Aurigae Express”

What I’m writing:

Steampunk Roswell 51 has been drafted and it’s out to the Team Ambitious critique group. I haven’t started writing anything else; it was a little draining, so I’m concentrating on reading the stories that I have to critique, tackling a few other items from my October to-do list, and getting ready for Nano.

What inspires me right now:

It’s less than half a month until November! I can feel the creative energy rising already.

What else I’ve been up to:

Still learning what I can do with the Nexus tablet. Spent a lot of time with family over the Thanksgiving long weekend. Organizing all my various book collections, including contacting Brilliance Audio to re-download “The Skies of Pern”, which I’d managed to lose my DRM-authorized copies of along the way. They were very helpful about that.

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

IWSG: Getting back to drafting

Hey there! It’s time for the September 2013 edition of the Insecure Writers Support Group! First of all, I’m excited to report that I crossed almost everything off my September to-do list before I went to bed on Monday evening, including submitting a story! A revised version of “Tough Love’ has been entered for Writers of the Future!

But I’m still feeling like I haven’t been accomplishing as much as I’d like to in terms of writing and revising. I only got a little over 1000 new words written in September, finishing off one story and starting another.

I’m taking a break from the Team Ambitious critiquing this week and next. (I’m not the only one. Somebody decided that submitting to WOTF was an acceptable substitute for submitting a new story to be critiqued.) And I’ve resolved to get the first draft of ‘Steampunk Roswell 51’ finished by the morning of Canadian Thanskgiving. I want to do some serious revision on ‘Love is a Masterpiece’ or ‘Gotta Have that Look’ too.

If only I can avoid spending all my time for the next two weeks playing with my new Nexus 7 tablet. 😉

A change in the Calendar of Goal Tracking letter lineup.

Okay, I guess it’s nearly 21 months that I’ve been working on my ‘calendar of goal tracking’ productivity trick. 🙂 Over that time, I’ve added a few new letters, and one multiple-letter code, to record new activities that I’ve been time-slicing, but I’m not sure that I’ve ever completely redefined a letter, until now.

Ever since the ‘Team Ambitious’ critique program started up, I’ve been spending a lot of time working on critiques for my Odyssey friends, and learning a lot from them. However, I think I’ve noticed that I’ve been spending less time and effort on drafting and revising my own pieces because of this, and that really does need to change. One of the places to get that change started, I think, is on the calendar. Somewhere along the way, I told myself that working on somebody’s critique was enough to get me an ‘E’ for the day. That stops as of yesterday. E is only for editing my own stuff, just like W is only for doing my own writing, and so on.

But I wanted to keep tracking the Team Ambitious critiquing stuff, and I fussed over what letter to use. T is already in use for the Thinking Sideways course, and A is for my Art exercises, so I couldn’t use either of them, and trying to use them both together could be really confusing. C is for Cleaning, and so on.

But I’ve made a decision. O was originally for Outlining new story ideas, but I’ve never really used that much, (even though I have some outlining to do soon on the Steampunk Roswell/Area 51 idea!) As of yesterday, O stands for Odyssey stuff instead.

And hopefully that’ll mean a few more Ws on the calendar, and some E’s that actually mean my stories are closer to getting submitted!

A delayed drawing and what else I’ve been up to lately…

Hello again, dear friends and followers. Sorry I haven’t been updating more often, but I guess I got out of the habit when I was off at Odyssey.

So, first off, I wanted to share another ‘Right side of the brain’ drawing tonight. I did this at the end of August, another perspective exercise, featuring the corner of a room:

I do like the way it came out, though sometimes I worry that I’m not getting too much from these exercises the way I come back to them every few weeks. I need to get started on some more drawing for September, maybe I’ll get some done this weekend.

So, what else have I been up to? Well, reading some cool short stories on my Kindle, (and out of the free copy of Asimov’s Magazine that Sheila Williams gave us when she came to lecture at Odyssey; that was my ‘to read in line’ staple back when I was at Fan Expo.) Also keeping up with Team Ambitious, the Odyssey class of 2013’s online critique circles project. Back when I was in New Hampshire, doing two critiques a day didn’t seem like a lot. Now, with a full-time job, getting two finished in two weeks can loom large.

I’m back to the ‘How to Think Sideways’ course again, working on my Song Rater app for Android, (that’s going pretty well, except that my Singleton appears to be losing data!) still reading slush for James Gunn’s Ad Astra, and I finally mailed off a cheque for my tenant’s insurance. Oh, and I think I’ve managed to fight off an ear canal infection with the help of some over-the-counter meds. Fun stuff. 😉