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On the Blog this week:
- The indie author panel tackles Formatting in the fifth installment of my blog post series, The Journey of Self Publishing.
- My review of A.M. Hargrove's Determinant, the third book in the Guardians series.
- Love poetry? Me too! Read about it in my I Love Poetry post.
- Check out my review of Forgotten by Cat Patrick.
- I also wrapped up the first half of 2012 for all things reading and writing on my blog.
- Don't forget to fill out my blog survey. I want to know what you think of my blog and what kind of things you like and don't like on blogs. ^_^
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Reading...
Books I finished this week:
517 of 1026 E.E. Cummings poems finished (18 this week)
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Writing...
~ If Only We ~ 29,401 ~
~ Before We Knew ~ 11, 449 ~
~ Whatever This Is ~ outlining ~
~ Under Enchanted Skies ~ 1,550/plotting ~
~ Beyond The Horizon ~ plotting ~
~ So I Thought ~ plotting ~
~ Hold Your Breath ~ plotting ~
~ Under Enchanted Skies ~ 1,550/plotting ~
~ Beyond The Horizon ~ plotting ~
~ So I Thought ~ plotting ~
~ Hold Your Breath ~ plotting ~
ALMOST got to the 30,000. I used some of my writing time working out title ideas for the ones I'm outlining/plotting. Check it out up there! Outlining means I'm actually outlining for the story, and plotting means it's pretty much on the back burner but I'm still jotting down notes. For the one, you can see I've got a word count. That's because I couldn't help myself when a couple awesome scenes came to mind. I had to execute them beyond just jotting down notes.
I keep seeing dream cast posts from authors online... and it makes me think about my books. Not dream casting them but actually having a detailed physical description of each character. I have some vague descriptions written down but nothing specific. I never thought it was necessary but the more I've been reading lately, I've been noticing certain details that pop up in relation to a person physically. I want to be able to add those sorts of details seamlessly. Plus, having a visual of what they look like would actually help make them more real in my head. I've always had trouble with this aspect because I end up making the characters all the same all the time. Starting charts and cutting pictures from magazines might help add some diversity.
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Otherwise...
I am in real need of cutting down on my online time and getting caught up on things. It seems like I go through this a lot. I blame it on the fact that the stuff I need to do is either boring or time-consuming, so I purposely spend more time online because it's more fun.
One thing I've been thinking about is how I want to learn another language. I started learning sign language several years back and would love to return to it. BUT, I also would like to learn at least one spoken language. When I was homeschooling, I checked out several books from the library to learn French. I actually learned a lot of words at the time, but I didn't learn proper grammar and the like. When I went to Barnes & Noble, I looked through the books on learning French there... and couldn't find anything worth buying. I want to find a book that writes out phonetically how to pronounce the words AND comes with a CD to listen to for pronouncing. Does anyone have any suggestions for books to get for this? I would so appreciate it!
OH! One last thing... Here's my corn picture for this year:
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| As you can see, the corn is INDEED Jessica High by the 4th of July. |
Until next time!
~Jessica
LOL! Love the corn picture. I'm a little envious that you have so many story ideas floating around in your head...just a little. ;)
ReplyDeleteThe funny thing about the stories is that some of them are barely put together. Like just a couple of important scenes... and then I cross my fingers that I can fill in the middle. :P
DeleteYAY for writing progress! That is AWESOME, Jess! And man, that corn is amazing. We just went through like 2 weeks here without rain and soaring heat, and our corn suffered. (Boo.)
ReplyDeleteI just finished For Darkness Shows the Stars. It was really unique and beautiful!
I'm surprised the corn is doing well here, we had kind of a dry spell for awhile. At least, our grass looks more brown than green, lol.
DeleteOH MAN! As soon as I finish The Unquiet, I am diving into that one. I needed to take care of a couple books first and it drove me crazy not to read it. Can't wait!!! :D
I've had this page open since yesterday, so haven't read today's update yet, but wanted to comment on this one! You've got so many story ideas - that's amazing! I try to be as descriptive as possible with my characters' appearances, but even when I do that, they're still usually vague in my head. I don't know why. When it came time to talk about casting celebs in the roles of my BSD characters, it was almost impossible. I still don't really know who would fit, and STILL think about it often. In my 2nd book I say the main character's best friend looks like Rachel McAdams, so at least I have a clear picture of her lol. It's hard!
ReplyDeleteAnd we are totally kindred spirits, because the two languages I semi-speak and want to learn better are ASL and French! My brother is deaf, but he has a bit of hearing with hearing aids and can read lips, and he can talk better than most deaf people...but when we were growing up, he was ashamed of being deaf, so he wanted us to talk to him and not sign, and if you don't use it, you lose it, so I was never able to learn fluent sign. I can understand when people sign to me slowly, and I can read lips pretty well (deaf people usually mouth along when they sign), but I'd love to be fluent. We've been teaching Logan since he was born and I swear at 2 and a half he knows more than I do lol. Noah, too, although his parents didn't do as good a job with keeping it up, which is a shame. And my dad was French - French was his first language, and he was teaching me before he died, plus since Canada is a bilingual country, we had to learn French in school, so I took about 9-10 years of it. But again, I didn't use it so I can't speak it fluently. It's too bad (again) that we weren't closer because we could use it together and then speak it to each other. And that is my little novel to you in your blog comments lol
Marie, you're a doll, commenting on both. :D I'm hoping going through magazines will help a little, then I can see it clearly. Plus, with all the stories I've got going, I need to make the characters a little different. Can't have every love interest looking like Nathan Fillion or Ed Westwick, can we? Well... I suppose we can, it IS our book after all. ;)
DeleteAH!!! I was actually just thinking about how you probably know at least some French. I wasn't sure how much you're expected to learn in school. All that was offered in my school was Spanish, but I didn't go to high school anyway. That's what's the hardest part about learning a language--making sure to keep using it. It is harder since it would just be me teaching myself. I wish I was taught a language when I was Logan's age! Since I posted this, I ended up finding my old French notebook with all my basic words and phonetic spellings. I had to crack up since I had just been thinking about it. But that would be SO AWESOME if we lived closer and could do both languages together. ^_^
Mmmm, Nathan Fillion...lol. I get it though, I tend to gravitate toward a certain look, but I obviously don't want all my characters the same. I even find myself doing that personality wise, like 'wait did Emma say something like that?'
DeleteMy one tip to you for learning French would be listen to it - there are probably videos on YouTube, but if you happen to have a French channel (which you might not), watch it, particularly the news, because they won't use slang and they'll talk in proper French. Does your library have videos or audio books? I'd say get a movie you're familiar with in English and watch it in French. I was flipping around one day and came across Harry Potter in French and just out of curiosity watched a few minutes of it, and because I know it so well in English, I could basically follow along in French, and I learned how to say a few different things in French. Something you might want to try if you're able! :-)
Hahaha, me too! I have to think before I write a scene with a character to make sure I don't use the same catchphrases or wording as another story.
DeleteThat is a brilliant idea. I am going to pull up some YouTube videos of movie clips I know by heart in English and see what I can learn. If I ever hear someone speak French on a TV show, I can sometimes pick up certain words. I should go to my library sometime, it's been awhile since I've been there, mostly because I'm trying to not get tempted by books I'd like to read when I have a billion to read first, LOL. But the movie thing is a great idea. It will help out immensely! :D Thank you Marie! *hugs*