writing

A way editing can be fun. No really. Seriously. Please stop laughing.

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Woman Writing a Letter, with her Maid by Johannes Vermeer, National Gallery of Ireland

So a while ago, I had to replace my computer. I was pretty irritated about it, it wasn’t that old, but it had always been a kind of reluctant co-conspirator, not terribly interested in my computer-usage schemes. Even though I got it new, it had a crotchety-ness about it. It groaned and grumbled; it rejected my shenanigans.

We had to part ways.

In replacement, I got one of those 2-in-1 computers (3-in-1? What would the 3 be?) that can function as a tablet. We’re totally besties.

In the morning, as a tented tablet, it streams me my yoga. When I’m writing, it sits up, prim and proper, as though it hadn’t just done the splits. It’s got a much nicer touch than my previous keyboard.

BUT.

Yesterday, I got the best part. The BEST PART. It’s a part so good I had to just yell about it, as you can see. Yesterday I got a stylus.

And suddenly my childhood visions of marking directly into a computer have nearly come true. I don’t think I could write on the screen like a notebook and have it convert to type (though maybe I can, any suggestions? Google would probably know. Google knows all), but while reading though, I can mark a red line through a word and POOF! it vanishes.

IT VANISHES.

I have the benefit of typing on the onscreen keyboard when it’s in tablet mode, so instead of my chicken-scratch handwriting, I can put in something I can actually read later. Mark up a page as I would if I printed it.

You guys know. There’s nothing like marking up a page that’s printed. Except this.

You can circle to highlight. That’s all I’ve learned so far; I’m sure there’s a guide to the editing symbols it will accept. It’s definitely helping as I work through my #MAYkingItWork goals. Only wish I’d done it earlier.

Wow, I’ve gushed a long post. That’s how cool it is. See? I told you.

Editing and fun in the same sentence. Who’da thunk it.

Check out  my full-length novels: 

Aunty Ida’s Full-Service Mental Institution (by Invitation Only)   

Aunty Ida’s Holey Amazing Sleeping Preparation (Not Doctor Recommended) 

 Her Cousin Much Removed

 The Great Paradox and the Innies and Outies of Time Management.

And download Better Living Through GRAVY and Other Oddities, it’s free!

Peruse Montraps Publishing.

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Instant escape

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Sometimes, when things are overwhelming here on Earth, which, these days, they frequently are, I like to imagine other planets way, way out in the reaches of space. I imagine what they look like, from a distance, blends of colors, nothing more than distant marbles.

And then I try to envision their surfaces, or what it’s like to be in a planet that’s only a ball of differently-colored gasses. The color of the sky. If they have rainbows, how they change depending on the atmosphere. What a storm is like.

But those aren’t my favorites.

My favorites are the ones where I imagine life, teeming life, different than ours but still alive. What sentience might look like there; what vegetation might look like there.

It gives me comfort to know that out there in the universe, life exists. It must exist, because the numbers of stars and their halos of planets is just too too vast for there not to be life.

Way out there, in that part of the universe we’ll likely never see, we are no more than a shadow passing in front of a star, our conflicts and problems concealed by endless space.

I’m sure those faraway planets have their own issues, but the ones I flicker into existence in my mind don’t. They’re calm, serene places where everything happening now here is nothing more than the imagining of a curious alien being.

Check out  my full-length novels: 

Aunty Ida’s Full-Service Mental Institution (by Invitation Only)   

Aunty Ida’s Holey Amazing Sleeping Preparation (Not Doctor Recommended) 

 Her Cousin Much Removed

 The Great Paradox and the Innies and Outies of Time Management.

And download Better Living Through GRAVY and Other Oddities, it’s free!

Peruse Montraps Publishing.

Monday Zen

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Sunday was languid. The drizzle outside alleviated the need for an excuse to stay inside, and stay inside I did. I was on twitter; I watched some TV; I took a nap; I did the most luxurious-feeling yoga online class.

With all that’s going on right now, there was a nagging edge of guilt to my relaxation, but still I managed to persist in a state that felt a lot like having gotten a massage in an afternoon at the spa.

This morning I awoke to thunder, something I hope will be literal and not metaphorical, given the political unrest, and in a gray blanket of cloud, that unhurriedness persists. You may have noticed.

I have no hesitation, no dread directed at my tasks for the day. Perhaps the stress will creep back in as it always does. Perhaps all this yoga has finally peeled away enough layers to let me sit in a calmer space.

Maybe.

But I know my nature.

If you need some calm, if you need some being in the moment, take some of mine. Take this moment with me and just breathe, just be. Even if it’s Monday.

Check out  my full-length novels: 

Aunty Ida’s Full-Service Mental Institution (by Invitation Only)   

Aunty Ida’s Holey Amazing Sleeping Preparation (Not Doctor Recommended) 

 Her Cousin Much Removed

 The Great Paradox and the Innies and Outies of Time Management.

And download Better Living Through GRAVY and Other Oddities, it’s free!

Peruse Montraps Publishing.

#MAYkingItWork Friday Update

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Brace yourselves, MAYkers and non MAYkers alike. Brace yourselves. Are you braced in there nicely and tightly?

Good.

Progress has been made. More to the point, progress has been made by me. After my escape in the middle of the week, and after an extensive wrestling session with my cursor, I wrote yesterday. Words. 826 of them. Not my most productive word count day, but I’m back in it.

With a slight problem.

I’ve let it sit so long, I have no idea what’s happening in the broader story. The scene, sure. But the broader story, no. So I have to go back and reread everything I have so far. Nearly 70,000 words in.

So there’s that.

On the editing front, I just left that manuscript to come write this update. So it may have taken more than half the month to ummire me from the extremely sticky molasses of inertia, but I’m unmired.

And I have a little insight as well. Sometimes, if you take the break, if you get away from it, you can get to it.

How’s it going for you? Doesn’t Speak Klingon has a great update I’ve reposted in the comments!

#MAYkingItWork updates:

Donna McNicol

 

Check out  my full-length novels: 

Aunty Ida’s Full-Service Mental Institution (by Invitation Only)   

Aunty Ida’s Holey Amazing Sleeping Preparation (Not Doctor Recommended) 

 Her Cousin Much Removed

 The Great Paradox and the Innies and Outies of Time Management.

And download Better Living Through GRAVY and Other Oddities, it’s free!

Peruse Montraps Publishing.

 

 

Two-hour vacation

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Yesterday I played hooky. I got away from the computer for the entire day, without an accusing blinking cursor with ten feet of me.

OK, well, part of the day was getting done things you have to get done, like laundry and taking my car for emissions testing, but the other part was spent among the fully-blooming crab apple trees at the Chicago Botanic Garden.

Glorious.

It’s one of my favorite times of year there, if not my very favorite, with an entire arching pathway covered in bursts of blossoms. Yesterday there were cloudless blue skies and hot, bright sunshine. Yesterday the winter faded entirely, superseded by the explosion of life that is spring.

Fat fuzzy bees danced excitedly from tree to tree, and I just watched them, not even bothering to try to capture them with my lens. Little birds drank the flowers’ nectar, and in among the branches, stood sturdy nests.

I got groceries and put them away and hung up the wet stuff that doesn’t go in the dryer to dry, but right there, in the middle of the day, it was like I went away to somewhere else entirely.

And it was just what I needed.

Check out  my full-length novels: 

Aunty Ida’s Full-Service Mental Institution (by Invitation Only)   

Aunty Ida’s Holey Amazing Sleeping Preparation (Not Doctor Recommended) 

 Her Cousin Much Removed

 The Great Paradox and the Innies and Outies of Time Management.

And download Better Living Through GRAVY and Other Oddities, it’s free!

Peruse Montraps Publishing.

 

**BREAKING: #MAYkingItWork Midweek Update**

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I’m a little worse for wear. Like this poppy.

**BREAKING: #MAYkingItWork Midweek Update**

There is nothing to report.

Yikes.

Still plenty of week left, though, right? RIGHT??

That’s what I tell myself, anyway. I’m still having a hard time balancing what’s going on out in reality with forcing myself into a fictional place. Writers, throughout time, have done it; it’s mostly what writers do. Rainbows and unicorns should not be required to turn to the quill.

See, maybe that’s my problem. Maybe I need a quill.

So I could spend the time trying to figure out how to write with a quill. Procrastination secured.

Though getting the ink out of basically everything probably wouldn’t be that much fun. But who knows.

I hope it’s going more smoothly for everyone else. At least it’s only Wednesday?!

Check out  my full-length novels: 

Aunty Ida’s Full-Service Mental Institution (by Invitation Only)   

Aunty Ida’s Holey Amazing Sleeping Preparation (Not Doctor Recommended) 

 Her Cousin Much Removed

 The Great Paradox and the Innies and Outies of Time Management.

And download Better Living Through GRAVY and Other Oddities, it’s free!

Peruse Montraps Publishing.

 

Easy like Tuesday morning or bloggety blog.

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Ah blog. Blogetty blog blog blog. Blogging. Right. Blogging.That’s what I’m doing right now. Blogging.

It’s gray again today, and the air has that clean, damp coolness to the back of it. It’s a tad chilly but I have the window open anyway. As often happens on these soggy days, the noise outside is muted, and the traffic drone a soft nest of sound.

I’d call it soporific if I hadn’t just finished my coffee. Finished? Let me check. If it wasn’t finished before, it’s finished now.

And there’s the siren. Un-citylike interlude over.

It’s funny how one place can feel like another, if only for a brief few minutes. I could have been anywhere with a brisk, humid breeze. Until that siren. And then the low trundle of a bus.

Sometimes, while writing, we want those concrete details, the ones that anchor us firmly to time and place. Usually, in my own writing, I like to use broad strokes; suggestions, and let the reader fill in the details.

Notice. Always notice. At the worst, you’ll get yourself a blog post out of it.

Blogetty blog indeed.

Check out  my full-length novels: 

Aunty Ida’s Full-Service Mental Institution (by Invitation Only)   

Aunty Ida’s Holey Amazing Sleeping Preparation (Not Doctor Recommended) 

 Her Cousin Much Removed

 The Great Paradox and the Innies and Outies of Time Management.

And download Better Living Through GRAVY and Other Oddities, it’s free!

Peruse Montraps Publishing.