Writing–December Projects

December 2, 2013November 30, 2013 ~ Kiki Writes ~ Leave a comment

December is always a rough month writing-wise for me. Between the NaNoWriMo hangover (which, I admit, can’t be bad this year since I was done in two weeks) and the holidays and the holiday obligations, writing seems even more of a chore than it should be. In order to combat that, the writing-goals for December get toned waaaaay down.

This month I only have a few goals which shouldn’t tax my brain and my patience too much.

I need to get the cover art done for the Ivy novella, which finally has a name! I’m calling it Cheaters and Chupacabras, which is a crappy name, but it’ll do, pig, it’ll do. And once I get the cover art done, I will be publishing it so you can find out if the novella itself is less-crappy than the title (I think it is).

I also need to get the cover art for my next anthology, Yearly, done. I’d like to have that published in January. And don’t let the title fool you; it’s not a yearly thing. It’s just the way the stories ended up representing months and I decided to capitalize on it.

And finally, I’m revising “She’s Not Here Anymore”. It was originally written as a novella, but after reading it again, I’ve decided to rewrite it as a short story. I’m taking out certain elements of the story because it ended up not being what I wanted and the new way will be better. I’m giving myself the whole month to do it because I’m not exactly enthused about it, but I think it needs to be done. Once I get the rewrites finished, I think I’ll be happier with the story and therefore, a little more inclined to work on it.

So that’s what I’ll be doing in December. Enough to keep me productive, but not too much to make me feel like an utter failure.

Writing–Cover Me

November 26, 2013November 22, 2013 ~ Kiki Writes ~ Leave a comment

I think it should be obvious that I create my own covers for my self-published titles. I also think the reason for that should be obvious: I am poor. I don’t have the money to hire someone to create a cover and frankly, I don’t think my penny operation is really worth the effort of hiring someone to do the covers.

So that leaves me and I think I haven’t done too bad of a job of it.

For my first self-titled venture, Rejected, I just used a cover generator type deal and it actually came out pretty close to what I was hoping. Yeah, it’s plain and not exactly creative, but it served the purpose.

For Gone Missing, I actually lucked out a little bit. There’s a bit of my great-aunt’s backyard that looked to me like a spot of woods that might be lining the town of the missing. I took the picture, added the text, and ta da! Cover!

For Night of the Nothing Man I knew what I wanted and I knew I was going to have to draw it myself. I’m no artist, but what I had in mind was simple enough. I wanted a crude shadow of a man standing on a hill set against a white background. Again luck was with me because it only took me one try to get the drawing just as I wanted. Then it was just a matter of adding text and whatnot.

Knowing that I’m the one doing the covers presents some advantages and disadvantages. While I don’t have to worry about paying someone who delivers substandard work, late work, or no work at all, I do have to accept that my ideas aren’t always workable because the person executing the ideas (Me) has limited abilities.

I also have to accept that I don’t always have ideas.

I’m facing that particular problem right now. I’ve got two projects, a novella and a short story anthology, fit to publish and yet…no covers. I’m not exactly sure what I want to do with either of them. This is kind of a problem because I sort of have this idea for publishing deadlines for them, though I have more time with the anthology than the novella.

I just paused writing this entry for five minutes to think about possible covers.

It’s something that’s going to bother me, always simmering away in the back of my mind until suddenly, the good idea will come to me.

Then I’ll just have to worry about being able to do it.

Rerun Junkie–The Guest Star Game

November 22, 2013November 13, 2013 ~ Kiki Writes ~ 2 Comments

I watch a lot of reruns, as you may know. Most of the time, my TV is tuned to Me-TV for my rerun junkie needs. Because I watch that station so much during the day, it’s not unusual for me to see the same guest star faces several times during the day. Some actors got around A LOT and some were kept very busy by television.

As such, I’ve developed my favorite guest stars, faces I’ve love to see pop up on my shows (but that’s another post). And since I’ve gotten so good at recognizing the faces that other people might not notice, it’s led me down the road to other thinky thoughts.

For example, one weekend I was bored off of my rocker and as I was watching my reruns I suddenly wondered who had been in the most shows that were on the current Me-TV fall line-up. My guess was Virginia Gregg because that woman was in EVERYTHING. It’s not uncommon for me to go a couple of weeks in a row and see her pop up somewhere at least once a day.

Then my thought went a little further. How many guest stars would it take to represent the current Me-TV fall line-up? What’s the fewest number I could come up with?

And so the game was born.

I started off with the guest stars I thought I saw all of the time: Virginia Gregg, J. Pat O’Malley, Dabbs Greer, Kevin Hagen, Vitto Scotti, and went from there, adding and researching new names as I came across them. It turns out that Vitto Scotti was in more of the shows than Virginia Gregg, but the two of them combined covered most of the line-up. After that it was just filling in the blanks.

So far the game stands at 11 as my lowest. Eleven guest stars cover 65 shows.

Some shows are harder than others to find one of my familiar faces on and oddly, some of the shows were surprising in their difficulty.

But the game continues. I’m sure that if I pay attention and keep researching, I’ll be able to get that number down under ten. I’m just sure of it.

And when the schedule changes in the spring, like I”m sure it will, I’ll start the game all over again to account for the change.

Okay, yes, this is a pretty geeky timewaster, I admit that. It’s taking rerun junkie to a new limit.

I’m an overachiever.

Writing–Ten NaNos

November 20, 2013November 13, 2013 ~ Kiki Writes ~ Leave a comment

Yes, my friends, it’s November so you shouldn’t be surprised that I’m talking about NaNoWriMo a lot, but this post should be the last one.

Maybe.

Anyway, this year was my tenth year participating. I didn’t realize I’d done so many until I got to counting the years.

I’m actually pretty impressed with this feat. When I started I had no idea that I’d do more than one. When I first started, the idea of finishing a novel was pretty much a dream for me. Now, not only do I finish the NaNo novels I start on November 1st, NaNoWriMo as a whole has become a sort of ritual for me, a half-to. It’s part of the season in my world that spans Thanksgiving, Christmas, and my birthday. There have been a couple of NaNos that I’ve gone into that I wasn’t really prepared for, having only just got the idea I was going to use a week, maybe a couple of days before, but the idea of NOT doing it never occurred to me.

I can cay with some confidence that NaNo has helped me become a better writer.

Over these past ten NaNos I’ve learned what works for me. I figured out that I’m not a pantser, but that I’m not great with a diligent outline either. The past couple of years I’ve written out a page or two summaries, sort of outlines, and written by them. It’s enough that I know what I’m going to write when I sit down in front of the computer and where the story needs to go overall, but not so much that it takes away the opportunity for me to riff and explore and see what that story has to offer.

I’ve gotten better at my discipline. I’ll always be slow to start, I think, but I’m more dedicated to putting that first word down and going from there. If I say I’m going to show up to write, I’m going to show up, period. Most of the time I go above and beyond what I expect of myself, too. I get it done.

Over the years, I’ve explored several techniques to getting the words down. The first couple of years I just muscled it out. Then I discovered sprints, write for ten minutes, goof off for ten minutes. Those really helped me build my writing muscles. The last couple of years, I just wrote. Two thousand words in a day had become easy for me to get in one sitting without getting too distracted. I could do it in a couple of hours. This year, with the longer writing jags, I found taking a break every thousand words or so helped me keep up my stamina.

My NaNo first drafts are still crap, but they’re less crap than they used to be. I’m getting the hang of telling a longer story right the first time so I don’t end up having to rewrite most of it later.

My first NaNo, I chain-smoked while I wrote. My tenth NaNo, I drank cups and cups of green tea. Not really a writing improvement, but it shows just how much life has changed during those years in between.

I went from feeling completely overwhelmed and unsure that I knew what I was doing to sitting down to my computer with a certain feeling of “I got this”.

NaNoWriMo made a writer out of me.

Here’s to ten more.

Writing–2013 NaNoWriMo Done

November 18, 2013November 13, 2013 ~ Kiki Writes ~ 1 Comment

Let’s review: this year’s NaNo project was going to be a deviation from my usual NaNo ways by writing two 25,000 words novellas (that go together) instead of one 60,000 word novel.

I was lucky this year to have a three day weekend to kick off the writing and I took advantage of it, getting myself a good head start. I then continued at my usual pace, logging about 2,000 words a day during the work week.

And then I hit another bit of luck.

Though I worried about how I was going to have time to NaNo with three jobs, it turned out to be all for nothing, as is my way. I got an unexpected two days off from one of my jobs, which set up yet another three day writing weekend. I ended up writing about 17,000 words in those three days, nearly 13,000 of them coming on Saturday and Sunday.

Looking things over, I figured that if I could take advantage of an easy Monday and get 4,000 words, I’d only need 2,000 words a day after that to finish in exactly two weeks, an amazing feat in my world because the quickest I’d ever done it before I think was in about twenty days.

I got my 4,000 words on Monday.

Then the cold I’d been battling since that past Saturday got the best of me.

I wouldn’t be able to work one of my jobs while sick. I decided to yet again take advantage of this lucky break (if you want to call not being able to breathe and getting worn out just making dinner lucky) and see if I couldn’t make one final surge.

5, 799 words later, I was done.

On November 12, I checked in with 50,188 and the completed first drafts of two novellas (written basically as a novel).

Here’s what I learned from this year’s NaNo:

-That I can push myself if I really want to and I shouldn’t be afraid to push myself sometimes.

-That I’m getting better at how to work. I set my goals, planned out how I was going to accomplish them for the day, and I got them done.

-I will never feel like I write enough words in the day. If I still have time before sleep, I feel like I’m wasting it not writing. That’s both a good and a bad mindset.

-That all first drafts continue to be crap, but I’m getting better at making my first drafts less crap and more usable stuff.

This was a good NaNo. I’m pretty proud of my drive this year. I don’t think I want to try it again, not for a few years anyway, because it was quite draining. And it hasn’t escaped my attention that I still have plenty of time to write another novella if I wanted to.

But, I think instead, I’ll enjoy being done early and move on to tie up some loose ends on some other projects.

Ah, the sweet smell of victory.

Rerun Junkie: Adam-12

November 15, 2013November 9, 2013 ~ Kiki Writes ~ 2 Comments

When Jack Webb decided to shine a spotlight on the beat cops of LA, he created Adam-12.

"Adam-12 continue patrol and handle this call..." — “Adam-12 continue patrol and handle this call…”

The show featured veteran officer Pete Malloy (Martin Milner) and his novice (and later fellow veteran) partner Jim Reed (Kent McCord) handling the every day street work of two uniformed officers under the direction of their supervisor Sgt. MacDonald (William Boyett) and sometimes with the help of fellow officers Wells (Gary Crosby) and Woods (Fred Stromsoe). They received calls from real-life LA dispatcher Shaaron Claridge (I love it when she denies them a dinner break; her word is law!).

Unlike Dragnet, viewers weren’t treated to one case seen all the way to completion. Instead they got what beat cops got: sent out on several calls during the episode with no follow-up later on. And though there were some high-action, dangerous episodes, there were a lot of episodes that featured the every day, mundane calls that every cop in uniform has handled: traffic stops, domestic disputes over the stupidest things, theft calls in which there was no theft, lonely old ladies needing someone to talk to, nosy ladies constantly ratting on their neighbors.

My favorite was the two ladies fighting over a bruised melon. One wanted the other one arrested for taking it out of the store without paying for it and the other one wanted the owner to get into trouble for selling crap fruit. Malloy had a look of pure “You have GOT to be kidding me” during the whole thing.

You also had the pleasure of watching Malloy and Reed’s relationship develop from student-mentor to true partners. The chemistry between the two was fantastic and the good-natured ribbing is real. Married Reed could be quite dedicated to convincing bachelor Malloy to join the club sometimes.

Like Dragnet before it and Emergency! after it, the show did wonders to boost the public’s understanding of how those jobs paid for by the taxpayers, this one being uniformed officers, worked. It was as much instructional as it was entertaining and I believe episodes are still shown to police officers as examples of how to handle certain situations.

As this was a Jack Webb show, several of his regulars showed up, including: Virginia Gregg (of course!), Burt Mustin, and James McEachin. Marco Lopez, Tim Donnelly, Bobby Troup, Ron Pinkard, and Randolph Mantooth all appeared in episodes as non-Emergency! characters (Kevin Tighe, Julie London, and Robert Fuller made their appearances during the cross-over episode “Lost and Found”). For Emergency! fans, the episode “Log 88-Reason to Run” is a highlight because Randolph Mantooth, Marco Lopez, and Tim Donnelly are all in it, though none of them share a scene. Fun!

Other familiar faces that popped up during the seven season run include: Larry Linville; Maidie Norman; my favorite guest-star J. Pat O’Malley; Frank Sinatra Jr; June Lockhart; Rose Marie; Jean Allison; Butch Patrick; Ellen Corby (before she was Grandma Walton); Keye Luke; future teen idols Willie Aames, David Cassidy, and Barry Williams; baby versions of Ed Begley Jr, Tim Matheson, and A Martinez; Karen Black; Cloris Leachman as a real crap mother; Tony Dow; Angela Cartwright; Barbara Hale; Robert Conrad sans Ross Martin (unless he was in disguise somewhere); George Murdock;

*takes a deep breath*

Micky Dolenz not Monkee-ing around; Harry Dean Stanton (who never looked young); Lindsay Wagner before she was Bionic; Sharon Gless; Scatman Crothers; Vitto Scotti because he was in everything; Dabbs Greer; Dick Clark; Brucke Kirby; Jo Anne Worley playing another roller derby girl; Mark Harmon; Mark Harmon’s sister Kristin Nelson; and Kent McCord’s daughter Kristen.

It was a good guest-breeding ground.

This is one of those shows that I only had the opportunity to start watching recently. And I’m grateful for that. I’ve developed quite the soft spot for Jack Webb and company shows anyway, but as a cop’s kid, this is one I can really relate to.

It also gave me the greatest intoxication measure ever.

Matador-in-an-intersection-drunk.

‘Cause that’s drunk.

These guys, though, they're drunk on justice. — These guys, though, they’re drunk on justice.

Writing–Remembering My First NaNo

November 13, 2013November 8, 2013 ~ Kiki Writes ~ Leave a comment

According to the stellar counting abilities instilled in me by The Count, this is my tenth NaNoWriMo. The funny thing about that is there was a time when I thought I’d be able to remember every single NaNo project I did because I didn’t realize just how many I’d end up doing.

The truth of that is here I am working on my tenth and I don’t think I could name them all.

But I can remember my first one. I think that’s because it turned out to be the most important.

I lost my first NaNo, but at the same time I won it.

My first NaNo was in 2004 and back then I was hard pressed to finish any story, let alone a long one. I’d written a few all the way to the end, but they weren’t worth much, none of them more than a couple thousand words at most. When I decided to take on NaNo that year, I had my sights set on that 50,000 word goal line. I was sure that I could do it. I had the story idea. I even outlined it on some note cards. I was ready.

And then the reality of November set in and I realized at some point by week two that I was woefully unprepared and I had really underestimated this challenge.

I didn’t come close to 50,000 words that year. I think I ended up with somewhere in the neighborhood of 30,000. But, two important things had been accomplished during that November.

I wrote the longest thing I’d ever written.

I finished writing the longest thing I’d ever written.

Oh, it was pretty much garbage, but it was FINISHED.

That first NaNo gave me the confidence to keep writing. I now had in the hands this knowledge that I could finish anything I wrote if I went about it the right way and didn’t give up just because I got bored before the story got to the good part.

That first NaNo also taught me something about planning a novel, about how I work best. It opened a door for me to step through and learn and improve.

So here I am, ten NaNos later, looking at my seventh winner, trying to get 50,000 words in two weeks instead of a whole month and I’m thinking…

Man, this never would have happened, I never would have gotten here, if I hadn’t done that first one back in 2004.

That’s one that I will never forget.

30 Things I’m Thankful For

November 11, 2013January 22, 2016 ~ Kiki Writes ~ Leave a comment

I don’t know how your Facebook feeds are running, but I’ve got several people on mine saying one thing they’re thankful for each day. I don’t know if they’re doing it for the whole month, or just up until Thanksgiving (which is basically the whole month), I was not briefed on the exact rules. But I figured instead of me trying to remember to post every day and what not, it’d just be easier for me to post a list of thirty things I’m thankful for right here and then people can refer to it during the month whenever they need to be reminded that I’m thankful for various things.

So, here we go. Thirty things I’m thankful for.

1. Family

2. Friends

3. Pets

(Gotta get those three easy ones out of the way.)

4. Reruns

5. Me-TV, TVLand, Hallmark Channel, INSP, Cozi, Netflix, Hulu, and YouTube for giving me reruns.

6. My TV boyfriends, Danno and Artie, even though I don’t get to see Artie much anymore.

7. Reading

8. Writing

9. Music

10. The Monkees, which combine my love of music and reruns.

11. Horror movies

12. Baseball. And the Cubs. (When they start winning a few more games, they can get a number of their own.)

13. My Aunt Jo and cousin Nancy making holiday dinners. Not only do I get to take the day off of cooking dinner, but they’re fabulous cooks as well.

14. Ice cream on Thursday nights.

15. NaNoWriMo

16. Being able to pay my bills.

17. The military, cops, firemen, paramedics, and other such folks who keep people safe for crap pay.

18. This blog (even if I can make it a pain in my butt sometimes)

19. Twitter. I keep my funniest people there.

20. My jobs, no matter what they are and how many I have at one time.

21. Crockpot chicken noodle soup.

22. Making my nieces’ Christmas presents.

23. My nieces asking me to make them Christmas presents.

24. Witty, snappy dialogue.

25. My daily blessing jar that I’ve been filling up all year.

26. My health. It’s not perfect, but I’m vertical and ventilating.

27. My angel collection. My cicada collection. My evil clown collection.

28. My sewing abilities. Something else not great, but serviceable.

29. Dancing, belly and otherwise.

30. My life. The ultimate thing not the greatest, but it’s mine and I’d rather not do without it.

My Yearly Descent Into Madness aka Christmas Season

November 8, 2013January 22, 2016 ~ Kiki Writes ~ Leave a comment

Oh yes. That time of year after my beloved Halloween ends and the jolly faithful completely skip over Thanksgiving and go right to shoving tinsel down my throat.

That time of year when Christians start screaming at me to say “Merry Christmas” but then tell me I’m not allowed to celebrate THEIR holiday (though if I’m going to be honest, folks on my FB started that crap in September; you know who you are). Nothing puts me in the mood to love my fellow humans quite like it.

That time of year when my horror films are replaced with saccharine holly jolly flicks about what a wonderful time of year it is. Six weeks of syrup drizzling all over my channels.

That time of year when Christmas songs start creeping into the playlists on the radio and in stores, gradually building until that’s all you hear because somehow people think that six weeks of this music will put everyone into the spirit instead of driving folks, particularly the poor folks working in retail, to homicide.

That time of the year when most people become obsessed with shopping and deals and getting and spending. So this is more retail PTSD, but when you’ve dealt with as many nasty, rude people as I have all for the sake of some joyous gift-giving holiday, your dislike of crowds, shoppers, and materialism becomes part of your fight-or-flight response.

That time of year when I’m subjected to false-cheerfulness and ho-ho-ho and very special episodes and endless commercials for toys and elves and Santa and white chocolate and peppermint in EVERYTHING.

Oh yes. That time of year.

I wish we could keep Christmas in December so I can eat my damn Thanksgiving turkey in peace.

Writing–Three Day NaNo Weekend

November 4, 2013November 3, 2013 ~ Kiki Writes ~ Leave a comment

The stars aligned for me this year when it came to NaNo’s kick-off.

This year NaNo happened to start on a Friday that I didn’t have to work. I chose to seize this opportunity and schedule myself a three day weekend devoted to eating, sleeping, and NaNoWriMo.

I was originally going to start at midnight like I used to do and try to get a couple thousand words in right out of the gate. It turns out that I like sleep too much and ended up going to bed around eleven.

But I made up for it.

After my usual round of procrastination that usually happens whenever I start any new project (but happens most notably with NaNo), I found that the words came a lot easier than I thought they would with this project. An hour and a half in and I had 2,100 words. After a lunch break, I got another 2,000 words or so in that same amount of time. I decided to do a third jag just to finish the section I was working on and ended up with 4,457 words. Not as much as I was hoping for, but I did have to write a couple of blog posts, so it was a good enough start.

That sort of productivity really lights a fire under my ass. I feel invincible, like I’ve got the story by the tail and I can go as far as I want to and this weekend, I wanted to go far. I wanted to get as much done.

On Saturday, I decided I need to really push it. I ended up writing 6,100 words (bringing the total to 10,557) and feeling like I didn’t write enough. It’s part of my stupid writing guilt; I feel like I never work enough even when I exceed my goals/expectations. I did 2,000 more words than I’d hoped to do (I was gunning for 8,000 total) and it still felt like I should have done more.

I’d originally had a goal of 12,000 total for Sunday, but since I’d done that extra 2,000 on Saturday, I bumped it up to 14,000. The words didn’t come nearly as easily as they had on Friday and Saturday, but I still managed to exceed my goal, writing 4,443 words, bringing my total word count to 15,000.

This is probably the most I’ve ever written in a three day period. I think 8,000 words might have been the most I’ve ever written in a day, but the 6,1000 I wrote on Saturday were probably the easiest mass I’ve ever typed out.

What’s more, a lot of what I’ve written isn’t bad. The story is good enough that I should have something to work with when it comes to revising.

This opening weekend has given me some confidence that this NaNo might be okay, no matter how many jobs I’m working. It also shows me how far I’ve come as a writer when it comes to my discipline and my ability to turn off my internal-editor and just let the words fly.

I’m calling it a success.