Creative Nudge #9 - Taste

 Before I get started on the Creative Nudge for today I just wanted to let you know there is only one day left to win the above book!! Hush Money was a great read that reminds me of John Grisham's work, only written with a younger and edgier tone. Go enter to win it!  There are very few entries so far so you have a good chance of being the winner.

Now onto today's Creative Nudge! As I explained last week, I am going to spend the next few weeks focusing on the different senses as a device to help add descriptive flavor to my writing, and hopefully yours! I'll be posting what I write up (this is what I wrote for the smell prompt) and I would love to read what you have to write as well.

Isn't that picture cute? It's cake....but it sure looks like a cup of coffee! Perfect picture to start out my discussion of taste. Make sure you check out the artist. 

I decided to follow smell up with taste because the two are very connected, in fact 80% of what you taste is because of the smell, which explains why food tastes so bland when you have a cold and your nose is all plugged up.

When I think of taste I primarily think of food, which is normal, there aren't a lot of other things that adults taste, although tooth paste and the lips of a significant other come to mind. Food is a very important part of most cultures, and I've always found it fascinating that people have such a wide variety of interests in food, and that what I think of as comfort food you might find completely gross.

Here's some fun facts about taste thanks to this site and this site:

• Hypogeusia is a diminished sense of taste. 
• Dysgeusia is a persistent taste, usually an unpleasant one.
• What we perceive as "flavor" is actually a combination of smell, taste, spiciness, temperature, and texture. So yes, it really does taste better cold, or hot, or whatever. Goldilocks knew what she was talking about!
• That "taste" I mentioned in the last fact? It is made of up of taste groups sweet, salty, sour, bitter, and umami (a savory taste).
• You know those bumps on your tongue? Those aren't your taste buds, rather, they contain your taste buds, and each one has an average of 6 taste buds inside it. 
• The average adult has between 2,000 and 10,000 taste buds, "super tasters" have even more!
• Your flavor preferences change over time and can be very affected by social queues. For example, if the first time you see someone eat something they react badly, you are less likely to like the taste of it yourself.

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So how does the Creative Nudge work? Read on...

The Creative Nudge:

Theme: The sense of taste.

Genre: Any

Other requirements: Try to make the sense of taste central to whatever you write!

How it Works:

Take a few minutes to write a short response (any format or genre) to the prompt.

Post it on your blog.

Come back here and leave me a link in the comments so I can read it!

I'll post my own response on Tuesday for you to read.

Check back next Saturday for another Creative Nudge!

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Need some ideas to get you started?

1. Write about your favorite food and a memory associated with it.

2. What's the worst thing you've ever tasted? Write about it!

3. Send your main character to a restaurant. What would they order? What do they think about the food? How does it make them feel? 

4. Go to a World Food Store, pick something you've never tasted, try to describe it.

5. Pretend to describe your favorite dish to someone totally unfamiliar with the cuisine. So describe macaroni and cheese to an African tribesman. Or Thai food to someone who grew up on Southern home cooking.

6. Describe a taste none-food related. Someone's lips, medicine, toothpaste, or even blood if you write about vampires!

Have fun!

~ Ruthie ~

Hey, Hey Good Lookin' - Whatcha Got Cookin'?

One of my goals right now is to cook more often, and so when I sat down to write this goals post the only I could come up with was this song. So of course I had to look it up...

Bring back memories for anyone? I'm not that old (not calling you old, calling me young :P) but my Daddy used to ask my Mom that question all the time, and even sing from time to time!

So how am I doing on my goals? Well...

Writing:
1. Five hours editing a week. I'm at 3:10 right now! I'm very happy with that. I'm actually ahead of the game! Granted, it's only by 10 minutes, but I was behind schedule last week, and never reached my goal, so this is super fantastic.

2. Blog on a regular basis. Monday: Giveaway post (go enter!), Tuesday: Creative Writing Post, Today: your reading it!

3. Write book reviews and post on GoodReads.com. Four so far! I'm not caught up yet, but at least I'm up to writing about the books I read this month! One of the reviews is in Monday's post... in fact it's the book I'm giving away! (hint, hint)

4. Read and comment on at least 5 other blogs. Check!

Life:
1. Put more variety in our diets. That above picture is last nights dinner. Left over burrito meat cooked up with some scrambled eggs and cheese, topped in salsa and olives, served on a tortilla (and rolled up, but this is prettier)! Super yummy. Tonight's dinner was a newish recipe (old favorite ingredients, new combination) but of course I forgot to take a picture of that!

2. Clean/Organize the house. I cleaned! A little bit. The house is still a mess in general, but the bathroom is clean! And a little bit of the mess is gone.

3. Exercise! I've been doing more stretching, and the cleaning is counting as exercise this week. Believe me, my knees are feeling it.

4. Take more pictures. I think the above picture of dinner is the only picture of any worth I've taken this week so far (the one's of my husband when I was picking on him don't count) but hey, that's one good picture. I'll take it.

See that pretty picture? Ok, so maybe it doesn't look so pretty to everyone else. Especially since I have gone through and blurred the text in the center. But that my friends, is the ready to go file for the second draft of Misfits!

Woohoo!

I finally finished the overly long process of taking all the changes I made on the paper copy and putting them in the new digital copy. This required lots of copy and pasting text, putting it in a different order (in many cases) than I wrote it, typing up the outline I created, typing notes into the text and highlighting them, and lastly, making sure all my references pages were in the new work-from file. Oh and for the heck of it I alphabetized, color coded, and labeled everything.

My OCD side was very happy when I was done.

It took way longer to do all this than I expected, but I figured out some more things about my story along the way, and I know the next phases of the the process are going to be much easier because of this phase, so I'm happy.

So what is next? Well I was going to tell you rewriting is next, but I realized yesterday that I need to do some more world building and character building before I tackle the rewrite. I started in on that today, and I'm not sure how long it's going to take me, but I know the book will be better for it in the end, so I press on!

How is your writing going?
~ Ruthie ~

Starting Strong and Finishing Weak

Cool house I see regularly :)

Time for a goals check in! How did I do this week? Well the title of the blog post says it all, I started strong and finished weak...

Writing Goals:

1. 5 Hours Editing: I haven't made any progress on this since Wednesday so I'm finishing out the week at 1:30. 

2. Blog Consistently: Monday - Setting the Goals; Tuesday - Updated my blog and posted; Wednesday - Midweek Goals Check-in; Thursday - None (but it's a day I'm allowed to skip if not inspired); Friday - Book Review; Saturday - Creative Nudge (go participate!); Sunday - this post! I'm really happy that I've managed to stay so consistent this week with blogging, especially because I've had really low focus this week.

3. Continue to write and post book reviews on GoodReads.com - 2 book reviews written, not enough, I'm really behind on these! 

4. I'm adding one - I need to visit and comment on at least 5 blogs every time I post a blog post. We'll see how it goes doing so this week! 

Awesome re-purposed type-writer - check out the source!

Life Goals:

1. Put more variety in our diet, try new recipe's and cook more often - I didn't do as well as I wanted on this one as I wanted, but I still did really good! I tried two new recipes this week (I wanted to try a third but ran out of steam) and I only fell back on making sandwiches one night this week. Woohoo!

2. Clean/Organize the house - I completely failed at this goal, but it was more important to take care of myself emotionally this week, so I'm ok with that.

3. Exercise! Not as consistent as I'd like, but I did do quite a bit this week, so I'm happy! Plus my physical therapist was really happy with my progress when we met on Monday, so that makes me really happy.

4. Take more pictures - This is another goal I did really good the first part of the week and not the second half, oh well, tomorrow is another day!

I'm a sucker for soundtracks - picked up Coyote Ugly's soundtrack this week for $5 - and listening to it right now!

So as you can tell if you actually read through all of that - it was a mixed week. I would have liked to do better, but like I said in one section, I needed to take care of myself emotionally this week, so I'm ok with not meeting at all my goals. I'm just happy I had enough presence of mind to meet any of them! I'll keep trying, one day at a time, and we'll see what this next week holds. I know one thing it'll definitely hold a giveaway, so check back for that tomorrow! 

~ Ruthie ~

Spring Cleaning and Various Sundries

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I'm not a big fan of cleaning. I'm just not. I mean, I know it's important, and I don't really enjoy being in a dirty environment, I just always have something better to do. You know, something to make, someone to talk to, and of course, writing. Then there's always the problem of the "Ooo...shiny!" rule. The "Ooo...shiny!" rule states that any time I clear my plate and try to get serious cleaning done I will find something to distract me. It's inevitable. Like death, or taxes, or garlic being in whatever I cook. (ok, that last one's not entirely true, I do leave garlic out of things like... deserts.)

There's also, for a long time, been the problem of having constant migraines. Those things are major energy suckers, and it's hard to find the motivation to clean when pain is making you dizzy. I also have several other health issues that add in their own challenges to the prospect of picking up that sponge or tackling a pile of miscellania. 

Combine the fact I don't enjoy cleaning with the health issues - and my house has never been super clean. I do try, but we live in a constant state of disorder. 

I'm determined to change that to at least some degree, and I have reason to think I can. Want to know why? Meet R2-02:

What? An Oxygen tank? That's right folks. Apparently I'm one of the few migraine sufferers that receives significant relief from huffing on oxygen. I'm ECSTATIC about this. Seriously. I can't even begin to tell you how happy I am! Oxygen is cheaper than many of the meds I've tried... and it's natural. I'm discovering that there are still a few migraines that I need to combine oxygen therapy with pain meds for, but I don't care. This is significantly reducing the amount of medication I'm taking, and I'm functioning! I've had the tanks since Friday and I haven't had a single day where I'm down with a migraine, and trust me, several of those days should have been lost to migraines based on symptoms prior to treatment.

This means I'm having a much easier time getting things done, so I've declared this week spring cleaning! I'm still having some problems with the "Ooo...shiny!" rule, but I'm doing my best to take notes on whatever's distracting me and get back to work. Spring cleaning means I'm not really writing this week (although I have at least one book review I have to do so I can return the book) but I plan to be hard at work on editing again next week.

Speaking of writing... time to report on last month's progress and talk about ROW80!

I love this piece!

It's called "misfit" (check out the where I found it!)

And the title ties in perfectly with the story I'm working on... so...

March was a roller coaster month with some really good days and some really bad days. I ended up with 15,795 words for the month - which considering everything is something I'm really proud of. Obviously I'd love to have written more, but getting that took some real effort, so I'm happy. Plus, I'm up from last month's 10,233 :P 

I read a TON last month. 27 books. That's crazy. In my defense I was really, really sick for part of the month so literally all I did was read. I still think that's crazy. I seriously doubt I'll come anywhere close to that this month, especially since I've been working on the same book for three days because I'm not spending much time reading so far. 

As for ROW80 - I know I'm supposed to have specific goals, but I really don't right now. I might come up with something more specific next week when I'm done with spring cleaning and more focused on writing again, but for now I'm just going to say editing. Editing, editing, and more editing. Oh, I should try to blog fairly regularly as well. We'll see how far I get!

Now I need to go clean something...

~ Ruthie ~ 

WIP Update - Constructive Destruction

***Warning, today's blog is full of pictures, but worth it!***

Thursday I posted about finishing the outlining process for my current WIP. I had gone through, marked each scene, and created flash cards to go with them. This is what happened next:

That's my book! Laid out scene by scene! All 91 scenes originally written! The reason there are some gaps is that some scenes did not contain complete pages. While this looks pretty, I quickly discovered it took up too much space to be practical. The goal was to lay out the book in order to contemplate the order of scenes and chapters, and while I might have been able to do that if I had laid it out on a bunch of tables (maybe set up in a square with me in the middle?), my floor just wasn't cutting it. So I gathered them back into a pile,  but I was still thinking the floor, so I spread them out a few scenes at a time around my knees.

That didn't last long. My joints don't like the floor that much, and I realized that I only needed to look at a handful of scenes at a time, so a table would do. Gathering up my supplies, I moved again.

A few scenes laid out to work on.

Like the card table? It's probably from the 70's... 

I used my tray table to put the manuscript piles. 

On the right, scenes to work on, on the left, completed ones paper clipped into chapters.

I loved watching the second pile grow!

In the middle of moving things around.

Since I don't outline first, I found this process really helpful. Especially because I wrote the first draft using alternating points of view (POV). It worked well at first, but by the time I had added in the rest of the adventurers, it just wasn't working well. I also realized, as I was reading through it, that I changed POV way too frequently. It felt like good long breaks in between each character as I was writing it, but reading? I'd change almost every page! That's just too confusing! 

I'm switching to using an omniscient narrator for at least the majority of the book, and that means I need to reorganize the order of some of the early scenes (where my characters were in two different places) and there was a little bit of shuffling through out the rest as well. Mostly in the chapter breaks. I kept my chapters at a pretty consistent word length during writing (it helped me to set goals and meet them) and had some horrible breaks as a result. I know that these might not be the "final" chapter breaks, but I think how I have them divided up currently will make the editing process much easier. Want too see how the final chapters look?

Isn't it pretty? Each chapter is marked with a sticky note in the top right, and has the 3x5 cards that matched the scenes in the top left corner. I'm currently working on taking the original draft and copying it into pages in a new Scrivener file in the order that I've rearranged things. Then I'll edit it chapter by chapter, with the old text and the new text in side by side windows. I have a list of things I want to remember in this edit, and I'll include those the best I can while changing the point of view. It'll be challenging, but it's also fun to watch the book evolve!

I'll probably do this with future WIP's as well, although hopefully they will need a little less work between first and second drafts! It still helped a lot with chapter and flow, and I liked being able to pick things up and move them around. I think a longer table would be nice though. Maybe I'll get a study room at one of the libraries next time!

~ Ruthie ~ 

Ps. How are your WIP's going?

Creative Nudge #7 - Luck of the Irish

Cool Project for a Leprechaun Catcher

I haven't done a creative nudge in way too long, but now that life seems to be settling back into a routine, I'm excited to post them on a weekly basis again! I'm really excited about this one, I actually got the idea for it last night as I was going to sleep, and I'm going to go write up my own response to it as soon as I'm done posting this! 

The Creative Nudge

Theme: The Luck of the Irish

Genre: Any

Other Requirements? None

How it Works

Take a few minutes to write up a short story based on the prompt.

Post it on your blog.

Come back here and leave me a link in the comments so I can read it!

I'll post my own response on Monday.

Have fun!

~ Ruthie ~ 

Happy Dance Time!

See that? Those are all the 3x5 cards I made for the different scenes in Misfits! (91 in total) Phew. I am so excited that's done! It was a lot more work than I was expecting, and I hit a lot of real-life speed bumps, so I thought I was going to be done with this step a loooong time ago. Now that I have it all organized...its time to tear it apart! I'll explain more about that on Sunday (with pictures!) That's tomorrow's project - and I've been looking forward to this since sometime in November when I wasn't even done with the story yet.

I'm also super excited because I made some real progress in reaching a title for the story, and in figuring out the sequel, all this morning! It's been a big day obviously.

I've known all along that this book was ripe for a sequel, and as I wrote the last couple of chapters it became clearer than ever, but I've never really known what the sequel was going to be about. Today, as I reread and outlined, I found several things that were just too much new information to be including in the last chapters of the book, especially with all the other realizations my characters were coming too. I started jotting down things like "use in the next book," and before I knew it, I realized I just given myself a major driving force for the sequel.

This book is all about my characters finding each other. Yes there's a quest that they're on, and that's very important too, but the quest is really there to drive them getting to know each other and learning to work together. The next book is also going to have some sort of quest to it (that part isn't figured out yet) but the focus for the characters is going to be growth. I'm going to have each one of them gain new abilities (some magical and some probably not), and grow as individuals along the way. I don't know much more than that, but that's more than enough to get me excited!

I've also figured out that Misfits (which is what my band of adventurers is) will be part of the series title. Each book title will have something to do either with the quest, or with the personal challenges facing the group. I know that sounds vague, but it's still a big step forward! I'll keep referring to this draft as Misfits for the time being, just to avoid confusion, and let you all know if I get something more concrete.

~ Ruthie ~

Ps. How is your writing going?

Fear

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Fear. It's something we all deal with. Some of our fears are irrational (there probably isn't a monster in the closet, unless my husband is about to scare me again) and some of them are quite rational (yes, avoiding black widow spiders is smart). There are fears that we have because of a lack of information, there are fears we have based on past events, and fears that are related to current events in our lives. Lots and lots of fears that people deal with in one way or another.

For most writer's there is a fear that we all share. Namely, that our work isn't good enough. 

Now I know that this isn't a fear unique to writers, but I am writer, and I know many of my readers are writers (or artists) and will identify with what I'm saying.

When you write something (or create a work of art) you invest a lot into it. You put in your time and effort, but more than that, you put a piece of yourself into your work. So this fear of not being good enough is very, very personal. 

I have struggled with this fear many times in my life, and most recently, as I've been working on outlining Misfits, the book I wrote during NaNoWriMo last year. (note: Misfits is a working title) I look at this piece of work in front of me and I see all its messy flaws, and believe me, it has a ton of them. One of the characters starts out talking in full sentence and later in the book he only speaks in choppy, broken sentences. One of the character speaks like a normal person and I need to fancy up his language and give him lots of big words to use. There are plot holes. Places where I made things work so I could keep writing and it's just quite frankly not believable. The conversations in places are so stilted it makes me cringe. 

It would be really easy to stop right here and say, "This is never going to be worth the effort. I should do something else." It is going to take a LOT of work to make this book at all readable and, after all that work, what if it's still not good enough? 

Here's the thing though. I can't worry about that yet. As my brother reminded me yesterday, Misfits is a 71k book that I wrote in 29 days. Of course it has lots of problems! Since I've never completed an entire first draft of a novel, and I wrote this one in a very short period of time, there is absolutely no way that the first draft could be anything but a mess.

And so I go on.

I'm 75% of the way through outlining the book, and when I'm done I'm going to spread the manuscript out on the floor, scene by scene with it's matching index card, and make some hard decisions about what needs to be done from there to fix it. I'm committed to bringing this book to a complete second draft, and my fears be damned. I can't let them rule my work or I'll never get anywhere.

Sure, there's a chance I'm investing all this time and effort and I'll decide, in the end, that this book isn't worth publishing, and that's ok. I'll have learned a lot through the process (and believe me I am!) and the next one I write will be better. I have to believe that, or I might as well stop writing. So adios fear, you can pack your bags, I'm not going to listen to your seductive voice.

~ Ruthie ~

I'm Baaaack!

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I've missed blogging! Actually I've missed a lot of things. I've been sick for weeks... and before that life was insane because someone I was close to was in crisis and...yeah. It's just been crazy but I'm getting better slowly but surely and I'm happy to blogging again! 

Yesterday was the first time in a month and a half that I had sat down to work on Misfits, my NaNoNovel. That's just sad. I have done writing here and there in the mean time, book reviews, a few writing exercises, but not touched the book. I know that the stress I've been under is a big part of it, but I also think that part of it comes down to scheduling.

I hate schedules, which makes it very hard for me to put myself on any kind of one. Part of it is that I can be very ADHD, so schedules tend to annoy me because I have a hard time focusing on what I'm supposed to be focusing on when I'm supposed to be focusing on it. So for a long time I've given myself a schedule of "you must do this and this at some point in the day" and just tackled it in whatever order felt "right" to me that day.

The problem with that is that the things I want to do, or have motivation to do for whatever reason, get done. The things that I don't want to do? Not as much. 

So I'm trying out a new schedule. It still has a lot of flexibility to it, but I'm assigning chunks of my day to certain tasks (like writing!) and then leaving some vagueness to how I approach the use of that time. I've also put into my new plan time for me to get sick or have migraines (which I do a lot) or for other things to disrupt my schedule. I'll let you guys know how it goes! 

~ Ruthie ~ 

February in Review: Trials and Tribble-ations

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For the non-geeks, "Trials and Tribble-ations" was the 100th episode of Deep Space 9 in which they pay homage to The Original Series episode about tribbles. 

February was full of Trials, in fact, they were almost multiplying at the rate of tribbles! Not quite though, fortunately, or I would have been completely buried. Between myself and my friends we had 2 ER trips, a hospital stay, car accidents, parasite infections, and a multitude of housing problems. Ugh. Just ugh.

Because of this, February was less than stellar. I got a little bit of writing done (10,233 words) but no where near as much as I had hoped. This month, instead of focusing on the writing part of the equation, I'm going to focus on editing. I'm doing NaNoEdMo - National Novel Editing Month!

What's that? Well NaNoWriMo is for writing the novel, NaNoEdMo is for editing it! 50 hours of editing in one month, which really shouldn't be as bad as doing NaNoWriMo. I know I put in more than 50 hrs in November! On the other hand, editing is harder, so maybe it will be just as hard. I have no way of knowing. I've never done this before.

I wasn't really planning on doing NaNoEdMo because I thought I'd be far into the editing by now. But, well, the last two months haven't exactly gone the way I expected. And I work better under a deadline! 

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In other news - I read 14 books this month (15 if you count the beta read I did for a friend) although that number doesn't show up on the good reads tracker yet. I have a couple books to put reviews in on the site still. At 30 books for the year I'm right on track for my 180 this year! Which is just a silly challenge to myself, but still fun.

I'm not really "back" to blogging yet. The parasite I mentioned up there? Yeah, um, that was me. *sigh* I'll be fine in the long run, but really still not feeling good, so I'm not going to commit to blogging regularly again until I know I'm better, and that I'm well in the groove for NaNoEdMo. See you next week maybe? 

~ Ruthie ~ 

Sunday's Writing Update

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We all know that you are supposed to write what you know, and I remember hearing somewhere that means that you need to remember to live outside of your book, or you'll dry up for inspiration. Not to mention it would be pretty hallow to have published a bunch of books and have no family and friends to enjoy it with! So I've spent my week on my family and friends, and gotten no writing done other than a few blog posts earlier this week, and I'm ok with that. I was needed, I lived my life to the best of my ability, and I'll get back to the writing as soon as I can. 

How was your week?

~ Ruthie ~

Banana Bread! Row80 Update

I made banana bread! I'm so happy! Why? I'm learning how to do more baking, and this is something I've never made before and it came out awesome! Woot!

Anyway... on to the writing!

On Wednesday I said that I needed to rethink my goals. Here is the conclusion that I have come to, I can not devote my life to writing right now.

What does that mean?

First of all - I'm not going to stop writing! That would just be insane. That would be ... soul sucking. I may go through weeks where I write less than others, but I am a much happier Ruthie when I write, so completely abandoning writing is just not going to happen. Period.

Second - I am keeping my writing goals, but they have been massively scaled back. I have decided that while I have two books I want to work on, I just can't sustain that level of focus right now because I need it for other things. For the next few weeks my goals are simply to work on blogging regularly again, and focus on Misfits. This decision was HARD because I want to work on both, but I'm not doing justice to either and getting stressed. Stress is not good.

Lastly - the reason behind all of this is that I'm really good at setting myself up to do to much, and between asthma and migraines, that is not a good thing! Especially since stress tends to lead to both of those. I got through NaNoWriMo and said, "I can do this! I'm going to focus on my writing and put it first!" Which would be great if I was truly at a place in my life where I could do that.

Instead, I really need to put my health first. I'm in the middle of a long journey out of the deep hole that was dug by my body. That may sound weird, but a full explanation would just take too long and make me sad. Suffice it to say, I am a very unhealthy person and large portions of it are not my fault (that and I love food, I really love food!). It means I have a long journey ahead of me to be what could be considered even semi-healthy. I am much better than I was, but...

Working on my healthy isn't just good for all the normal reasons, as I continue to get stronger I'll be able to do more, which in the long run, will mean more writing!

Where are you at with your writing?

~ Ruthie ~

Ps. As a perfect example of how messed up my health has been - yesterday was a really busy day and I wrote this up while the banana bread was cooking. But by the time I had pulled it from the oven, taken pictures, and eaten, I had to go do something else. By the time dinner was done I was so tired I couldn't do anything else and this never got posted. See why we need to get on top of this whole health situation?

Moving Forward Once Again - ROW80 Check In

I'm making progress and writing again. It makes me so happy! I'm no where near caught up on my goals, and honestly I'm fighting a migraine right now so I'm not going to pull up my goals sheet and update it until tomorrow. I'm going to need to revise things based on the time lost due to the back injury, but that's ok. I'm well aware that there are things in life that are out of our control. The only thing we can control is how we respond to them and then move forward.

Moving forward can be hard sometimes, especially once you know your too far behind to properly catch up. The key, I've found, is to remember that even if you can't catch up you'll only fall farther behind if you don't start moving. That's where I usually start, simply moving.

Simply moving can mean a lot of things. Pertaining to the actual injury, it means doing what I can for myself, with out help. Getting my own water. Then, as I improve, getting my own food. As time progresses I move about more often, do basic stretches, start to catch up on small chores.

With writing, simply moving looks similar. The first thing I usually pick back up after a major set back is this blog. If you look at the last two weeks my posts have been few, but I did make attempts to get back at it. Then, once I was able to do that with relative ease, I focused on catching up on book reviews. Now? Now I'm back to the "real" writing.

In the last couple of days I've not only written some of those book reviews that I've mentioned (I have several in queue right now!) I've also started on a ghost story, and worked on going through Misfits and taking notes. I was hoping to work on Jemnath today, but I got knocked down with a migraine so again its one of those days where moving forward involves small steps.

The ghost story is one of those cases where I have loads I'm supposed to be working on, but my muse is insisting I take some time to work on a different idea. I'm trying to balance all three right now, but hopefully the first draft of the ghost story (it's a short story) will be done in the next week and I can put it on the back burner for awhile. Depending on how it turns out I might work on polishing it from time to time and make it my first submitted work. It has potential, but who knows what will happen!

How are your writing endeavors going?

~ Ruthie ~

Creative Nudge #6 - Meet Levi

Due to my back injury I was never able to respond to the last Creative Nudge I posted - or to post a new one! To catch up I'm both going to share what I wrote and give you a new Nudge - all in one post. Sorry if this gets a little bit long!

Creative Nudge #5 was to interview a character from one of your stories. If you didn't get a chance to respond to it but still want to, feel free to leave a link to your post in the comments of this one! For now... Here's mine :)

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Levi is one of the characters from my NaNoNovel 2011 which I'm currently referring to as Misfits (although I'm thinking maybe Pack of Misfits instead?) Levi is a Wolf. Wolves in Maerdon are sentient, have a range of psychic and magical abilities, and years ago began learning to shape change to enable them to more easily communicate with the members of other races that weren't comfortable (and sometimes not capable of) using telepathy. Levi has a tortured past, and when we meet him in Misfits he is choosing to live out among the other races in the shape of a man. He's big, 6'2" in human form, with black hair and blue eyes. I've had him answer these questions based on his life before the book starts.

Question #1: What's the hardest part about shape changing?
The small things. At first that means things like getting the fingers and ears right, but then once you have learned the form that becomes much easier. Then you are tripped up by things like facial expressions, mannerisms, even the way you walk. I've spent enough time among the other races that I've learned to imitate them fairly well, but I still forget that most humans can't smell the way I still can while in human form. It takes a lot of focus not to be constantly sniffing the air.

Question #2: What's your favorite thing to do?
Hunt. I love the hunt, and, based on experience, it's something I won't really be able to explain to you.

Question #3: Since you've chosen to live among the other races and not with a pack, how do you make your living?
I hunt. I've learned out to take down a kill without ruining the hide and I then tan and sell the hides. 

Question #4: Where do you live?
I travel a lot. Never stay in one place long, but I do have a cave I take the hides back to so I can tan them. 

Question #5: Wolves are a pack society, is it hard living as a lone Wolf?
Yes.

I could ask him more questions - but this post would get rather long (because of my questions, not his answers obviously, did you notice they got shorter as we went?).  

Erin Morgenstern's Website

Creative Nudge #6: The Circus! I'm currently reading "The Night Circus" by Erin Morgenstern and I can barely put it down (but I know I have to do my own writing too!). So write some thing about a circus, or a clown, or something else you associate with the circus. 

Go write! Then Blog. Then come back here and leave me a comment so I know you did! I will not be using the linky tools that I was previously using (don't want to pay for it) and I'll be looking around to see if I can find another one before next week.

~ Ruthie ~

Still Recovering - a Late ROW80 Check In

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Well - after I posted my last bloggy/writing update I managed to re-pull the muscle in my back. Yeah. I'm on a roll here this month! I was fighting off some sort of bug yesterday, so I didn't even mange to get this up on time. That's ok though, I'm definitely on an upswing again today! I even managed to wash a few dishes. Woohoo! Any progress is good!

Hopefully I'll have some writing progress to report by Sunday, at the very least I'd like to get back to my regular blogging schedule, and blog reading schedule. I miss it!

How is your week going?

~ Ruthie ~ 

Just Because

Hey ya'll. Today is supposed to be the day where I post a piece of my writing, or do a post about one of my characters, or SOMETHING related to that. Well... Um... I could. I really could. I'm sure I could go through my stash and find a gem, dust it off, and slap it up on blogger.

I don't wanna.

Yes, I'm whining. You can tell me to go to my room if you want to. Thing is, I haven't done a "just because" post in a long time, and since I'm really not feeling good today, that's what I want to do!

Now, normally I keep things to writing and books on this blog, but that gets a little "all the same" after awhile. Mixing it up a little...see the pretty scarf on the right? That's what I've been spending on lot of my non-real life, non-writing, non-reading time on. For those of you who haven't known me long, I love to create. My passion is beads and jewelry (most often made out of teeny-tiny seed beads) but I love creating things no matter what medium it's in!

This scarf is a project for myself. I'm still a very beginning knitter, and I haven't really done anything since last winter. It's been challenging working with the boucle yarn, it snags easier and can be harder to count, but I've stuck with the basic garter stitch and after pulling things out more times than I want to admit the project is going well! I have two HUGE skeins in this dyelot and I'm hoping to have enough confidence by the time I'm done with the scarf to make hats and gloves. We'll see how it goes! I'll post more pictures as the project progresses.

What do you do with your "non-real life, non-writing, non-reading" time? Does such a thing even exist? If it doesn't... don't hate me. I wouldn't have this much time if I didn't have health problems! See? Even bad things have their upsides.

~ Ruthie ~

Ps. I added the Good Reads book count widget to my books read page - check it out! 

Week One of Set Writing Goals

Before I start talking about where I'm at in my writing goals - I wanted to share something fun with you! I mentioned on Tuesday that I won the Book Mark Break Challenge this year, and the prize was that she featured me on her blog. I'm very excited about it as its my first time being featured since I rejoined the bloggy world, so I'd really appreciate my lovely readers heading over there and checking it out.  Just don't forget to come back and read this post and leave me a comment! 

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Today marks the end of my first week of ROW80! (If you don't know what that is go here.) It's been a weird week, but a good one. Most of my plans got changed around, but I still got a lot done, and I had some invaluable girl time that I don't regret for a minute, so that makes me once very content writer. Mr. Muse is happy too. 

The Goals and what I accomplished:

1. Write 750 words minimum a day - I did it! I had one day where I was really sick and almost didn't do it, but that's why I've set up a reward. If I do my 750 words every day I get to buy a book - and I really want to buy a book! It was enough to get me to the computer. Most of what I wrote that day was trash, but reading back over it today it was interesting to see how some of what I wrote set me off on things I worked on the next day, without even remembering I'd made a note about it while sick! See? Even sick ramblings can be useful.

2. Jemnath - Ch’s 16 &17 - I barely made this goal ... by writing at least half of it today. But hey, the goal was there, this blog post was looming over my head, and it got written. Isn't that what joining ROW80 is all about? I know I do much better when I both have set goals, and a system of accountability. Of course we'll have to see what future weeks hold, but so far it's working!

3. Misfits - Read Through & Hatchet Attack - This is a lesson in needing to adjust goals. I'm not done with the read through - and I haven't done the hatchet attack yet because I have to finis the read through first! I'm ok with that though because I am 30% of the way through my read through, and I put a bunch of hours in it. It's just taken me longer to do than I expected because of the type of notes I'm taking. So I've adjust my goals, dedicated next week to trying to finish the read through (hopefully life will cooperate a little better than it did this week), and going from there. If you look at my goals page you'll see both that I updated it with this weeks results, and I've already adjust my editing goals to match reality!

How is your writing going? Are you meeting your goals? Do you need to adjust your goals like I had to when faced with reality?

~ Ruthie ~

Creative Nudge #5 And A Fun Picture!

Remember my review of Prison Nation and my author interview with Jenni Merrit?  We've been chatting a lot and went out for coffee today! I was thinking maybe one or two hours chatting... Three and half hours later we were no where near running out of topics and we are planning on getting together at Powell's soon. What's better than two writers talking about books and writing in a book store?

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I was a bad girl and never wrote a response to my own writing prompt this last week. Ooops. It's been a bit of a crazy week, I'll write up something for this week's Nudge though!

Creative Nudge #5: Take a character, it could be one from a story your writing or just one you make up on the spot, and do a Q&A session with them! You'll get to know them a lot better along the way - I promise! Ask what ever questions you want. Have any you want me to throw at one of my characters? Leave a suggestion in the comments!

~ Ruthie ~

WIP Wednesday - Full of Distractions (ROW80)

That's right, my week so far has been full of distractions. Some of them good (lunch with a friend) and some of them mundane (like laundry) but full none the less. Today was supposed to be a day of writing with a little bit of house work mixed in - but my plans have been derailed! 

It's a good derailing though. See that cute couple on the left? That's my "baby" brother Peter and his wife Tanya wearing some of the knit & crocheted items my Mom made (I know the hats were knit, and I have a feeling the scarf was crochet but I can't remember). They have been in town for Christmas (they live in Chicago) and I found out last night that there is a going away luncheon for them today! I was going to head up to Vancouver tomorrow, but I've moved all my plans around and I'm heading up today instead. Which should be a ton of fun and leaves tomorrow as a writing day instead! 

Despite all my distractions I've gotten a little bit of writing work done. My goals for this week are:

1. Write 750 words min. a day.
2. Jemnath - Ch’s 16 &17
3. Misfits - Read Through & Hatchet Attack

So far I'm going strong on the writing 750 words a day. I've promised myself a new book at the end of the month if I manage to do it every day so that's plenty of incentive! Yesterday's 750 was taken up writing chapter 16 in Jemnath (goal 2!). Every other chapter in this book is very short, between 450-800 words, so that was relatively easy to hammer out yesterday. The only downside is that means I have at least 2000 more words to write this week in that book, but with tomorrow and Friday pretty wide open that should be reasonable to accomplish.

I'm LOVING doing the read through of Misfits! I'm only through chapter 5 so far. I debated going through and just reading with out notes the first time versus taking detailed notes as I went a long and opted for the second option. In an ideal world I'd be able to keep my writing fingers still long enough just to take in the scope of the story - but I just couldn't do it. I am not only taking notes in my notebook, I am making 3x5 cards for each scene as I go along. It's all part of my master plan to take a hatchet to first draft! I'll explain more about that (with pictures!) in the ROW80 check in on Monday. 

For now - I gotta go take a shower, write my 750, and head out for Vancouver. Cheers!

~ Ruthie ~

My Writing Goals - I'm Excited!

I’m very excited to share my writing goals with you, my blog readers! I’m not sure I’ve ever been this excited about sharing my goals. There are several reasons for that, but I’ll save that for later.


This year I’ll be joining in on A Round of Words in 80 Days (ROW80). ROW80 is all about setting good writing goals and then achieving them, but there is lots of grace involved, you are free to change your goals and adjust them to meet reality.

I am excited about meeting other writers, and about the accountability involved. I’ll be posting twice a week (Sunday and Wednesday) about how I’m doing with my writing goals. I have put a page up at the top of my blog with my writing goals (or you can click here). That page has it a copy of my spread sheet (I’m all about spread sheets!) but I’ll summarize in this post.


1. Write 750 words a day. I’m doing the 750words.com monthly challenge (for more on 750words see my post here.) If I write every day for this month I get to buy myself a book! Going back and forth between actually owning Hunger Games, Eden by Keary Taylor, and working on my Terry Brooks collection. Anyway, the 750 might be made up of writing prompts, writing book reviews, working on my books, or just stream of consciousness, but it will happen!

2. Two chapters a week in Jemnath. I’ve projected that out until the end of the 80 days, but I honestly have no idea how many chapters this book will take! I may be done by the end of ROW80 - or I might just be really close. We’ll see. Two chapters equals one long chapter and one short (about a page) chapter. I think that’s attainable and still gives me time to meet my other goals.

3. Editing Misfits. I really don’t know exactly what that’s going to look like past the first read through and going at the book with a hatchet (I’ll post about that on Wednesday). For now I have the first two weeks filled in and the rest is TBD (To be Determined). I’ll expand on my goals once I have a better idea of how the edit is going.

Like I said - I’m really excited about this! I think I’ve set attainable goals that will stretch me, but not too far. It certainly won’t be the challenge NaNoWriMo was, but I think thats probably a good thing in this case. I also feel more confident about meeting those goals than normal, because I’ve learned that I desperately need outside accountability to meet my writing goals, and I think this will be perfect for that. Not to mention, I’m just elated that I’ll be doing so much writing!

What are you writing goals right now? Want to join ROW80? We’d love to have along for the ride!


~ Ruthie ~


Ps. Do you like my writing notebook (see picture)? I love Celtic knot work and leather - so this book is perfect for me! I also love purple and this pen works really well.