Castle in the Clouds

Thanksgiving went pretty well. We went to my mom's house this year. It was quite the gathering. There were 9 adults and 9 children. We had three tables spread throughout the house--the dining room table for the adults, a folding table for the teens, and a picnic table for the little ones. Mom made the turkey and most of the sidedishes and desserts. I brought toss salad and cherry cobbler. and my sister brought the corn. Mom didn't seem her usual self but I think that might have a lot to do with the stress of raising teenagers. I've heard some pretty interesting (as in disturbing) stories about what she's going through with the oldest girl right now. None of these have been confirmed by my mom but I imagine in time I'll hear all about it. There really wasn't any privacy on Thanksgiving day so we could chat. I should take my mom out to dinner sometime soon. Just to give her break from the kids. I would have invited her to go shopping with us on Black Friday but sh...

I know I need to write every night right now. That Christmas gift project is always in the back of my mind. Each day it grows bigger and my confidence in completing the rough draft grows smaller. I'm not overwhelmed yet, but it won't be long if I don't get busy and stay that way! Yet, I'd rather be scrapbooking. The photos call to me, luring me away from my computers to dabble in the basement with paper and embellishments. Not to mention all the very cool supplies I've accumulated over the last eight years. The creative potential is endless. Still. I know I need to write. So right now I'm dancing with temptation. I'm trying to satisfy the scrapbooker and writer inside me. Tonight I started out scrapping but guilt drove me from my scrappin' space to the laptap and the story I've promised to my sister-in-law. While this sounds good, I really didn't make any progress. I don't even think I added a sentence. But at least I had it open, right? That...

Writing workshops can be a study in perspective. Over the last ten years I've participated in community writers' groups, academic creative writing classes, and online critique groups. I've read my novels aloud, one chapter at a time, to perfect strangers. I've shared poems and short stories with classmates. I've entrusted my word docs to my online crit partners, just as they've trusted me with theirs. Each experience has been worthwhile and enlightening. Not to mention occassionally annoying. One of my most vivid memories from my first writers group is the night I was told with my level of skill I should be writing something more worthwhile than romance novels. The gentleman who told me this said it with such a tone of condemnation. I don't remember saying anything--I was rather young then and hadn't quite developed my current attitude. I think I may have laughed, rather unconfortably. After all, it was a backhanded compliment. He wasn't telling me I...

Friday night we had a sitter stay at the house so the hubby and I could go out to eat and watch a movie. Dinner was pretty good. My steak would have been better if the first five bites wouldn't have been full of gristle and fat. The only saving grace really was the cheese and slices of portabella mushrooms smothered across the top of it. Ken's dinner was much better. Very tender and very flavorful. After dinner we drove over the movie theatre to see what movies were playing and at what time. There were two we were interested in. I was more inclined to see a comedy, yet I was willing to let him pick out the movie. He insisted I pick it out. So I did. I thought the new Will Farrell movie would be funny so we bought the tickets for the 10:00 o'clock show. Left with lots of time to spare (almost two hours) we decided to go shopping. Or at least window browsing. We drove up the road to the mall and walked around Dunham's until it closed at 9:00. One hour until showtime. Sinc...

Ken and I met with the boys' teachers on Wednesday night. First, we had the Kindergartener. After arriving way too early and sitting in the hall on teeny, tiny chairs for too long, we were ushered into the classroom. The boys sat on a chair nearby while Ken and I went over the little guy's report card with his beloved teacher. I'm happy to report the little guy is doing great! He still has a few things he needs to work on, mind you, but nothing worth worrying over. He's already learned quite a few of the sight words he needs to memorize and he's doing well in math and such. The only thing he really needs to focus on is learning to identify his letters. Yep. He can recognize words but not letters...it's weird. The third grader did not fare so well. In fact, he seems to be failing EVERYTHING. The only good mark he received was in math: problem solving. Can't do simple addition and subtraction, but he can problem solve. Right now the school uses a g...

I switched from my old Blogger account to the new beta version. The only thing I'm not liking is the header. I got an image loaded into it but it doesn't like the html code for tables. Oh, well. At least I have labels (aka post categories)!

I have three stories I'm working on at the moment. One of them is a short story I wrote yesterday for my creative writing class at the University. Another is the collaboration with my sister, Chrissy , which is shaping up into a paranormal historical romance. The last of my WIPs is my vampire romance. The short story came together in an hour's time. I don't like the ending but I already have a few ideas on how to modify it into something more short-storyish. True to my writing nature, I didn't finish things, just left them hanging. It's not the best thing I've written, but let's be honest, short stories are NOT my thing. Never have been. Probably never will be. I write them for class and as writing challenges but never because I feel inspired to write something short. The second story--the collab--needs a lot attention. My sister has had time to play with this concept for years. I'm coming to it a little more green behind the ears. I told her I'd com...

If you've been a visitor here for any length of time, you know I use a writing program called NewNovelist to help keep me organized. While I really liked the program right from the beginning there was room for improvement. I guess I wasn't the only one who thought so. I received an email a couple days ago alerting me to an available upgrade. Geek that I am, I bought it. It was worth the $44 dollars. 100% worth it! Features I wished it had are now available. I'm not sure I'll stop using Microsoft Word as my main word processing program but for the first time I feel it could become a possibility. Here are some of the key upgrade features I'm lovin' right now: *I can upload pictures on character profiles. *I can upload pictures on place (location) profiles. *It has spellcheck. Finally! *From within the program I can access my internet explorer favorites for easy reference. *From within the program I can access folders on my harddrive directly related to the story ...