Hope Darby Writings

Since the lovely Linda was kind enough to meme-tag me, here’s your treat of the night:

Seven answers to seven questions…

1. It is your lucky day what are you going to do? Sit on the beige shores of Grand Turk with my husband, sipping an outstanding piña colada, munching nachos from Margaritaville (hey, you don’t have to be a Jimmy Buffet fan to enjoy the food! Thank goodness…) and then snorkeling. With a full belly. So I can sink to the bottom to gather shells easier.

2. What was the game you played as a child that you almost always or always did win? Scrabble and Scattergories. Don’t try to out-word the wordnerd!

3. You get to meet anyone from the past or present who will it be? Present: JK Rowling. Trite choice, perhaps, but I’d love to spend a day in her head. Past: Jack Kerouac, because, well, just because.

4. When you relax what is it that you do? I put my body into odd configurations in the name of yoga, work on training my dog, or nap. Oh how I love to nap, but too often the damned insomnia monster refuses to relinquish control.

5. What is your favorite number? 3 and 13 (lookit, Linda, you’re not alone!)

6. What was the name of your favorite childhood toy? I was a Barbies and My Little Pony girl. Of course, I had them all acting out odd storylines and didn’t really foster a strong relationship between Barbie and Ken, but them’s the breaks of being an only child with an overactive imagination. I had to impose my will somewhere and the other kids in the neighborhood had to sleep sometime.

7. If you could name the next fashion fade/craze what would it be? Geek chic. Argyle cardigans in bold colors, large-collared, widely cuffed, button-down shirts under sweater vests, and flat shoes. Don’t forget the notebook-sized purses with ample pen space!

And now I tag … Sarah, Brennen, Renee, Shorty, Kahlee, Katiebutt, and Lyvvie!

More soon, Mikey needs to poop.

3 days to go, and the rush of frenzied adrenaline is beginning to kick in. Lovely Kahlee asked how I am preparing for NaNo, so here’s a bit of my current process:

I’m Bubbling like mad! I also downloaded Q10, a full-screen freeware word processor, because as we all know, this little girl tends to get distracted in a big way by all the pretty colors and lights of the internet (eye roll here).  So, with Q10 up, I can’t see ANYTHING else, and it helps me to focus better. I’m looking forward to using it this year!

Let’s see, what else?  I’ve spent a bit of time fleshing my main characters. I don’t spend a whole lot of time doing that before NaNo, because it never fails that I learn more and more about the characters as I write. And if what I learn about them conflicts with what I “fleshed out” in the beginning, I get frustrated and feel like I have to start over with the new information. Not good! So, I tend to leave the real characterizations until the NaNo frenzy has dissipated.  The story is what matters most. The details can wait until the second draft (ie December!)!

I’ve bought my “Ramblings” notebook, too. Every year, I get a mid-sized notebook that I carry everywhere I go. Nothing goes into this notebook other than ideas that pop into my head about my story. I do this because 1) if I don’t write it down right then, I’m apt to forget what was so great about it in the first place, and 2) most times, those ideas are totally out of place with where I am currently in the story. I don’t want to forget it, but I also don’t want to break my momentum by trying to jump around too much.

I give each idea it’s own page. This not only makes it easier to find later, when I have a “Hey! This is a GREAT spot for XYZ idea!” but also means that if something else occurs to me regarding that idea, I have plenty of room to make notes. And lemme tell you, I am a note-taking kinda gal!

More to come, when my brain fuzzies clear out…

I’ve noticed that as I prepare more and more for NaNo, I’ve been talking a lot less. Normally, my husband can’t shut me up. I’m talking to him, talking to the dog, talking to the cats, yelling at the computer, etc etc etc.

Over the last couple of days, though, he has asked me at least eight times, “Are you okay? You’re so quiet! Are you upset? Sad? What’s up?” or some variation of the same.

So I’ve figured out that the more words I dispense into my writing, the fewer I actually speak. Makes me wonder if JK Rowling ever said a word to anyone while writing the Harry Potter novels…

I am in love with the weather right now.

It’s 9pm, beautifully dark, a light rain falling against concrete, grass, tin roofs, and cars. I have almost every house light off, no television on, just the sound of the rain falling and my furbabies playing. My outdoor Halloween decorations are plugged in, so an orange glow is beautifying our front porch.

This really may be the most relaxing environment I’ve been in since lying on a beach in the Caribbean.

Two weeks to go!

Anyone else NaNoing this year?

My dog chewed a hole in my Wonder Woman mojo-writing hat, so I’m going to have to find a new “uniform” for this year’s festivities.

This year, I’ll actually be able to get my official “NaNo Winner” title, since they’ve decided to allow “scrambled” texts in the word-count verifier. Up until now, you’ve had to copy/paste your work in full on the site, in order to prove your 50,000 word count. For paranoid folks like me, that was a little too risky. Not that anything I wrote in that month would have been worth yoinking in its submitted state, but still…

With the word scramble being allowed, it’ll make all the difference in the world. No chance of illegal yoinking, no risk of pilfered ideas, and still able to get a shiny new emblem to go under my name. Woo hoo!

So, any other NaNoers floating around here?

Did you miss me?

The cruise was phenomenal. The ship, magnificent. The waters, breathtaking. The islands, little dollops of heaven.

Naturally, I kept a journal while we were traveling (you can take the writer away from the computer, but dang it, most of us remember how to use pens!) and I’ll definitely be bringing some entries here. For now, I’m recovering. Lucky me managed to get sick while on vacation (of course) and am now battling walking pneumonia, sinusitis, bronchitis, and what my doctor graphically described as “large pockets of what resembles bubbly snot” behind my ear drums.

You know, he took far too much pleasure in describing that, er, substance in my ears. He got the wickedest gleam in his eyes every time he said it. After the third or fourth instance, I interrupted and said, “You know, I appreciate the descriptives, but I think something in me dies every time you talk about bubbly snot in my ears,” which of course led him to expound further.

So yeah. My new favorite words. Bubbly ear-snot. Woo hoo!

Well, tonight is the night! We will be creeping out during the witching hours to make a hellacious drive to the airport, flying around for a while, and then boarding a cruise ship destined for the Caribbean.

If preparing for this trip has taught me anything, it’s this: shopping for summery clothes in September is fantastic. Linen pants for $5, countless lovely blouses ranging from $1.50 to $10, shorts for $3.50… I love 75% off sales!

Shopping-induced adrenaline high aside, I’m admittedly a little nervous about the trip. I’ve never been on a ship before. Heck, I’ve never been on a boat before, save the regular canoeing expeditions during family camping trips. So suffice it to say, the prospect of a week-long excursion on a ginormous ship on the high seas is freaking me out a tad. A bit. Some. Okay, a lot.

But! I’m packing my ginger pills, focusing on the terrifically fun excursions we have planned (swimming with sea lions, snorkeling around reefs and scuba diving around sunken pirate ships, swimming with sting rays, etc), and hoping that I can do my normal thing and pull myself together enough to fake it until I really do start enjoying myself.

There are few things worse than having a passion for a craft that requires internet access, only to have your router(s) completely fall apart on you.

Seriously, it sounds like an upgraded version of “the dog ate my homework” excuse.

“I haven’t been shirking my work, I swear. My router just died.”

Hrmph.

I made a post last night and now it’s gone! Gah!

Today has been spent in the car. I had to take my little girl cat, Genie, to the vet. Poor thing has dreadful inhalant allergies, and had to have another steroid shot. Ouch! She was rewarded with a small mountain of treats when we got home, though, so I think she’ll manage

My good friend Sarah and her lovely husband Brennen helped me design a business card a few weeks ago. Those finally came in, along with refrigerator magnets of the same design, and a bunch of glossy flyers, return address labels, etc. So I’ll be spending the next little while hoofing it to the local university, companies that distribute newsletters, the library, etc, to hang flyers and pass out cards. Have to drum up business!

I need an updated version of The Writer’s Market. I have 2007′s edition, and I know that a lot of the information is outdated. But geeze, those things are expensive.

By the way, is it flyers, or fliers? I never can remember…

Today is Saturday, and in the southern states that means one thing and one thing only: football.

More specifically, college football.

Even more specifically, SEC college football.

The world stops, the housework goes unnoticed, the finger-foods go down the gullet faster than Tom Cruise goes through glib comments, and ardent SEC fans whoop and holler at thousands of television screens in stereo. Armchair coaches, sofa-bound defensive coordinators, and backyard quarterbacks cheer, curse, and hotly debate each penalty as it is called, by refs who are obviously biased toward one team or the other. Instant replays are demanded, DVRs rewound, and each commercial break is hailed with frenetic channel changing to see what’s going on at another game.

Roll Tide, Hail State, and Go Backs