Why not find out for free?!

Starting Feb. 1st if you follow me on Twitter you could win a Kindle copy of my newest book Cupcakes and the Centre of the Universe check out the easiest rules in the universe below and happy following!

1. You MUST be a Twitter follower of @writeinlife (that’s me)
2. Watch on the first day of every month for the special RT request from me (it’ll be hard to miss)
3. The first 5 people who RT my Tweet will win!
4. I’ll DM you for your e-mail and then a Kindle book will magically appear in your inbox.

Exclusions: If you’ve already bought my book you can’t win but feel free to RT me anyway if you like.

Only if you’re serious about it.

I’ve actually edited this one. Not that I didn’t edit my first one but this one seems more serious. This is actually in my preferred genre. Maybe that’s why I feel so strongly about it.

Would it Help if We Talked About It?

Maybe. It’s called Cupcakes and the Centre of the Universe. It’s coming out Jan 21st on Amazon. I’m still figuring out Smashwords later it will be there. The Centre of the Universe is having an existential crisis. (Well, if I were the Centre of the Universe I probably would to). There’s space travel and a ghost several spaceships and a couple of firemen. Actually the firemen don’t really factor in that much. There’s really nothing else to compare it to so I don’t know how the reviews will sound.

Reviews! I forgot about those…I have to go. See you sometime before the 21st!

Yes ’tis a rather warm Christmas, I must say (<–read with British accent of your choice).

Because it has been so warm I have been forgetting quite often that it is Christmas. It doesn’t help that I keep thinking last year was 2009 and therefore keep trying to tell people that it snowed last year in December when it hadn’t (that was in 2009, do try to keep up). Instead of hot chocolate and fruit cake my holiday season has been filled with trying to buy some headphones that work and a newly discovered nut allergy.

But recently it has started to feel a little more like Christmas because I got some early presents! Yay! ::elf dance::. Something about being in someone else’s house and being showered with gifts is better than being in your own and showered with gifts. I mean, seriously, I’m supposed to be showered with gifts in my own house. The best part is that I have more gifts to open this weekend.

Is this shallow? Probably. Childish? Definitely. I was going to put a sentence that started with the word ‘but’ here but there really is no justification for this post.

I have had the idea for this post in my drafts for over a week but I had to wait until it wouldn’t be just about how great Torchwood is. The real reason for this post is that I was thinking the other day about what makes a good story. One of the things that I thought of was character. But what makes a good character?

This is probably the world’s most impossible question to answer because everybody likes something different when it comes to characters. One person like Captain Jack while another thinks the show is rubbish without Ianto (had to slip that in there, I’ll stop now). I happen to think that no matter the personality or actions of a character the thing that all characters have is boldness and commitment from the writer. It is one thing to think of a great name or a great back story for a character and another to actually write it down.

I already told you about how much trouble I’m having trying to stop my inner editor from stopping my current novel being written. This was not always the case and lately I’ve been wondering why this was not always the case. The answer is I don’t know. I wrote my first novel when I was 18. I was just coming off the world of fan fiction (don’t ask) and while I remember having a little hesitation when it came to knowing how to word certain scenes I don’t remember being so critical of everything that I was actually nervous about typing it. I know no one is reading it now but I feel like they are. I have rationalized it as one of those things that no one ever has to read if I don’t want them to etc. Like you do when you’re unsure about something but for some reason I can’t seem to get past fear of failing my characters enough to make significant progress on the story.

Maybe it’s length after all I have just finished NaNoWriMo and am shooting for triple that word count in this one.  I pin pointed one of the problems as hating my characters so I got rid of that problem. I hated my main characters so much the first go round that I didn’t care whether or not they were alive or dead. That doesn’t happen. It shouldn’t happen so I started over.

I don’t feel the way I thought I would about that decision. I feel very liberated to be writing the characters I want to write and the story I had in mind in the first place. The problem now is I find myself being intimidated by my own characters. Just their presence in my brain seems too high and lofty a goal for me to try and put on paper. Or screen.

Yet when I look back through the veil of time and space (I wrote my first novel in another room) I see a bolder more capable writer and I think in a British accent “Hold on a minute! I’m older and that means that I’m supposed to be better now!” If not better then more able to take risks.

Maybe sometimes you just need to tell yourself to snap out of it and write already. Or maybe you just need to take a shower and put on your elephant pyjamas.

Is that a good first line or what?

I have one warning for anyone who happens to read this: It may go on for a bit and be rambling along for a while but that is the nature of things these days.

So I have finished NaNoWriMo with all 50,000 words in tact and started writing my next novel. It’s an idea I had during NaNoWriMo which was consuming my soul as I waited to finish that one and start on the new one. Only problem is now that I don’t have NaNoWriMo baring down on my head like a heavy wet heavy thing I am extremely critical of myself. I don’t understand this. So here are my best guesses:

1. NaNoWriMo has ruined my life. This is unlikely. I feel really good about finishing it after four years of trying.
2. I really love my characters. This is a phenomena that I have witnessed in myself before. If I think of characters with back story that I like and a personality set in front of my mind as part of them from the beginning I tend to get a little nervous and can’t write very fast. This seems opposite to me. It seems to me that if I had no idea who I was writing that would be the thing to slow me down but I suppose in the grand scheme of creative processes being nervous means that I am nervous that I won’t get my point across the way I intend it to be.
3. I’m not worthy. I am worthy of my own story though so this also doesn’t make any sense.
4. My Open Office word processor is driving me nuts! For some reason it won’t switch over to UK English for this novel like it did for the last one I wrote. It’s really unfortunate because this one is set more in England than the last one was and I really need it to tell me when I hit one of the words with an alternate spelling that I will overlook eventually like Jewellery.
5. Music is a distraction. This is also highly likely. I love writing with music but I think that is because I love music and I love writing and I want them to go together and help each other. In actual fact I think the music makes me a little nervous when it comes to writing as well. One of my greatest fears is that I will write something that will sound so great when I write it but then discover that it only works if you are listening to that particular song. This has never happened to me before but that won’t stop me from waiting for it.

So there you have it my top 5 writing fears that I have to overcome sometime in the course of this novel. My biggest decision so far is that I will finish this one and it will be the closest two novels I have ever finished.

Speaking of Sucking Hard

When I was a beginning writer I used to read a lot of articles about writing and one of the things that I read a lot was that writers love everything that they write. The reasoning for this seems to be that people who are writers love everything they write because it is something they wrote. Since then (i.e. since I have interacted with writers and actually been a writer for a few years) I have learned that the real reason for this is that people who are not novelists are attempting to explain away the reason that they are not by saying that those people who are are just in love with themselves and you’re not a serious writer if you like what you write.

The truth is that no writer loves what they write. It is a guarantee that if you finish a novel you have loved your characters enough to stick with them. You may even love your setting or the basic idea of your story but no writer completely loves what they have written. Stories are never finished just like any other art form. The artist, no matter what his medium, never feel finished with their work. There is certainly no writer I know who would say they loved what they wrote just because they wrote it. This to me (and hopefully to others) is an insult. It pretty much suggests that anyone who is a writer is also a five year old bursting at the seams to show his parents his new coloring page he just “finished”.

I’m not saying all this because I hate what I wrote during NaNo (but we won’t get into that right now) I was just thinking about that the other day.

Let’s Get to the Happy Part

Woo hoo! I finished NaNoWriMo. Don’t get me wrong this was not my first attempt. It has been four years for me to actually make it to the whole 50,000 words within the month of November. It took a lot of decisions my first decision was to do it. Now you may be thinking something really sarcastic like “No, really?!” while faking a heart attack at the obviousness of that decision. But let me tell you this is a decision. Every November I say I WANT to do it. But I have never really decided to DO IT. Deciding to do it is a very different thing than wanting to do it. Anyone who has actually finished NaNoWriMo will know what I’m talking about there.

The next decision I made was that I was going to make this November a new beginning because let’s face it sometimes trying to complete a huge, nearly impossible, goal can seem pointless right smack in the middle of it. Even though a new beginning seems vague it got me through to the end.

The next decision I made was to sit through my word count goal every day. Another obvious one but if you leave this kind of thing up in the air in any way you won’t finish. You won’t even get through one day with your word count in tact. My personal goal is 2,000 words a day which is about what it is when it’s not NaNoWriMo too. I also did planned 5,000 word days on weekends which strangely motivated me and I actually got excited about them as if someone else had planned them.

Especially during the middle of the month I felt like I sucked and I hated that I ever started writing or had the idea that I could do NaNoWriMo but I still only missed one day of writing through the whole time I was on the shy side of 50,000. Now I’m over 50,000 and since it’s still November I might add some more words just to show off.

Most of all I decided to enjoy the process of writing. More often than not writing feels like I’m alone in front of a computer but in actual fact whether we’re sitting in front of a computer or writing long hand or carving our novels in stone tablets we are in the company of a lot of great people. Your favorite writers, my favorite writers and anyone who writes whether amateur or professional all know what it’s like to be in the middle feeling lost and not knowing why because you know exactly where you want to go or being surprised by what your characters actually do even though you just knew three weeks ago that they would be doing exactly the opposite. Every writer in history has faced similar problems and in that way writing is basically time travel.

Happy Writing!

NaNoWriMo 2011: Procrastination

The most important thing for me this month has been developing. Developing a love of my characters as well as a routine for my writing. It’s not that I’ve never had a routine before but this is the first time that I have ever had a routine that was sustainable for me at least for half the year. This month is also one of those times when I say “This is the day I become a serious writer,” which isn’t really true because the day I really became a serious writer was when I was 10 and developed my first comic book series. For the record I never really read comic books or liked them but creating them was too much fun to resist.

For what ever reason this month has seemed like the real moment I became a writer. Maybe it’s more like this is the month I have become a serious goal finisher. But we’ve still got 12 more days to find that out.

I have also been thinking lately about how many novels I’ve actually written. This technically is my third but does it count if one of them was only briefly published and will never see anyone’s bookshelf ever again? It is listed on Amazon but that doesn’t mean anything because it’s out of print and practically disowned by me. I’m curious whether or not I should admit to writing it or not if anyone ever asks. I remember writing it and being very excited to finish my desired page count and then some. I was in love with those characters at the time but now it just seems like so much fluff and vapid throw away situations that I can’t bring myself to republish it in any form.

I suppose I should acknowledge it as a turning point because it was a transition from writing fan fiction to writing original characters. It has been a long time since I have had characters that I really truly loved even Youth For the Mission didn’t hold the sway that those characters did. I am happy to say that the characters I am writing this NaNoWriMo do have my heart almost as much as those first ones did. So over all I am happy with this NaNoWriMo progress even though it’s not over I can see the finish line in all its glittering…next novel starting *sigh*…glory.

I finally came up with a solution to decide how long my book should/will be by the end of this thing and page count-wise it wasn’t long enough even by my standards for publishing. So I have set myself a new goal: 74000 words in 30 days. My first novel was actually 80000 words by the time I published it in its third draft so 74000 words is actually a bit small as well. However keeping my genre in mind I think it’s good if it’s not quite 300 pages because I think 300 pages would be too long for my particular story.

Does that mean word count/page count is relative to genre/story? Some people think it is. I’m not sure if I’ve decided yet.

So far I’m at 20,142 so I have a ways to go as they say. But if I can stay on track I should be finished by Nov 27 which is really scary and makes my brain want to ooze out of the side of my head. Also I just remembered recently that last year I decided that last year was the last year I was going to attempt NaNoWriMo.

On one hand this is a good thing because it avoids a lot of potential for plagiarism. When I try to write Sci-Fi I find it impossible to read Sci-Fi because I either find ways in which it is exponentially better than mine and it really discourages me or I start to interject things about my characters into the story I’m writing and then realize that was exactly what was in the book I just finished. This becomes a problem often because I am a cross-genre writer. My primary genre I like is Comedy/Sci-Fi (which I still count as Sci-Fi even though a lot of hard Sci-Fi writers don’t want me to). But I don’t really seem to have a problem writing it when reading or watching Comedy while writing mostly it just makes me want to read/watch other things besides Comedy.

So my question would be this: Do you think it’s better to stay far, far away from the genre you’re writing in while you’re writing it and then go back to it in your in-between time?

I guess the other question is: Do you have this problem too?

This is why NaNoWriMo is so hard. As soon as a challenge is posed to me I get so caught up in rules that my fingers freeze over the keyboard as if they were paralyzed with some sort of made up ray gun that I make up in my head and sounds really great except no one ever knows about it because my fingers don’t want them to.

In short; NaNoWriMo is kicking my butt. I’m making more progress in the 50,000 words department though and that’s making me happy.

But it’s Comedy/Sci-Fi so I can’t watch anything except old Brotherhood 2.0 videos and Frasier because they are the furthest things from what I am writing. I’m debating between continuing to read Helen of Troy which I am currently in the middle of or reading Prey by Michael Crichton because it’s about man eating robots–or at least that’s what I got from the back of it.

First I’m going to go buy some shampoo that I’m not allergic to.

Technically NaNoWriMo is not the only reason I can’t do extra work. I’m setting up the world’s most productive garden and writing this blog while trying to figure out how I’m going to find the time to actually grow anything to sell at the farmer’s market this year because my regular work schedule changes when kids are out of school for the summer. It’s making my shoulders fuse to my neck just thinking about it.

Really I wish I didn’t feel guilty about saying no because I would just be saying no to individual pieces of work as they were offered to me anyway so really I’m saving them a lot of trouble asking me about it. Feeling guilty is just another way I am telling myself that whatever I care about personally isn’t worth it and that makes me sad because if I don’t care about it (which I do) then who will?!

Now I’m feeling guilty about that.

As for the NaNoWriMo; this year seems to be shaping up rather successfully I’m over 16,000 and will be at 17,000 tonight if I can drag my mind from the depths of distraction when I get home and crank out another 900 words before I pass out from exhaustion…that reminds me I have to go to the gym tonight too.

Or is that just what I’ll tell myself?

If those babies think they're getting his job they have another thing coming!

I woke up today with the sad news that Andy Rooney died. Actually it was a prediction I made when he retired. After all Steve Jobs died pretty shortly after his retirement too. The message of this year I suppose would be retirement kills! Keep working!

But really the heart and soul of this post is the fact that I want Andy Rooney’s job. What could be more apropo? I’m a writer, I can complain. In fact I propose that I can complain better or at least with more depth than he did if for no other reason than I am closer in age to this technology mongering generation that I was born into–or in most cases in spite of.

I know more about and can complain about the following;

1. Being subjected to 5.5 hours of Call of Duty at a time by a ten-year-old who thinks the world revolves around his butt.

2. People who think I know nothing about music from the 60′s/70′s because of my age. This can also be coupled with an ironic reversal of Rooney-ism about how people think I’m younger than I actually am and I get tired of it.

3. People who use their DVR’s to fast forward through commercials. Now I’m no materialist but a good commercial every now and again brings me back to the nostalgia of watching movies on TV when I was little.

4. The smart phone is probably the dumbest piece of electronic non-sense I own. All I wanted was a phone with better reception. Why do I need to be able to check my e-mail anywhere? It takes up enough of my time as it is just being on the computer. And don’t bother telling me I’ll wonder how I lived without it. I really won’t.

These are not meant to be things that Andy Rooney would have complained about but they are meant to be the next generation–a continuation if you will–of all the things that he would have probably agreed with me about if he were younger. I only wish I had figured out how great his job was years ago and then I could steered my life in more of a curmudgeonly direction early on instead of all this optimism.

R.I.P. Andy

P.S. Don’t you just hate it when people use RIP as an excuse for a tribute?

Every time I start to write something I feel has potential or is really exciting to me I want to write more in other areas (usually this blog). It’s interesting to me because my greatest fear has always been running out of words or ideas. I know this isn’t a particularly uncommon fear among writers but it has always been proven wrong in my life. I also have found that the accidental plagiarism lessens the more I write. Writing in itself is a practice as well as a craft. It can get better but fortunately you are never finished with it it keeps growing and changing the more you do it.

Hopefully this is encouraging to some of you who are participating in NaNoWriMo or whatever other project you have been involved in.

It’s been a year since I was 26.

It’s been a year since I started training as a CNA

It’s been a year since I finished my novel

It’s been a year since last NaNoWriMo

It’s been a year since I gave up on going to teach English in China (that would have been an attempt to join another cult)

It’s been a year since I took pictures for the internet

It’s been a year since I saw one of my best friends

It’s been a year since I set writing goals

Let’s see what this year brings…

1. Granola is not complicated. All you really put into it is oats and oat flour.

2. Oat flour is not expensive or complicated. All you have to do is put a cup of oats in a food processor.

3. Make or use thick syrup for the crunchiest granola. Either make a simple syrup with less water than sugar or use Agave or maple syrup. Personally I use Demerara sugar which is from a succulent plant and is not bleached. It’s a lot sweeter than cane sugar and won’t burn in the oven like brown sugar can.

4. Use coconut oil instead of regular vegetable oil. Unless you’re allergic to coconuts of course.

5. MOST IMPORTANTLY: Do not bake your granola for more than an hour! Seriously oats are fragile and don’t take that long to toast. I never toast mine for more than 20 minutes and that is with stirring breaks every five to ten minutes.

Here is the recipe I have come up with recently:

4 cups oats
4 cups oat flour
1/2 cup or less Coconut oil or other vegetable oil (I wouldn’t use olive oil)
1/2 cup granulated sugar (or thick syrup like maple or agave)
1/2 cup or less water (only if making your own syrup)
Fixin’s (that’s the fun part and can include nuts, chocolate chips, dried fruits or anything else you could possibly dream up)
If making your own syrup do this first: Pour 1/2 cup sugar into a small pot and place on stove. Turn burner up on high and stir in water a little at a time until sugar starts to dissolve. Boil syrup until all granules have dissolved and bubbles start to look like caramel.

If using Agave or Maple syrup skip that and do this: Mix syrup, oats and oat flour (see tips above for easy and cheap oat flour) in a large mixing bowl with the oil until all oats are coated. Preheat oven to 350 and spread a thin layer of oats onto a baking sheet. If using chocolate chips this is when you would add them.

Every ten minutes take oats out and stir until the toasted oats are mixed around with the less toasted oats. Never bake granola for more than 20 minutes they do continue to toast after you take them out to cool. When they are your desired color take them out and mix in fixins and let cool before storing.

Happy granola!

Share your tips and tricks below.

Banana Plants!
My most recently acquired group is six banana plants which live in my front yard. Now, I know what you’re thinking, “You’re in Zone 7 you know you’ll have to overwinter those!” Not so, my friends, for these are the rare California Gold banana plants which will not only survive in zone 7 with no frost protection but will also fruit here! OK so I probably am being overly optimistic but it’s a garden it makes me happy and what’s the fun of gardening if you can’t be a little optimistic? These seriously are fast growing little plants I planted them a little under 2 weeks ago and they’ve already got new growth!

The brown spots are perfectly normal and I’m letting the leaves fall off naturally because I want to see the whole process taking place. I went to Thailand and saw wild bananas growing there but I wasn’t there long enough to really experience the process. But I do know that they grow in clay there and they survive the dry and rainy seasons. So who knows what will happen? Anyway bananas have a really interesting growth structure. They are not really trees they are herbs which is one reason I decided to try to grow them. What we see as a trunk is really leaves grouped together and growing from the root which is tuber-like. The challenge is trying to get a type of banana that will fruit here in America. I’m not into growing plants that are just ornamental so bananas are not something I thought I would ever grow. Most varieties are either not for my zone and usually don’t start until Zone 8 or they just have inedible fruit. But I had a dream about banana plants and knew I had to do something. So I researched until I found a cold hardy banana which will grow in Zone 7 and fruit! I bought mine from Greenearth Publishing and they also have other varieties and a book about starting your own greenhouse business. The only other place I’ve heard of someone getting Cali Gold’s is on Ebay auctions. A lot of mistaken people out there are still debating whether or not this is a truly cold hardy plant even though one of the first things when you Google Cali Gold is this post by someone who has one fruiting directly after a frost–with no leaves!

Time will tell and even if they never fruit I still love ‘em!

It just seems like I could accept by now that I cannot finish a novel during NANOWRIMO. My first novel (Youth For the Mission on Amazon for Kindle) was started after NANO and finished before the next one.

But I have embarked on yet another writing year and also on a crazy new life path that I’m sure will fuel the creative juices that have been so lacking before.

So…onward and upward to the NANO!

Cut to last summer when I had the job from hell as a live-in nanny. I did almost all the cooking during this job which lasted 3 months. Something miraculous happened though I found out that when I wasn’t cooking for an ungrateful 11 year old boy who didn’t want to eat anything I cooked I really liked it. I especially like learning to make foreign things that are really cheap to make even though they’re expensive to buy. Before I went to work there I already knew how to make hummos and that was just about it. When I came back from that job I set out to learn how to make other things. First on the list was Pad Thai. Now I have learned how to make Pad Thai sauce as well.

I don’t, like some people, find cooking therapeutic but I like being able to control how much sodium and sugar and fat and which ingredients I am actually eating. I’m also finding that most things that taste complicated aren’t really hard to make. I’m expanding my garden this year as part of my personal green campaign (actually I haven’t really called it that but it seems appropriate) so I’m hoping that many more things I learn to cook this year will include things that I have grown as well.

One problem I have with cooking is that I often can’t eat all of it fast enough. I’ve got frozen Thai noodles right now waiting for me to get over a cold so I won’t choke when I eat them.

I got seeds yesterday so my garden is here it’s just not in the ground yet. So that’s exciting. Before this turns into a post that reads like a letter to someone I barely know I’ll go and see what else this life has in store for me.

The truth is I still don’t like it black. What I do like is the health benefits of not drinking a cup full of sugar first thing in the morning. Coffee used to dehydrate me terribly I never thought for a minute that it was because of the creamer. Also I don’t get a sugar rush. Other things about black coffee I like are low calories. A cup of black coffee only has 10 calories but with my flavors it can range anywhere from 35 to 135 depending on how much I used that day.

Also there’s no temptation for me to supplement my entire breakfast with just coffee. The sugar content of coffee flavors make me feel like I’m eating when I’m not and it sometimes would make me wait two or even three hours after I woke up to eat breakfast and there was more than one day when I would suddenly realize I forgot about breakfast all together!

I’m not saying that if I ever go to Starbucks again I will be drinking black coffee there but I can say that I am definitely a black coffee drinker at home every morning. Hopefully I’ll get used to it.

So my final decision is Greens+ for best taste and most complete formula. Even though it’s not vegan it has no yeast, dairy or egg products and no fillers. It was also one of the few that had probiotics. I’m excited to try the other flavors since the original tasted so good. The most important thing is to find healthy things that I will stick to every day. This is definitely one of them!