Sunday Gratitudes #3

I’m grateful for…

🐾 – Getting more job applications sent in and more blog posts written and scheduled.

🐾 – Being nominated for a Liebster Award! That is good stuff for attracting new followers. I found several new and awesome blogs to follow through the post that nominated me.

🐾 – B. being a healthy, alert, and energetic dog again!

🐾 – Pasta with a goat cheese butter sauce. Amazing home-made dinner choice.

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Beautiful Bamboo

I just watched a TED Talk video that blew my mind.

I’m not just saying that. This video just obliterated everything I’d previously thought about with regard to buildings and building materials in my novel, and I recommend that everyone watch it. In Bali, Elora Hardy has put together a team of artisan builders that are making the most amazing houses out of bamboo.

Bamboo.

Liebster Award!

I’d like to thank Jessica M of ellDimensional for nominating me for a Liebster Award!

The Liebster Award is a way of recognizing and discovering other bloggers, and speaking as someone with a background in social media marketing I really appreciate it. It’s networking and being nice at the same time! I’ve seen nomination posts before and usually made a point of browsing the lists of links for new blogs to follow.

And now follows the questionnaire. I’ll present 11 facts about myself, then answer my nominator’s personal 11 questions, and write 11 new questions for whoever I choose to nominate. Nominees aren’t obligated to respond, just know that I think your blog is cool.

Wednesday Words of Wisdom #2 — Character Development

“Each of us is born with a box of matches inside us but we can’t strike them all by ourselves.” ~ Laura Esquivel

“I barely knew I had skin before I met you.” ~ Sarah Waters

“How do you solve a problem like Maria?” ~ The Sound of Music

~

I love making characters. For a few years I was pretty heavily involved in a tumblr RP (role playing) community that was populated mostly with OCs (original characters), which was fun and unusual. Fandoms often don’t tolerate additions to the casts of canon characters with all that much grace – and having seen Mary Sues, Gary Stus, and poorly thought out self-inserts aplenty in every fandom I’ve participated in, I can understand why. But in this more flexible environment the setting had more canonic establishment than anything else and we were free to populate it with whoever (or whatever, even) we wanted.

There were at least four upsides to the way this worked.

Daily Writing Progress #3

Tuesday, January 19th

• Project: Private journal
  • Word Count: 587
• Project: Untitled short story
  • Total Word Count: 1199
  • New Words: 557
• Thoughts: Words, words.
• Tomorrow’s Goal: COVER LETTER. While that job post is still online.

Wednesday, January 20th

• Project:  Untitled short story
  • Total Word Count: 1419
  • Word Count: 625
• Project:  Words of Wisdom post
  • Word Count: 625
• Project: New cover letter
  • Word Count; 706
• Thoughts: Yes cover letter! Some of it was repurposed and drastically edited from earlier drafts — I’m not even fussed. Also, this keeping track of all my word counts thing is a real challenge! But I think it’s a positive thing.
• Tomorrow’s Goal: Maybe write another post or something? At the very least, finish editing the cover letter and send it.

Sunday Gratitudes #2

This week, why not throw in a “why Sunday Gratitudes” quote and article link.

“For example, researchers in one 2003 study randomly assigned one group of study participants to keep a short weekly list of the things they were grateful for, while other groups listed hassles or neutral events. Ten weeks later, the first group enjoyed significantly greater life satisfaction than the others.” ~ The New York Times

I’m grateful for…

🐕 – Our dog finally having a diagnosis, the right medication, and is eating again! I cannot even imagine what parents with sick kids go through.

🐕 – Getting enough rain lately that I’ve seen water running in street gutters even when it’s not actively raining. And seeing things on the side of the road trying to be green.

🐕 – The 20 people who are following my  blog!

🐕 – Finally making myself remove Candy Crush, Candy Crush Soda Saga, Candy Crush Jelly whatever, and Cookie Jam on my phone. I deleted them and rediscovered sudoku. 

Daily Writing Progress #2

Friday, January 15th

• Missed this day because the dog was sick, and associated craziness.

Saturday, January 16th

• Missed this day because the dog was sick, and associated craziness.
• Tomorrow’s Goal: I’d like to post something this week.

Monday Musing #2 – Visualizing

“I’m just thinking about, for my novel, all this would be underwater.” ~ Me, riding through San Francisco

~

My novel, Growing Magic, is set far enough into the future where magic has replaced technology that people have more or less forgotten what the world was like. Now, geography is not my strong suit  but I’ve sketched out some maps. One of the features of this “new” world is that the sea level is much higher. I don’t know if this is what the Earth will look like in a thousand years according to science’s best guess, but I was looking at a topographical map while drawing it and the rest I’m chalking up to “because magic.” This includes the two new continents I threw in on a whim.

Sunday Gratitudes #1

I’m grateful for…

🍣  – Our big tall chocolate lab, B., getting to use one of his Christmas presents for the first time. It’s a a stand for his food bowl so he no longer has to bend down so much to eat at the apartment.

🍣  – Getting some bills paid.

🍣  – That I took out the trash, scooped out the litter box, and swept up the apartment so we are now overflow-, stink-, and dustbunny-free. (And by dust I mean dog hair.)

🍣  – THREE YEAR ANNIVERSARY!!!

Daily Writing Progress #1

This post was inspired by the Daily Writing progress segment on Writing And Musing. And another thing: Growing Magic is my NaNoWriMo novel that I’m rewriting.

~

Sunday, January 10th

• Project: Words of Wisdom blog post
  • Word Count: 798
• Project: Growing Magic outline
  • Word Count: 219, finished ch. 15
• Thoughts: I should look the blog post over again tomorrow, but it feels good to add more to the outline again.
• Tomorrow’s Goal: Introduce W in Growing Magic.

Monday, January 11th

• Project: Growing Magic outline
  • Word Count: 471, ch. 16
• Project: Private journal entry
  • Word Count: 743
• Thoughts: This 750words site could help me keep up a proper journal. (Oh no, is it a paid thing and I’m just on a 30 day trial…)
• Tomorrow’s Goal: Add some of the bits with the witch that I’ve been musing on since relistening to A Hat Full Of Sky.