Apparently I have been on WordPress now for a full year. Sometimes I find it hard to believe that I started thinking about this a little over a year ago and I have been working toward MAKING it happen! Stuff will get written this year!

 

It is freezing cold here in Indiana, makes one want to curl up with a good book in front of the fireplace. Preferably, with a hot drink, or maybe many hot drinks, I may need one shortly. I have been working on some of my chapters, moving them to first person and it makes me want to engage more with the environment and the food and drink of the characters. For part of the story, they are on a starship for a long period of time and though I can compare it to life aboard a modern day submarine, I am trying to think of ways that it may be vastly different.

Questions to think about:

If you were on a starship, what menu item would you most want to have served?

What are the official sanctioned drinks and which ones would the crew and/or passengers sneak aboard?

Writers write and authors publish. Well that’s one of the many things I have heard about writing over time now that I have decided that maybe I should share some of what I am writing. For a long time, my writings were for me, and only me. Once in a great while I might share a portion of something I wrote with someone, but that was quite rare. Now I am learning more about how this whole publishing thing works and finding out that there are tons of other writers out there just like me.

I have started to feel like a writer; as opposed to writing was something I did now and again. Now I am writing more frequently (and consistently) and am pursuing the goal of publishing something. I keep asking myself, why? It’s not the money, though that would be nice, do I really feel compelled to share these stories with others? Apparently yes, I do want to share these stories and talk about them, talk to other people and see what they think about them and the best way to do that is to get these stories “out there”.

In 2015 I decided I was a writer. Now in 2016, I want to become an Author!

Hi again,

Yes, it has been awhile since I have posted anything. The Holidays snuck up on me and also threw me a few curve balls. BUT, all is well now and I am in the middle of editing multiple works at the same time. I have recently made a crazy decision to put the main story that I am working on into first person which involves some major editing. I think it will pan out in the end but we’ll see. I know this blog needs work and images, so I will try to get to that in the next few days. Are you ready for 2016?

Happy New Year!

I have read many answers to that question – What is Science Fiction?

Science fiction has both science and fiction brought together in an interesting way. I have found that a lot of the science fiction that I really like makes only a few changes in the science and then follows the story to the logical conclusion. In my stories there are space ships traveling in space, but it takes place in the beginning of colonization efforts and long duration space travel. People are still people and there are no significant aliens. (Ok, there are some cute, fuzzy aliens, but they are critters, not people.)

Halfway through the NaNoWriMo event, I am debating on what happens next. Trying to think ahead, what are the possible problems of space travel that don’t involve propulsion or the crew going crazy because they are sick of being around each other? These are the questions that keep me up at night.

 

#NaNoWriMo takes place starting on November first and runs through the month, finishing on November 30. The idea is to write a novel in 30 days. I have done this twice before and have signed up again for 2015. The past two years I found it difficult, but achievable. Here’s hoping that this year works much the same way.  NaNoWriMo is all about word counts, just getting it down on paper, not editing, just writing.  Creating that first rough, sometimes really rough, draft is the starting point for most of us. I am trying to get a handle on editing my current manuscript, a relic from 2013, but may have to put it away to focus on writing come November.

Tonight we watched the new trailer for #TheForceAwakens and my son asked if the movie is ready now, or are they still working on it? Thinking about how long it takes something to go from start to finish made me wonder if they are still refining a few small details or just working on distribution? My work from 2013 is still in progress and looks to remain “in progress” for some time yet. Something like Star Wars takes years to create and that is AFTER they came up with the story.  Makes me editing my little story seem almost fast.

For more story creations or info about writing, look up http://www.Nanowrimo.org. November is fast approaching!

I am creating a new list, a new 101 things I would like to accomplish over the next few years and it’s funny, but I am having trouble coming up with things I want to do. I have salvaged a few items from the previous list, but in general I don’t have any big plans or ideas.  I need to start small, my last list was about starting things, and that was great. Now ‘Maintain Pace’ or ‘Keep Going’ isn’t really an agenda item one can check off and I don’t want to completely repeat my previous list. I enjoyed having fires in the fireplace but don’t really see the point in putting that on the list again. If I stop having fires in the fireplace, maybe I will add it back on, but I want to add some things that are new for me. What do I want to try, make or do? It’s harder than I thought it would be.

Some things I add to the list because I think I should. Exercise and such is a good thing, I should do it. I should make/buy a compost bin, that would be a good thing to do. Trying to balance the list with a mix of things I should do and things I want to do. I did list ‘Take all my vacation days’ per year, we’ll see how that goes.

Writing should have a significant section of this new list, now that I have gotten hooked on writing and come up with some crazy stories to tell.  Reading also has a place on my list. I read over 52 books for my last list, I will try to do that again.

If you have any suggestions, let me know! I am always open to new ideas and new reads!

A little over 1000 days ago, I set out to accomplish 101 tasks. Some had multiple components, like where one task was to read 54 books I hadn’t read before. Others involved baking, making, quitting – yes that was a task!, sorting through clothes, jewelry and shoes. Many of the tasks were experiences – make a fire, roast marshmallows, plant a garden.

I know this is a fad of sorts, a place between to do list and bucket list, but I thought it would be fun. And it was. I did many of the things on my list and though I did not accomplish it all, I found it interesting to see what I had said I wanted to do and why I did not do some of those things. (I didn’t finish the list by the time line I set.)

So now, looking back on it, I see it as an assessment. Here is what I thought about it in the beginning. It is amazing how fast it went.

I am keeping a list of 101 things I’d like to accomplish in the next 1001 days.

For me, 1001 days (2.75 years) is a happy medium between writing a “to-do” list and keeping a bucket list. It’s a way to dream big and make regular progress toward meeting those longer term goals.

Looking at the list of tasks, my goals are starting to emerge. Here goes!  Beginning Tuesday, January 1, 2013  – Ending Tuesday, September 29, 2015

Selections from the list:

34. Have a fondue party
35. Watch a sunset
36. Watch a sunrise
37. Go to New York City
38. Go to Chicago

I didn’t have the fondue party, but I did the other four. I have had a fondue party in the past and it was fun, but the timing never quite worked out.  I did enjoy the sunrise and sunsets, and the travel to Chicago and New York. I also tried to appreciate the little things in life a bit more conscientiously.

50. Make my own ice cream – This was fun, and I was able to try it out a few times.

There were other things on the list that I failed miserably at. I wanted to make bread from scratch, make an original painting, learn to knit, make a wreath and learn to brew a batch of beer. I did try knitting a bit and looked into brewing beer and wreath making, but I still did not accomplish these things.

I did manage to see a live theater production, and a current movie in the movie theater. Those were wonderful and I was glad I did them. I enjoy movies and theater and don’t get out enough to see them often.

Anyway as I think up a new list, I thought I would share my thoughts about this format. Go out and try new things, at least a few. Think about what you really want. What are you willing to put some effort into and really TRY?

Do I care if no one ever reads/buys my work and/or thinks it’s terrible? I might care….a bit. But it won’t stop me from writing. I have very rarely shown my work to anyone, ever, so how much different could it be? One of the people I used as a character in a story I wrote forever ago is gone, and I have only shown a few people my writing in 20 years. I think I would like people to like what I write, or to find it interesting, discover a new perspective, that sort of thing, but if they don’t love it, that will be ok. It’s not ready yet, so who knows! I think I have been dwelling on the fact that none of my writing is “Ready” yet and as I was compiling my handwritten pages into files and my typed pages into online files, it was funny to see how much I have written over the years. SO, sometime in the next 12 months I am going to publish…..something. I have some ideas; there are a few things that could be made ready sooner, so those may be first. Maybe something I write for NaNoWriMo will edge them out and that is ok too.
Really, in the long run, this is all just for fun, and to get the stories out of my head. I am also learning a lot and there is something to be said for that. Some people play softball or golf, I write.

In all the books I read about writing, they suggest reading widely, both in genre and out of genre. Try something new, something old, something borrowed…… Here are some of my favorite Science Fiction Authors.

Orson Scott Card is still one of my favorites, it really doesn’t matter what you think of the author, I focus on his writing and it has had a major impact on how I view the world and how I think about things. Some of the constructs, the questions he poses in his works still resonate with me years after I first read his works.
Frank Herbert and Douglas Adams also were early finds in my life. Heinlein, (Do I even need to write down his first name? Ok fine, it’s Robert.) Ray Bradbury, HG Wells and Aldous Huxley too. Kurt Vonnegut I found fascinating, though I would not think of him first as a science fiction writer.
I found Dan Simmons, Neal Stephenson and William Gibson later in life. I have toyed with Asimov for much of my life and though I highly respect him, his work is good for me, something I should read/defiantly need to read, but doesn’t make me want to curl up with his books.

Carl Sagan’s Contact really stuck with me and I was mostly ok with how the movie turned out. The book was of course better, but I understood why they did what they did for the movie. I did read the original (Mary Shelley’s) Frankenstein, which can be counted as perhaps the first science fiction novel and having seen countless movie versions of it, the book was such a departure from what I was expecting at the time.

Ursula LeGuin is another one that I discovered early and then found a whole backlog of books I had not read. Does Margaret Atwood write Science fiction? I think some of her work surely qualifies and I have read a bunch of it. I am a big fan of her work. A Wrinkle in Time was probably one of the earliest science fiction stories I read, at that age I read more fantasy than science fiction. (I still like fantasy today.)
There are many more books and authors on my “To Read” list, I know I need to read Asimov again, there are many books by the authors listed above that I still haven’t read, even though I have enjoyed their work, I need to read more of their work.
Do we, as authors and writers of all kinds, seek to find authors we can relate to? Or worlds that we can relate to? I should read more widely, read different genres and stretch myself. I have read some YA dystopian fiction; I guess it would be classified as science fiction. The Hunger Games and Divergent were well done and very accessible. Matched and the rest of that series I read most of as well.
Scott Westerfeld’s Uglies and the series that followed I found fascinating because it was unlike anything I had ever read. (OK, it was a lot like that one Twilight Zone episode #12 looks just like you, or whatever the number was) but other than that, the world he created was wonderful and vibrant and horrible at the same time.
I have read some romance and some mystery, some “thriller” and whatever do you call the girl with the dragon tattoo, that series was disturbing but so well done.
SO, I am looking for suggestions, any thoughts? What should I read, what are your recommendations?