Too Many Books

I'm getting a little lost in a world of diapers and daycare. So I decided to start writing again. I've revamped my WIP and it feels amazing to work on it. I struggle with every sentence. I have this issue with perfection; I don't just want to spill it out. Stooopid. Before I got pregnant (or maybe while I was, I don't remember) I had an idea that I felt would take my WIP to a better place: a mysterious narrator, with a payoff for the reader at the end. So, I'm working with this idea, and playing with the ways to include narration without overtaking the "present action" (I'm generally a past-tense writer, so saying "present action" always seems funny and false to me.) And, I'm trying to be a more scene-oriented writer. When I read, I find it very irritating when a writer chooses to skip time without so much as a paragraph break. Yet when I look at the chunks of text I've already written, I find I do it, too. So, I'm off...

Ahh... I'm reading the best book right now. The main characters are named David and Laurel -- the same names as two of my very own characters in my will-she-really-ever-finish-writing-it WIP. Anyway. The book is called THE GIRL WHO STOPPED SWIMMING and it has been likened to THE LOVELY BONES. It's fantastic so far -- 85 pages in, and I'm. in. love. I'm off to read more, but before I go... I haven't really bragged about the sheer awesomespice number of books I've read in 2010 for awhile. It's time to share: With a goal of 100, I'm on book number 54! While I apparently threw out my writing goals along with the used-pregnancy tests I took (hubs said it was just icky-weird to save those as mementos -- also, is that like thowing out the baby with the bath water? -- I never understood that cliche. Anyway. This parenthetical aside has spiraled out of control.) it appears that I just might succeed in my reading goals this year. I rock at something...

Doesn't it figure that as soon as I publicly announced the shelving of my WIP, my first novel, that I would have a breakthrough with it? Oh, the sweet (and, literally, I mean sweet, wonderful, making-me-smile ) irony! I've had a writing breakthrough. I'll be sharing it with you now: I've been writing in third person, so to distance myself from my mc, Laurel, who is very (probably too much so) similiar to me. However, it's been difficult to figure out some of the technique -- was I in deep POV or not? Was I writing with a narrator? It seemed so, because if I wasn't then there may have been a hell of a lot of author intrusion... and wait... If there is a narrator, who is the narrator? Why does the narrator matter? Why would this narrator tell the story? Do I need to know that? Do I even need to address it at all? So, anyway. I had all these concerns. Legitimate ones. Concerns that had me wondering whether or not I should throw in the towel and work on some...

Well. I'm thinking about shelving my current WIP for awhile. (Oh, wait. Two monts without real progress? I think I already have shelved it.) So, I'd like to start writing something new. But, what? Writers, how do you come up with your story ideas? Non-writers, what kinds of books do you like to read? What plots appeal to you? Anyone at all: if you have a suggestion or an idea for a book, leave it in the comments! Don't you sometimes hear about a certain situation and think, that would make the best book or movie? Do tell! (I know, if it's so easy, why don't I just come up with my own idea?!) (Come on, I'm preggers. Throw me a bone.)

Vacationgate 2010 Hubs has decided to go with my family and me to Destin next month! (He says he told me that he "would go" on the day I told him I was pregnant, which was smack in the middle of Vacationgate, when hubs did not want to go... nor did he want me to go and stay in my parents' condo for free. If you'll recall, I was going to go regardless.) So, I booked our condo today. Instead of me going for free, hubs and I are both going and spending $749.00 for the condo alone. Hubs didn't want to be left out after all. But, you know. It's cool. This will be our last babyless vacation. Who needs new windows anyway? 2010 Reading Challenge May was a productive reading month. I've now read a total of 34 books this year. If I can read 16 books in the month of June, I'll be halfway to my goal of 100 books for this calendar year. Word. (Or, should I say... words?) WIP-Progess Still slim to none since learning I am "with child" eight-...

I didn't puke this morning! Hooray!! Maybe morning sickness is becoming a thing of the past. Oh, that would just be fantastic -- as opposed to yesterday, when I hurled up cold water -- which was all I had in my system. Moving on. I'm pretty such I'm probably kicked out of my crit group, since I haven't posted a chapter or completed any crits in a full month. I don't know why I've put writing on the back burner since finding out about my pregnancy... but that's what I've done. Sure, I've been a little more tired than before -- and maybe a bit distracted -- but it's not like I'm repainting a nursery yet, or stocking up on onesies, or stalking every known baby name website. (Well, okay. Maybe I am doing the last one, you know, since hubs isn't a fan of  Simon Larter Murphy for a boy or Tina Lynn Murphy for a girl. Whatevs.) However, yesterday's Let's Talk Blogfest really got me salivating a bit. I think it's time for...

Update : Hubs obviously does not know about my blog. Or, if he does, he doesn't stalk it. Therefore, hubs did not get any rewards last night. Writerleigh: ( What? Amber Leigh Tidd Murphy still writes? Since when? And she's blogging about writing? Wait, hold the phone!) (Hey, enough sarcasm from you, dear followers. That'll do.) So, I've decided that one of my hugest fundamental flaws is a LACK of writing in scenes . Here's the thing: I don't know why the hell I have this problem. Maybe it's because I'm writing over large portions of time. (Chapter One currently spans a few years time, and details my MC's experiences when she is 5-8 years old.) I've decided to try to break down chapter one into scene sections. Also, I've decided that I might not make it backstory. Why can't it be present action? (I was inspired by Curtis Sittenfeld's THE MAN OF MY DREAMS. Her MC, Hannah Gavener, is fourteen years old in the first chapter, w...

Home alone on a Friday night, I've indulged in Moe's chicken nachos (not as good as Qdoba!) and the SATC movie. Unthinkably, I hadn't seen the entire film until tonight. In October of 2008, I watched the majority of it at my gal pal's house the morning after her bachelorette party -- didn't get to see it all because hubs came to pick me up about the time Big and Carrie were supposed to get married. Hubs had to take me to retrieve my car from some dank alley in downtown Louisville, as I'd cabbed it back to said girlfriend's place at the end of that night with the drunkest of them. In truth, my car was parked in a gated lot at my uncle-in-laws office. I'd  began that evening at a posh party for Underwired magazine, which hub's aunt and uncle also attended. While drinking free wine and eating fancy food, I met two fabulous lady writers, the wonderfully feministic Javacia Harris and the ever effervescent Maisy Fernandez Draper . I was the teensiest...

I haven't done jackspice since I found out I have a bun in the oven. I mean, I haven't even opened the document where my WIP lives -- not since last Wednesday, which I now refer to as the-last-day-I-lived-in-innocent-bliss. I'm so preoccupied -- already. Is this normal? I can't stop: thinking about baby names, touching my belly, weighing myself, staring at my belly, contemplating the absurd amount of housework there is to do before a living infant can move in here, reading about foods to eat, reading about foods not to eat, generally bitching due to a (not complete) lack of nicotine and caffeine, telling random people I'm pregnant, worrying about money, worrying about having a miscarriage, worrying about the baby not being healthy and wondering if I will crumble and feel like it is my fault if the baby isn't healthy, freaking out about the thought of giving birth, feeling anxious every time I cough, like something inside me might become...

Yesterday I posted my "day in the life" piece, but oddly enough -- it was not a Typical Tuesday. I took the afternoon off from work. I skipped out of the office bankbranch office ( office sounds so much cooler!) at 2:00. And literally, I skipped out. There is just something about free time which turns me into a giddy twelve-year-old girl. I came home and pounded out the afforementioned blog post. Then, I had to hit up the DMV to renew my tags and pay taxes on dear Bella (my cherry-red Pontiac Vibe) and her boyfriend Edward (hubs sporty blue Niassan Senta.) (Clearly, hubs has no idea that I've named his vehicle after an old man who loves jailbait. You know, I'm really not sure he'd be cool with it, either. Oh, wait -- I'm certain he wouldn't dig it.) Assuming there would be a torturous wait at the ever-bustling Department of Motor Vehicular Annoyance and Expense, I walked in with my story on my mind and my notebook in my purse. However, the a...

I've been feeling a little guilty lately. I think I'm sort of obsessed with my own blog. Seriously, I adore coming home for lunch in the middle of my workday. My plan is always to sit down and write. It's the perfect time to work. There are no distractions (other than the hungry rumble in my tummy) or reasons that I shouldn't be able to churn out a good amount of words before I head back to the world of checking account deposits and cash-in tickets. However, I find that when I come home for lunch, all I want to do is blog. My reader is full as a good girl's Christmas stocking, and then there's my own post -- just waiting to be written. Something alarmingly witty, for sure. Something that will generate the multiple comments I will hungrily read from my cell phone when I sneak out for a cigarette break at 4:00. So, I avoid the writing -- you know, of the fiction variety. I sit here, instead watching the text fill the blank screen of a New Po...

I should be writing. I mean, like, actually working on my manuscript. I feel like such a fraud. There are the excuses -- I just started a new job, American Idol was on last night and is on again tonight, my husband is looking over my shoulder (when he isn't hogging the laptop.) Then, there is the reality: in 2010, nothing has changed. I still don't write every day. I can't even churn out 500 little words with daily regularity. Here we are, 1/12 of the way through a new year, and I haven't really accomplished much at all in the I-wanna-be-a-writer department. The old Amber would call herself predictable and let the disappointment fester. Ohh, yeah. That's so me. There I went again, not following through on my promises to myself. I'll never change. I suck at life. But, do you know what I just said to the old Amber? I said, Shut up, old Amber. Who cares? It doesn't matter what you haven't done. Just start doing it. Now. I don't of...

I got my first spammy-anonymous comments today. I am not happy about this. I have no interest in seeing Miley Cyrus nude. If the commenter left a link about seeing Ryan Reynolds in the buff -- well, that might have been a different story. Anywho, I hope this does not become a regular occurance on my blog. I post enough smut on my own, and don't need the from some nameless commenter in that arena. Nor do I need viruses to infiltrate my computer. Stay away, H1N1 of the internet! Moving on. Many of my followers are the writerly type, and I so enjoy your tips and advice and reading about your journeys. I wish I had the focus to blog about writing every day. But, it's six days into the new year and I am not happy with a word I have written in 2010. (Well, except for the no kissy blogfest scene. I definitely dig that.) I was stressing about the middle of the book -- it was sagging, it was lacking something -- so after struggling through a few scenes I decided to abando...

Cozy up and let the sexual tension in: it's no kiss blogfest . (Note: scene written exclusively for no-kissy blogfest, but may just find its way into my WIP.) This scene takes place when my main character, Laurel, returns home from college for her fall break. She arrives in town too late to attend the play at her former high school -- but she and her best friend Paul stop by to inquire about the plans for the cast party. Paul is still in high school and has the "in" with the artsy crowd, but didn't perform in the school play because of commitments to Community Theatre.  Laurel's ex-boyfriend directed the play, and he and Laurel haven't seen each other since she left for college a few months before.      She and Paul walked toward the auditorium well after the lights had come up, just as the stars of the show were leaving, their stage make-up unnatural looking now under the harsh flourscent...

I'm off to a quick start on my quest to read 100 books in twenty ten; eighty pages into Donna Tartt's THE LITTLE FRIEND, which (as I just tweeted) is as good as slow sex. If only I could get the new year to give me a swift kick in the writing pants. I'm struggling with the middle section of my WIP, bogged down with lack of subplot/ juvenile writing/ Donna Tartt making me feel inferior. I just wrote one sentence, went back and read the first and last lines of each chapter, and exited out of the document. Stellar progress. I've been catching up on my google reader this evening, and was inspired by  Melane's post over at Chasing the Dream. She's decided to write everysingle day in 2010. Obviously, this is a fantastic quest. And, Melane is smart and didn't give herself some ridiculously steep word count to meet each day. 500 little words, because sometimes that's all that happens for her. That is okay. There is nothing wrong with that. I have th...

I wrote a little this morning. Not, mind you, a lot. I'm still about 6,000 words behind the approximate-Nano-worthy word count... oh, and that's only if you count the words I wrote before the beginning of November. I figure I'm allowed to cheat since I am not officially signed up, and I since I had less than 5,000 words written before the month stared, so it's not really that big of a deal. (Well, I would have a lot more than that if you counted the backstory about my main character's childhood, which I want to embed into the ms as a flashback, but I am not yet sure where or how I'm going to use it, so for now, it's not considered part of the word count.) <-- longest sentence ever. It feels good to admit that I am cheating. Although, let's be honest. It kind of sucks, too. I'm about to beat the living daylights out of my inner editor, who is being really mean to me lately, and telling me that my blog posts suck as much as my first draft. ...

I had never heard of Nano ( National Novel Writing Month ) until this year. For those of you who don't know, you better ask somebody. Well, since you asked, I'll tell you. It's insanity, that's what it is. The goal is to write 50,000 words - the equivalent of 175 pages -- in the month of November. I didn't sign up to officially participate, but figured I would write the approximate 1500 words per day in an attempt to finish my manuscript before Christmas. I thought it would be such great motivation, knowing that other writers out there were sitting at their laptops and pounding the keys, forming sentences and paragraphs and scenes. But I'm behind already and considering the wave of a white towel. I'd written 1500 words by this morning and proceeded to quickly delete the crappy half this afternoon. I think that November is a sucky month for writing - November 1st, particularly, is really not the best day to start doing anything. Whether you were in a ...

I consider myself pretty driven, career wise. I graduated college in four years despite transferring schools twice. I've moved up the bank-ladder to reach a management position in three short years. I certainly push myself to excel. I am trying to understand my lack of motivation in nearly every other area of my life. First, there are the friendships I have all but abandoned. Yes, I've gotten better about trying to have monthly get-togethers with my college/restaurant and highschool/girl groups of friends. However, I've always been more of a one-on-one type. There are two friends, in particular, who I haven't seen since January. I keep promising myself to remember they are only a phone call away. I need to recognize that being a little emotionally exhausted after work isn't an excuse to come home every night and plant myself on the couch, and that weekends were created for more than just football and loads of laundry. Next, there's my house. There are pile...

It has been one week and four days since I've last written a word. Well, I have written plenty of words -- on this blog, on facebook, at work, in my checkbook register, and with the electronic pens at Speedway and Kroger and Walgreens and such, after entering my pin number. But I have not written a word of my yet-to-be-titled-and-properly-worked-out novel in eleven days, or two hundred and sixty four hours. I do, however, have the perfect opening line of what will some day become my query letter when I look to get an agent; you know, the moment in time just before I'm published and bankrupted by libel. So... here it is, the opening line: Laurel Lancaster's closet is over-full of skeletons. Damn. It sounds so much cooler in my head than it looks on the page. Laurel Lancaster's closet is overly full of skeletons? Laurel Lancaster's closet is overflowing of skeletons? Laurel Lancaster's cloest is overflowing with skeletons? Laurel Lancaster's ...