Too Many Books

Do you guys know about The Examiner? It's a pretty awesome city-specific website. In addition to news and weather, you can search articles written by experts called (obviously enough) Examiners . I just checked out the Louisville Writing Careers Examiner , a gal named Jessica Hastings. (A few of you will love to know that her most recent post was on Writing the Breakout Novel by Donald Maas.) The Examiner is hiring. There are a list of topic available in your city of choice, or you can add a topic that interests you if you don't find your preference listed. I submitted a bio, some personal information, and a writing sample over the weekend, and hope to become a First Time Mom Examiner, or the Louisville Book Examiner. I have no idea what the pay scale is, but I figured it was worth looking into. A little suplemental income never hurt anyone expecting a baby! Let me know if you're heard anything about The Examiner -- or if you have tried out the website before, ...

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.)

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...

Wall. head. bangspice. It has officially been a Monday. I have, in fact, a case of the Mondays. Perhaps I am feeling a bit surly due to the state of utter failure that is my NCAA tournament bracket. I may as well have wiped my arse with the five dollars I spent to enter my own damn pool at work. The Kansas Jayhawks can run and flock themselves. In other news, I have learned that my biggest failure as a writer is point of view. Apparently, even when writing in third-person omniscient, one cannot freely head-hop her way through a manuscript, even if it sounds really, really cool in her own head. It only confuses and annoys readers. Now, rather than throwing in the towel, I'm trying to compile a list of references so that I can become a better writer. If anyone has reccomended remedial reading on POV, please leave a shout-out for me in the comments. Also, if anyone can think of good examples of novels written in omniscient third person POV, leave me those titles as well. My...

Thank God. (Virus 2010: defeated.) I was starting to get the shakes from having quit social networking almost cold-turkey. And, boy did I need to get out a good blog post this afternoon. I can always tell when I'm feeling particularly rant-y. My fingers fly over the keyboard with ease. I don't think twice about what I am going to type or how witty I will sound -- and usually, if you'll excuse my vanity, I think these posts end up being some of my best. Work has me a little stressed out today. I am so thankful for my lunch hour -- and that I am now sitting at home (that was for the benefit of the suits, you know, letting them know that I am not in the office as I compose this blog entry) sipping leftover morning coffee. And perhaps letting out a primal scream or two. To be honest, the marriage of my former bank and my current bank hasn't been that bad. Yesterday was kind of like our wedding day, and now we're on our honeymoon -- already bickering like an ...

In the 1999 article, Virtual Reality: The Perils of Seeking a Novelist's Facts in Her Fiction, Sue Miller -- one of my favorite authors -- discusses her perpetual annoyance with those who ask to what degree her novels are autobiographical. It's bothersome, she believes, because it is "a kind of potential diminishment" of her work, and implies that it is "possibly no more than the stringing together of episodes lifted directly from my life, or from the lives of fascinating characters I have known." Then, she has this to say: For the true writer, though, however close the events may be to his life, there is some distance, some remove, that allows for the shaping of the work. The shaping, after all, is what it's all about. Every reader can sense the difference between a writer who embodies meaning through the events he describes and the writer who seems simply mired in those events. It is that struggle for meaning that lets the writer escape the tyra...