New Books for my Birthday!

My birthday was this past weekend (the 23rd, for those of exacting curiosity) and my geeky bookworm side was indulged to the max. Witness below:

On the left, you see 3 books that I purchased just today from Austin’s wonderful BookPeople store with a gift card from my friend Nicholas. I picked a good mix: a modern sci-fi, an epic fantasy, and of course a book all about dragons. I’m eager to dive into them, but my reading attention is currently taken up by the other half of the picture above.

On the afternoon of my birthday, the doorbell rang, a box was delivered, I near broke my back picking it up expecting something lighter, and then I open it. The ENTIRE Sword of Truth series by Terry Goodkind. Sent by none other than my awesome boyfriend, who gets bonus points for being clever and absolutely surprising me. See, I’d first stumbled on this series when I chanced to watch an episode of Legend of the Seeker and got hooked. I found out it was based on this series, which I’d been meaning to read for awhile anyway. I got the first one from the library, thoroughly enjoyed it, and requested the 2nd one, which was checked out but they could put on hold for me when it came back in. And then I waited. And waited, and waited. Longest library hold EVER. I commiserated with my boyfriend on the long wait more than once (he, too, is a fan of the series), and he decided to end my wait and make me squeal girlishly in birthday book excitement all in one fell swoop.

I’m halfway through book 2, Stone of Tears – witness the crease down the spine – and the bookworm inside me is rubbing its hands together maniacally in anticipation of tackling the rest of this haul.

NaNoWriMo

NaNoWriMo: National Novel Writing Month: http://www.nanowrimo.org

Well, it’s official. I’ve signed up for this madness. Starting on November 1st, I will attempt to write at least 50,000 words of a novel over the course of the following 30 days. If you figure that one page has about 250 words, that works out to about 6-7 pages each day, which doesn’t seem quite as intimidating. I have an idea and rough outline in mind, and strangely enough it’s not going to be of the science fiction or fantasy bent, but a bit more true to life. It’ll still be fiction, but will be set in current times, and be about a very real-world issue for this particular character. Right now I’m leaning towards writing it in first person, even though I know that will bring the inevitable ‘is this about you?’ questions. We’ll see. It will be an interesting exercise, in many ways.

I’ll be posting word count updates on the NaNoWriMo site, so if you’d like to track my progress (and possibly chivvy me along occasionally) you can do so here: http://www.nanowrimo.org/eng/user/522485

Any one else out there onboard for this crazy ride?

MUSES theatre project

Here in Austin there’s a little annual theatre event called MUSES. In it, the Vestige Group takes over a house for a unique kind of performance. They take pictures of every room in the house and send those out to playwrights, who then write and submit a 5-7 minute scene or monologue to take place in one of the rooms. 10-15 scenes are chosen, then casting and rehearsals take place very quickly, and roughly a month later theatre-goers can share in this very interesting live performance experience. The limited-size audience is broken up into smaller groups, and go room to room to witness and sometimes participate in these scenes.

This year, the Vestige Group decided to use only Austin playwrights and writers. I heard about all this through the Austin Writers Meetup and decided to try my hand at stage writing. Below you’ll find a PDF of the short script I wrote (a monologue) as well as the pictures from the house that inspired this scene. Scenes were only due on the 23rd, so we’re still waiting to hear which scenes will be chosen for actual production. Fingers crossed.

Picture 1 | Picture 2 | Scene: Negative Space

**UPDATE: My scene was sadly not selected for production out of the 50+ submitted. Ah well. I still consider it a good writing exercise.

Vacation

Tomorrow I head to sunny (hopefully) Florida for a week to visit my sister in West Palm Beach. It’s to be a week of relaxtion, girl-time, beach-time, and ideally writing time when my sister is at work. I’m taking a bunch of books on writing, my laptop loaded with all of my current writing projects, and I’ll be in a nice lakeview apartment with a balcony and a puppy for company.

If this doesn’t kick my muse back into action, I’m not sure what will.

April Poetry Project

April is National Poetry Month, and for 2009 I thought I would do a special project for it: write one poem every day for the entire month. I’ll be posting a poem every day over at my library on Pathetic Poets Society, and the ones I think are particularly good will get blog facetime here at Myths & Memoirs.

Follow my project here: http://pathetic.org/library.php?i_memberid=613&mode=folder&i_folderid=1238648613

Writing Update

Just a quick update on all of my different projects, on the theory that if I make their existence known, someone might ask me about them and I might then have an extra prod to actually work on them and get them done.

Saerglen (Screenplay): I’m attempting an historical fiction screenplay. It takes place in Ireland around 400AD. I started this back in 2005. For about 2 years, it sat at around 30 pages with no progress made. In the last 8 months or so, I’ve added about 25 more pages, and seem to be getting back in the groove of the story. I do hit spots where I get stuck or agonize over a bit of dialogue. My overall goal is to finish this by the end of the year, though I’m going to try to make it sooner (for those who don’t know, a typical screenplay is about 120 or so pages – think a page per minute).

Untitled (Short Story/Novella): This is a shorter piece I’m working on, though it remains to be seen how long or short it will end up being. It’s a science fiction character study, basically. The interactions between this worlds-famous writer and his new assistant, and the secret behind his particular talent. I’m feeling more momentum on this than the screenplay at the moment, but we’ll see what happens. I don’t have a particular deadline/date in mind for this one, because I don’t know how long it may end up being. Suffice it to say my goal is to work on it steadily and finish it, haha.

New Poetry Project: I think poetry remains (and will likely always remain) my forte when it comes to writing. But I don’t write it nearly as often as I used to, and this is something I’d like to remedy. So, starting on Sunday the 15th, I will be embarking on a new project: to write one poem each day for a month. I will be posting them mainly over on my PPS library, but will post some of them on here, too. I toyed with the thought of calling this project something like the Ideas of March (Ides of March… get it?) but decided that was too cheesy. So it remains simple ‘poetry project.’ **update on this: due to sudden influx of ‘real’ work, procrastination, and it being brought to my attention that April is National Poetry Month, I will be postponing starting this until April 1st.

Untitled (Trilogy of Novels): This is on hold for the moment. Probably until after the screenplay is done. My brain can’t handle two giant projects at once.

In other writing news, my story Perspective (see old blog post) was not deemed quite good enough to catapult me to the 2nd round of that writing contest. I’ll be getting feedback next week hopefully telling me why. Bit of a disappointment, of course, but there will be other times, other contests.

New Place!

Ok, so some kind of Happiness Fairy must’ve been looking out for me and reading this blog, because literally the day after I wrote the below poem, I found the PERFECT place. Looked at it one day, got approved the next, and signed the lease the next. I have spent the last week moving in, and it is wonderful. I don’t even mind all the mess of unpacking.

My favorite things about this new place:

1. The quiet/sleep-a-bility of it. It’s in a nice neighborhood. I’m in a 1-story, so no people above me. Only one neighbor attached on the right, and she’s never here, so no noise through the walls. It’s my first place completely on my own, too, so no roommate making noise when I’m trying to sleep or things like that. I’ve slept better/more peacefully this past week than I have in YEARS. It’s frickin’ awesome, and I didn’t even have to change zip codes!
2. DISHWASHER! It may be absurd for me to be so excited about this appliance, but when you’ve lived the last 3 years washing every dish by hand, this becomes a huge deal.
3. Laundry machines all to myself. No more sharing the washer and dryer with 5 other people, and having to haul everything out to the garage and hope no one pokes around in my unmentionables. Washer and dryer here are newer, indoors right across from my bedroom, and all to myself. Yay!
4. It’s just plain pretty. Vaulted ceilings. A fireplace (a fireplace!) with a mirrored wall around it. Nice fresh white paint, clean carpet, spotless tiles, gleaming appliances in the kitchen. It’s new and shiny, and I’ve always been a fan of shiny new things (like when I got the MacBook Pro I’m typing this on… it’s silver and pretty. I pet it sometimes).
5. The view! Not only do I have a nice little covered patio area outside, complete with white picket fence around it (I kid you not), but I have a backyard! Full of green and grassy things and big sprawling trees. MUCH better than the flat brick wall and wire fence I saw out of my old office/back door view. AND, it’s not just the sights, but the sounds, too. I open the patio door to just the screen, and what do I hear? Not music pounding from next door, or people arguing/talking in the driveway, or cars driven by guys who think mufflers are optional. No. I hear BIRDS. And other nature-y sounds, like wind amongst the leaves, and the occasional squirrel chatter. If this is not the ideal environment for me to get more writing done, I don’t know what is.

There’s more (I could go on and on, I really do love this place), but here are a few pics of the lovely abode:

My new place!