Gardening and the Story

     I finished another revision of Marcus Tuttle three weeks ago and have been having a hard time getting back into working on my next novel. That isn’t surprising, since I’m going from “edit” mode to “writing” mode and the two stories are completely different. Marcus Tuttle is a younger middle grade novel and my next novel is an upper middle grade novel. It may seem like a small difference but it's actually quite a large mental jump.
    So what have I been doing to facilitate this change in thinking and start writing again? Gardening. Yes, now that the weather is finally warm enough, living as I do in the frozen tundra wastes of Chicago, (Just kidding. Well, no, actually I’m not.) I feel compelled to get outside and dig in the dirt. I find it's helping me begin to write again. I muse to myself about the story while I’m potting, and I think about what a character might say as I weed and water. I feel that soon my story is going to start growing on it's own.

Gypsy the Gardening Dog

          Hello everybody. After an extended absence due to sickness, I am feeling much better and have decided to start blogging again.
          My mother suggested that since I haven’t been taking classes and have no drawings to post, I should post some of my older artwork.
          I think I shall but I’ll start by posting a photograph that I took of my dog Gypsy. She is currently sleeping at my feet as all idyllic dog images tell us they do, but I have the audio addition of her snoring like a pig.
          We found out this week as I planted my garden on the back porch that Gypsy is a gardening dog. She loves the smell of gardening and sticks her wide nose into anything dirt related that I happen to be working on. Then she plops down on any dirt pile she can find and naps. She’s a great dog.

Belly Dancer

          I'm happy to say that the last few poses that we've done in my drawing the costumed figure class have actually been models in costumes, not street clothes (well, one wore street clothes but they were so funky it looked like she was wearing a costume.)
          Here the model wore a belly dancing outfit. This is also the model who wore the mongolian outfit. The were both her costumes. It's fun to draw someone wearing an actual costume. I hope it keeps up this way, because t-shirts just aren't that exciting to draw.

Woman in Mongolian Hat

Here is the latest of my drawings. The model wore a wonderful asian/mongolian costume that I got so wrapped up in drawing that it messed me up.  I had to start over. Then I focused on just her face and I can't say I'm sorry. I like this one a lot. Maybe because I let myself use color. Slowly my drawing skills are edging up and it's exciting!

NaNoWriMo Winner! How does it feel?

          I have to be honest and say that NaNoWriMo was grueling. It started out well. I didn’t know I could write that much so fast and it was gratifying to find out that I could. I certainly learned a lot about myself during NaNoWriMo.
          I learned that I could write pages and pages every day and not just when some muse wandered by. I could be disciplined about my writing. I found out that my characters came alive and started dictating the story to me. That was a great discovery. My characters were practically writing my novel for me!
          But I also learned that you can’t write well when you write fast and I’m not proud of the writing that I produced. I hope to be once I’ve revised the novel once or twice, but for now, it’s terrible. Finally, I learned that it’s highly stressful to write 50,000 words in one month and even though I did it, I'm glad it’s over.