Monthly Archives: November 2011

NaNoFiMo

Final NaNoFiMo total—33200, or thereabouts. Not nearly the wordcount of a NaNoWriMo, but I finished two books under contract and stuck words on a couple of other projects, so it was generally a very productive month. Despite the constant harping that writers sit down and write every single day, I will confess to you that […]

By the way…

There’s a series of auctions running to support Terri Windling, the well-known author/editor/artist/etc who’s hit some rough patches in recent months. Ms. Windling certainly doesn’t know me from Adam, but The Wood Wife was one of the touchstone books during my divorce, so I’ve contributed the very last jumbo-sized artist’s proof of “Naked Mole Rat […]

Chopped

Okay, I’ll admit it. I watch Chopped. (Along with Mythbusters, My Little Pony, occasional random cartoons on Boomerang, and whatever nature shows are on at any given time, plus the Daily Show if I have summoned any political give-a-shit that day. This forms the majority of my TV viewing since Survivorman went off the air. […]

On Writing

On a whim I downloaded the sample chapter for Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird, which is actually a book about writing. And I am howling through the whole thing. (For example, talking about writing bad first drafts, she talks about writers she has known “Not one of them writes elegant first drafts. All right, one […]

Ungh.

The worst part about being self-employed is that when you’re waiting for other people to get back to you, you start to feel…unemployed. Yes. I have done all my writing for the day. I am totally and completely on track for everything, if not way ahead of schedule, I have written 2200 words today, I […]

Blue Jayfowl

I really wanted to paint chickens with markings from other birds. Tiny goldfinch chickens! Cardinal chickens! The noble Bald Chicken, symbol of our nation, coming in for a landing at the nest! Bluejays are the most distinctively colored birds I could think of, so I started there. And I think the color bit works, but […]

Snippet-tastic

A chunk from NaNoFiMo. This definitely won’t get finished this month, but at least I should pack a bit more meat on its bones…   It was a small stream. It had never been dragged with iron chains or even shackled with a footbridge. It lay across her path, glinting in the light that slipped […]