Monday, December 28, 2015

Reading and dogs

I have sleep problems, so before bed, I unwind by reading a paper white kindle till I get sleepy.

This is how reading goes down in my bedroom. I'm relaxed and under the covers when a blocky, fawn head pops up on the side of the bed and I have two green eyes staring at me. If I make eye contact and do not scratch the head, she starts verbally grumping at me. If I continue to make eye contact and do not make with the head scratching, it progresses to howling and crying.

If I ignore the two green eyes staring at me, in about five minutes, there is a 32lb pit bull lying next to me licking my face and one paw is over my kindle screen so I can't read. I can say stop and she will quit with the kisses. I can move the paw off the kindle screen, but I'd better make with the back scratches if I have any hope of getting through the chapter I'm on. If I stop scratching the back to turn the page, the paw goes back over the screen.

They don't advertise when they are trying to pass pit bull bans that they are manipulative cry babies that don't let you read unless you are giving them pets at the same time

And so it ends

I'm at the point in my novel where the ending can go either way. I have to make a decision. I've put off writing for three days because I don't want to make it. I've also spent the past 3 days dyeing my hair per the previous post. My amazon dye came in, but I didn't want it to do nothing, so I bleached my hair with some left over bleach, and I'm not sure if it came out blush, bashful, or pink and pink. It was very Steel Magnolias in my house. The next day, I put the Amazon dye on and while I was shooting for a light copper, it came out nuclear orange and there wasn't enough dye for the amount of hair I have so there were bleachy pink sections. I had to hunt and gather like that (push a buggy at target) and obtain food and more hair dye. Some kid and target loved the nuclear orange and said I should werk it.

I'm up two hours late last night watching cartoons and I finally make the decision about ten minutes before I absolutely need to be getting in bed. I get as much writing done as possible and go hop in bed and read. Of course, I cannot concentrate on what I'm reading and hardly got any sleep at all. Add to the fact when I did start getting sleepy and thought I would be able to sleep, my small neurotic dog decided it would be a good idea to explore under the bed.

I've been up and rearing to write for a while, but I'm waiting for work so I can get some hours in before I start writing. I've decided on the ending and it's going to change the beginning. Such is life. I needed to edit anyway

Thursday, December 24, 2015

Holiday time

I've had Christmas with my family and am now home. Champagne bottle uncorked and I thought someone was shooting? Check. Anti Government conspiracy theories? Check. Obama is coming to take our gun? Check.

We opened presents youngest to oldest and the entire family seemed to forget I am older than both my brother and my brother in law. Probably because they are both married with kids and my hair is bright red and my parents bought Christmas gifts for my cats. My sister in law also inquired as to the original color of my hair and everyone laughed because no one knows, including me.

I've also dropped an unexplained thirty pounds my medical team can't seem to explain, so my entire family got me diabetes for Christmas in the form of chocolate everything, which I am not complaining about because I was hungry about an hour after I got home and chocolate is delicious

I was chatting with my dad and he just started a new job and told me with his first paycheck, he intends to buy a new laptop. I know what is wrong with their current laptop. It's full of viruses and malware. It just needs to be cleaned, which I can do. I asked him to hold off on the new laptop and let me take it home and work on it and it will be another Christmas present from me

I've been at home piddling on their laptop and I'm having a hard time not calling my mother and screaming at her like Gordon Ramsey "You put so much malware on here, you made Bill Gates cry." It's getting fixed and I sent my dad a text selling him the virtues of Windows 8 or 10, where my mum and nephew can get things from the windows store instead of installing things from all over the wide web. I know when I got my laptop, ,he was pretty anti Windows 8.

So after this virus scanner gets done running and I get more potential malware uninstalled, I'm putting Windows 8 on here because it's an older laptop and I don't think it can handle 10. Tomorrow, I will be teaching my mother how to use Windows 8 and hopefully filling up on left overs

Wednesday, December 23, 2015

Hair dye and the Evil Overlord

My normal day involves waking up, feeding everyone, working, then writing. The girl cats have decided they will no longer dine with the boy cats and demand their food be brought up to be. I do this because one girl cat is tiny and the other is thin and they can't afford losing weight.

I work at home and my hours depend on the availability of work. Lately, there has been a shortage. I did, up until a few months ago, go to an office for work. I'm trying to find another office job in my field.

While I was at my previous office job, they did not really care about tattoos, piercings, etc, as long as you could do your job properly and not walk off the floor. It's a high stress job. So I dyed my hair fire engine red and all was fabulous. Then I got laid off.

I had a job interview with a new company and I did not know the culture there and I didn't want to bleach my hair again, so I dyed burgundy over it. I did not get the job.

After looking at the burgundy for a few weeks, I now hate it and it makes me look like Satan or at least, an evil overlord. Maybe I didn't get the job not because they didn't like my answers to the bizarre questions they asked me, but because they thought I would start collecting souls?

I had two boxes of a color that my hair was for the majority of college that does not make me look like I want you to eat that apple, but it didn't take. I was at the grocery store and found a color I like, but they only had one box and it takes two boxes to do my hair. So I just grabbed the next color and dyed it.

Now my bathroom looks my evening activities are along the lines of the television show Dexter and I still look like I tempt people in exchange for their immortal souls.

I got on amazon and attempted to find the color I'm looking for. Which I did, but it's an add on item. So I ordered two boxes to do my hair and another box to do my roots just in case this actually works. I'm not quite sure why my hair has decided to rebel against me. My hair has been almost every color and there's been some bizarre colors that were easier to get out than burgundy.

So since there's no work for me right now, I'm going to go dye my hair and sit here with a target bag on my head and hit refresh and see if work reloads while I'm being held hostage waiting for work.

I may finish my novel this week. I'm really close. I made the difficult decision and I'm sticking with it.

If I finish and decide I can't live with it, at least my hair color may be right

Sunday, December 20, 2015

My main character

I'm so conflicted on what I want to do with this character. I'm almost finished with this novel and I have to make a decision soon.

I created this character when I was fourteen. I finished the novel at seventeen. I began rewriting and changing the story at eighteen. While decades may have passed without me writing about these characters because I was either in school, getting married, or I decided I wanted to focus on another art form, I still thought about them. Every night, when I would get in bed, I would think about what rewrites I would do.

The character has totally evolved from when I was fourteen and I think more realistic now. The character has gone from close to my age when I started writing the novel, and now that I'm almost finished, she's younger, but closer to the age I am now. She really kind of grew up with me.

I know what her fate is in my first draft. I'm conflicted on if it's going to be the same in the final draft. I like to torture my characters. This character has been through a lot. There have been a lot of bad times and now some good times.

There are two different parts and narrators in this novel. The first part of the novel is told from the view point of a journal by the character I'm conflicted on. Then it switches to the view point of her mother and we don't get to see what goes on in her head while she has to deal with all the issues I throw at her, we see how much it hurts her mother.

I don't plan on switching back to the view point of my original narrator because it doesn't make sense. I'm now conflicted on this characters fate. Is it a good one or a not so happy ending? After everything I've put both of my narrators through, does it all work out for them? Does it all come crashing down on their heads?

After living with this character for decades now, this decision is really in my hands and I'm going to have to make it soon and I am totally dreading it

Wednesday, December 16, 2015

Introduction

Welcome to the blog!

I write fiction and I don't really have a genre. My imagination is all over the place. I grew up coming from a family of musicians and have been writing since I was fourteen. I completed my first novel at around sixteen or seventeen, hand writing in notebooks. When I finally bought a computer when I went to college, I started seriously editing it and rewriting it. I had written quite a bit when I had a computer issue and when my ex boyfriend tried to fix it, he fried my hard drive. I had a backup on floppy disk (I'm old), but my brother had apparently brought home a corrupted floppy from school, which messed up my floppy and I lost everything I had done.

I started over with some more serious editing and rewriting. I started a second and third novel. College got a little crazy as I majored in art related fields and had several labs that required me to spend most of my waking hours and some of my sleeping hours at school.

Then life happened and I picked up composing after working with a composer on a project. I focused on that for a little while and picked up a new instrument.

About 3 months ago, I got a bug up my butt to start writing again and have written over 600 pages between 2 novels. If I get stuck on 1, I move on to the other. They are both totally different, so if I'm stuck on one, I can generally write on the other.

I'm about finished rewriting the one I started at 14, then will start seriously editing and looking at publishing