Word Counts and Words That Count
Between 11:59 PM tonight and 12:00 AM tomorrow morning, I write 1,182 words, simply by switching from the NaNoWriMo word-count tool to the one built into my word processor. I have 7 more scenes to write to complete From the Ashes of Courage, and most of those are epilogue. Today, I penned over 4,000 words, […]
The Lazy Man’s Chocolate Pie
This year, we’re making pies for our family Thanksgiving feast. All of my brothers and their families all gather at my parents for the day. C is making pumpkin and lemon meringue. But my favorite, I think, is still my own Lazy Man’s Chocolate Pie. Hardly original, but still full of sugar and calories, and […]
Parents of Divorced Couples
I ran into an interesting issue today with one of the characters of From the Ashes of Courage. In brief, Gail and George divorced years ago, and they haven’t seen each other since. Now, she’s part of his life again, as a friend. George’s father seems genuinely happy to see her and treats her with […]
She’s a headstrong businesswoman…
She’s a headstrong, driven, single-minded businesswoman, a successful independent professional at only 29 years old. But she still feels empty. He’s a fun-loving real-estate agent who made a mint in the boom market, now fast running out of money. And their friends set them up on a blind date, unaware that many years ago, they […]
7 Fun Links from My Feed Reader
I’ve been slogging my way through NaNoWriMo. I’ll probably call this novel From the Ashes of Courage (or some variation thereof), because I think it reflects the theme and mood of the story: risking all in the face of defeat; and less Love Boat, more As Good As It Gets. At this point, when it […]
How to Grow Flowers
The Little One was commissioned by one of her friends to draw pictures for a book about how to grow flowers. My first question was, of course, “How can you draw pictures for a book that hasn’t been written yet?” That was the Little One’s question, too. But she drew the pictures, and explained each […]
Etude in Black and White
I was watching an old Columbo episode, “Etude in Black,” in which conductor Alex Benedict murders his star pianist Jenifer Welles, to prevent her from revealing their secret love affair. As a musician myself, and knowing a little something about the piano, I thought it might be fun to rewrite one of the scenes of […]
Anybody Go to BU? (and NaNoWriMo Update)
According to my writing spreadsheet, I’m on track to finish NaNoWriMo, but I’ll need to come up with more scenes in the novel. I’m averaging 616 words per scene, which is around half what I had originally estimated. Not a problem, because I have a number of additional, unplanned scenes already on the back burner, […]