Staining Hardwood Floors

Who you do not want helping you with this project:


Every time we turn around, she's there. As are her little itty bitty foot prints. My husband yells at me. I yell at the kids. The kids yell at the cat. None of us can figure out how she keeps ending up downstairs.

Will this project never end?

Writing Is Hard Work!

Yesterday I wrote and wrote and wrote. It felt as if I was pulling every word from the very depths of the dictionary and placing them carefully in each sentence. I struggled with each paragraph and every page. After three hours, I walked away from the computer. Watched a very bizarre movie. Came back. Deleted the same twelve pages I'd sweated over all morning and began again. This time, the words were there. And even though I only had time to splash about a thousand of them onto the screen, I felt satisfied. And this morning they read well.

What did I learn? I write like crap when I force myself. Go with the flow, baby.

Weather and Work

Storms blasted my little corner of the world yesterday. Tornadoes set off sirens, and I wasn't allowed to take a break and relish the activity. I love storms, especially when I'm not stuck in traffic on the interstate. But I'd bought a new toy yesterday morning, and my husband insisted I use it -- all day. It's called a palm sander. I purchased this little thinger-majigger to aid in the do-it-yourself project which is consuming my life. We are finishing our hardwood floors. As my husband pushed the sanding machine, I crawled from edge to edge and belt sanded the areas he couldn't reach. Then I had to use my little toy to palm sand the areas the belt sander couldn't reach.

I hate this thing.

With a passion.

My arms ache. My back aches. My body wants to collapse and never awaken. AND to add insult to injury -- I couldn't watch the skies turn all sorts of interesting colors nor enjoy the display of lightening that slashed through the clouds.

What I could do is turn my thoughts inward and contemplate my wips. I like to write invisibly. It allows me to discard and rearrange my plot and opens my mind to things I might not consider as I plunge along at the keyboard. I made headway on both the projects I'm working on. It's a shame I have to spend my day with that little toy and not my computer. Did I mention that I hate that thing?

How Do I Get Published?

I'm afraid I can't answer that question, my friends. Why? Because the road to publication is different for every writer. There is no hidden key, magic word or secret spell. How did I get published? Here's a tongue-in-cheek version:

1-- I spent months writing this book then years getting it just right.
In the interim, I moved on to other projects.
2 -- I proofed it for decades to make sure everything was correct.
Then proofed again.
3 -- I researched for 18 weeks, 2 days and 6 hours, to find an
agent who would handle the type of book I wrote. That agent rejected
it. So then, I began again...
4 -- I repeated step three 89 times more and waited
and waited and waited and waited some more
6 -- I researched for 13 weeks, 4 days and 10 hours, to find a
publisher who would handle the type of book I wrote. That publisher
rejected it. So then, I began again...
7. -- I sold my book.


Perseverance will be your best friend, self-doubt your worst. Know that you are not alone. Do your research, scour the links I have provided. I posted a new link today. Redlines and Deadlines. I figured, heck, why reinvent the wheel? Go read their blog. Great great great information.

Frogs...

I love this time of year when the sunset brings peeps and squeaks of mating frogs. Needless to say our pool cover always has about two to four inches of water on top and the froggies love to lay their eggs until the green plastic becomes nothing more than a swarming pond of tadpoles. Each year, I scoop several cup fulls of taddies and dump them in my Koi pond. Why? Well, first and foremost, my fishies are hungry. But second, I love the surprise. A few always survive, and I never know whether I've hatched a bull frog, tree frog or toad. By June, it's pretty apparent. I either have the incessant chirping of a tree frog waking me up at the crack of dawn, deep horn of the bull frog frightening the bejesus out of me in the middle of the night, or a small parade of tiny toads entertaining me while I sit on the front porch.

I liken this surprise to my plots. If it's too predictable, the reader will be bored. Move it forward. Change it out. Keep your voice fresh. All of these are daily struggles. As the tadpoles sprout legs and begin morphing into a higher life form so do my manuscripts. I admit I get a complete rush when my ideas pull together and become a full-blown finished book. There's nothing like it -- well, perhaps the Rockin' Roller Coast at Disney is pretty darn close.

My latest query from my Dragon Dancer series is receiving partial requests. Perhaps I've finally figured out what it is to write a decent query letter. If that's the case, I'll share. I'm nervous. Very very nervous. One particular agent who requested a partial is my dream agent. Top of the list. And I pray I haven't made some idiotic snafu in the partial.

I'm multi-tasking. I've split my day into three parts. I'm moving forward on Angel Falls and the second book of the Dragon Dancer series plus I've decide to scour my first Dragon Dancer book (the one I'm querying) to make certain I've eliminated all overused words. I seem rather attached to the word "that." But that's for another post. :) In addition, I'm working on a novella as an exercising in tightening my writing. It's a real chore, because I'm not a naturally "tight" writer. I like to, um, express myself.

Do I Feel Your Pain?

Apparently not.

I've always considered myself an empathetic creature. Until this past weekend. My husband had knee surgery on Friday to correct a slightly torn meniscus. It was discovered that he had gout/pseudo gout or some such thing which was the root of all his pain. I have an extremely high tolerance to pain and found myself at a loss over the weekend to provide sympathetic care. I did cater and serve but my response to "the leg spasms are killing me" was "been there. done that. get over it." As I wrestled the crutches from my husband's hands, I realized it was a good thing I never felt the call of nursing. And my solution to gout? Giving my husband bitter cherry juice and saying in a jovial voice "drink up, it's good for you."

Julie obviously parading around in the skin of her villian...

I Have Nothing to Say...

I really don't. Weird, huh? Actually, it's probably because I'm steeped in my current wip. I have been challenged with character naming on this ms. It stems from the wide range of ethnic backgrounds that I have included, creating the insecurity of totally making a serious snafu and giving someone a name that is inappropriate to their culture. I persevered and succeeded but not without much hair yanking and blood letting.

Julie