Today I woke up and it was raining. The day progressed as usual until I was sitting in my studio and I hear a sound that sounded like hail coming down. After that, I started to hear a dripping. I went over to investigate and the ceiling was leaking in one of the meat lockers! I took the paper sitting until the leak and moved in back into the studio, in an effort to keep it dry and then grabbed a couple of cups to pick up the dripping (I didn't have anything bigger). I mopped it all up and it looks like it's going to be okay. I might find some duct tape tommorow to fix it a little better.

Here are some drawings that I did:


A Still life in colored pencil

Same still life in watercolor


The corner of my studio in colored pencil

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My printer wasn't working this morning. For the life of me I couldn't figure it out. It just would NOT feed the paper correctly. This upset me a great deal, because I really liked my printer and in fact favored it over pretty much any other printer. The fact that it would break now, at such an inopportune time as it ever way (which is to say it would always be a bad time for it to break down) was almost crippling. So I sat with it and yelled at it, as I am want to do on such occasions.

"What is it?" I growled at it, "Is there something wrong with the feeder? Is there something stuck in it?"

And as I gruffly reached my hand into it, I found that there... indeed was something stuck in it. I have a little spongy rubber snake that I keep on top of the printer pand by some strange fortune, it had lodge itself in my printer. I pulled it out and the printer worked wonderfully.

In other news, I am reading David Copperfield. I just passed the woman who looked like a haystack as well as the man who eats all of David's food (a part, which I had almost forgotten that I had heard in the car on one of my mother's many books on CD) and trotted back into unfamiliar territory involving Salem House and a riot of folks that I don't know if I should trust or be afraid of, yet. Well, I suppose I have 900 pages to figure it out, XP

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This evening as I was finishing up my dinner, I saw a large bumble bee, about the diameter or perhaps a nickel or a quarter, flying about my kitchen. I was startled by it, but tried to coax it out of the door, because, while it was very dangerous, it was also quite beautiful. However, since it was a bumble bee and slow in mental facilities, it did not go out of the door at all and instead landed in my bookshelf.

I grabbed a fan from the desk a cup from the cupboard and pursued it over to the bookshelf where I found it sitting on my Concordia study bible. I could not surely get the bee on my fan and under the cup safely, so I decided to take the bible out and bring it outside. So, speaking softly to the bee, I walked outside with it and told it to go.

I shook the bible. It would not go.

I shook it again and it would not go.

So, I cried, “Now get off the bible!” and smacked the bible on the front step at which point the bumble bee flew off into the distance.

And that is the story of the bible and the bee.

The crisis had now been averted. I left the bible out for a bit because I remembered that I had to read it for a bible study anyway. I read Ruth and Esther.

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These are some drawing that I did of a Carrion Crow (which I figured out is what we have)


In pencil


In Watercolor (black)

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This is the second in a trilogy (soon to be saga) about a set of non-blood drinking vampires, American Indian werewolves, and the supernatural loving girl between them.

Pros

Interesting characters - I liked the characters. I think I like Alice best right now because she’s the only one who has not been an idiot lately... and I like her name, but when it comes down to it, Meyer creates a good picture of these people in your mind, she knows how to develop characters.

Good Problems - These characters are dealing with problems that not only can float a story, but also are problems that bring out a lot of different sides of them and allow them to work through some interesting issues. Again, it goes back to character development, you have to have good problems to be able to understand good characters. It really is the reason why I am writing a supernatural book, because of the implicit problems in facing oneself being a monster. It is something that I think a lot of people can identify with.

Cons

Problems with Rising Action - The book is just a little disorganized. The story is dealing with a lot of different plot lines that really are not speaking to each other. Because of this, it often feels like the story is not going anywhere.

The characters talk too much about their feelings - This actually… was one of its biggest faults to the big horror writers in the nanowrimo forums. It was too touchy feely, they said, vampires and werewolves are monsters, they’ve got to be tough. I think that vampires and werewolves can have complex emotions, but I also think that there is more than one way to characterize emotion. Instead of saying, “I am really pissed off at you right now.” A character could throw a chair across the room. Instead of saying, “I am upset about how things are working out. I imagined that we could still be friends with the feelings I had for you, but I am beginning to think that I really care about you too much and it might be better off if we didn’t see each other.” you could say, “You know what… I just.. can’t do this right now.” or “I HATE YOU!” What can I say, it’s more authentic.

If I were to rate this on a scale from one to ten, one being "very poorly crafted and I don't know how it got published" and ten being "OMG I can't believe its over, I want to read it again and again", I would give this a 6. It's good, but there are still a couple of things that would take it from good to great.

(6 out of 10)
Coming soon: Review of Thud

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Yesterday, I went to speak with my sponsor. She said a lot of things. This, she said, would be an exploratory summer, that I should try out different things, find my own style, work and rework and, of course, do this all regularly. I thought to myself, this is what I had planned as well... the only thing I did not plan though was this: how in the world was I going to get a plot?!

Now, I am no stranger to plots, I have about five in my head that will one day work themselves into beautiful novels, but, what I did not have a plethora of was children's book plots. It was...panic worthy.

So this afternoon, I decided that I was going to go and do some research.

I lumbered out of the front door and opened the door to my car. I pulled out my camera and started the five minute walk to my studio. I saw birds, lots of bird. The birds saw me, too, though, so I only managed to get a couple shots as I walked by, we'll see if you can even see the bird in the pictures.

I swung by my studio to grab a notebook and then went up the way to the education building to find the education library... which was harder to find than I thought. I started in the office, where she told me to go around the back of the building and I would find it there. "You can't miss it" she said. Well I did. In fact I 'missed' the darn thing after asking three or four more people. All the while, I felt a little like I didn't belong there. One lady on the top floor looked at me like she was not so sure if she should direct me to the library at all, until I explained my project. About then, I wished I had one of those corny badges that said, "VISITOR" with my name Sharpied in.



I found the library. I spent the next four or five hours milling through the stacks and reading children's books. I wrote down the number of pages, how many words were on each page, how many words there were in the book, what sort of organizational structure they had, etc. They were about a lot of things: arrogant animals, demanding animals, vain animals, angry animals. I thought to myself: where are all the shy animals. All of these animals seem so... forward, but the truth was that most of the little animals I saw walking around (childfolk and birdfolk mostly) were actually not very forward at all, but painfully shy! Piccolo seemed more likely to be shy. I wrote a little about Piccolo.

Just as the day was ending a young boy walked in. He talked to the janitor, called him by name. That alone caused him to remind me of someone I knew VERY well. He told the janitor that it was this birthday this weekend. The janitor told him that he should have fun and the boy said that he was sure he would. I thought back to all my birthdays. I thought about the agony it was to ask all those people, about how I cut down the number of people as I grew older and more cautious. Piccolo was much for shy than me. I wrote, "Piccolo did not even send out invitations because he thought no one would come."

For now, I had a story.

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