No your eyes arent playing tricks on you...

I changed my template, I was bored of the pink although don't be surprised if it is back tomorrow. It is my and Nobles favorite color. Yeah I know a guy who likes pink, go figure. Hey, this is the guy that lives in my shower too. I saw this lovely color on a friends blog and had to try it. (thanks Tristi) I like blue it is the color of the Prophet robes that Noble wears.

Janette Rallingson has a post on her blog about theme songs. I have thought about it for a day or so and I have decided that my theme song would be "Dream Big". I don't know the artist but as I prepare to send my MS to a publisher the song keeps rolling in my head.

I am Dreaming Big right now. Perhaps I'll fall flat on my face but it will be a good thing right?

Wendy, I get dibs on the "Vision" title, (already have a character in my head).

Thanks

Eyes to see....

Three of my sons and I spent most of the day yesterday at the optometrist. Two of my sons had appointments. The 16 year old appointment went as planned; exam pick out glasses and pay co-pays. The four year old was another story. When they put the drops in his eyes to dilate them he squeezed his eyes shut and then he couldn’t open them; he stretched his face sooooo long but his eyes wouldn’t open. It was so funny, we were all laughing there in the exam room.

When we went to choose glasses he grabbed this pair of Barbie light blue glasses that were obviously for a girl. He wanted blue glasses and wouldn’t budge until I put a pair of black ones on him. Then he wanted black. A few minutes later he wanted blue ones again. I honestly thought it would be harder for my 16 year old to choose glasses than my four year old. We finally ordered a pair of blue glasses with red on the inside and we were both happy.

Last night I went to a stake Relief Society diner and program, I couldn’t eat the dinner, with my food allergies, I usually can’t. The women who performed were good, it just isn’t my type of preferred entertainment. But there was one part that jarred me to full attention and that thought pervaded my thoughts the rest of the night. We stood as a group and recited the RS declaration. It wasn’t the group or their intentions that caught my attention, but a word.(of course me being a writer) The Relief Society declaration states that “We are women of faith, virtue, vision, and charity.” Vision is the word that struck me, a voice in my head asked me “do you have Vision…”

The eyeglasses incident and that question has made me think deeply for the last few hours. In my writing exercises with my friend one of her characters, who is blind, said “you don’t have to see to have vision.” Surely sight and vision are different things. We see things all the time…. But do we use vision in our lives often enough?
I am a writer; I have written and edited thousands of pages. While publishing my books is a huge dream of mine it isn’t my solitary goal. I write because I love to write. I love filling clean white pages with things from my head. The Vision of black letters on a clean white page fills me with satisfaction. If I never get published I still have these wonderful stories to share with family and friends.
So… if you aren’t focused on publishing as your primary goal then why submit at all? You ask.

Because I have vision,

“I do have Vision.” I told that voice in my head, last night. I have seen my books in the book store all seven of them lined up together. I have seen the black spines with electric blue lettering. My Vision tells me that I am on the right path for me.

Yes I have Vision, and that Vision will see Dominion Day published…

WOW!!!!!!! Progress...

Okay I didn't write all of this, but I edited the passive voice out of 12 chapters today. That is 42,865 words!!! I also took it and edited those 12 chapters for the LDS market, changing a few things here and there. I am impressed, and excited I thought it would take much longer than this. I am 1/3 of the way to sending it to Covenant. AAAAAAA!!!!!!!!

I am not getting my hopes up, it is speculative fiction and although it doesn't preach the gospel it has some "seeds" of truth that might make it passable. The bad guy gets a conscience and goes good type of thing. (And a little romance.) I am under the firm belief that if I don't submit it, it will never get accepted in the future.

(I asked Kirk Shaw if they did any science fiction and he said that they did but hadn't in a while. I asked him why and he said that what had been submitted was Crap. I asked what kind of crap, stuff not apropriate for them or not good writing. He said they were bad writing.)

Let's hope that Dominion Day is good writing acording to Kirk. :)

Revamping Goals, Brain Fry.....

Okay I admit that I have not written anything for about a week. However, the work I did today was much more important than just sitting in my chair and typing. You see… I have an open invitation from Kirk Shaw an acquiring editor for Covenant to read my Dominion Day MS. Before I send it to him, I have one last very important edit to do.
I have already spoken about my tendency to write with passive voice. So… last night I sat and started to take out all the “was” in the book. It is a long task although not as hard as I imagined. I took out almost everyone and reworded a lot of my sentences. When I got the first chapter finished I sent it to a program called Virtual Editor found at:

www.veditor.net

After it processed my first chapter I used the edited feedback to also change the “has been, be” etc and sent it back. I was very happily surprised. My passive voice went from 11.9% to 2.1% the Flesch Kincaid reading level went from 4.5 to 5.8 and the average reading age went from 9.5 to 10.8. WOW just changing my passive voice helped my writing dramatically.
So now what? You say…
I am revamping my goals for each day. After editing one chapter my brain is pretty fried so my new goal is to edit 1-2 chapters using the V-editor, Give myself one grammar lesson a day, and write for a few hours but i will be writing just random things not working on intercession. I REALLY don’t want to go through EVERY MS i write and edit the passive voice out of it. I vow to learn to write active and that is what the rest of the month of April is going to be. Hopefully retraining my brain to think, speak and write active.
Sigh! It is worth it right?

Panic and frustration...

I had to drive to Price to see a dermatologist today. It is a thirty mile and minute drive. On the way there i didnt have much time for thinking I was pushing it time-wise and didn't know exactly where I was going. The way home I was more relaxed and had time to talk with my MC of my series about plot and revising. That is untill it started to snow. About 15 min. into the drive home it started to accumulate on the roads and I turned from a planning ploting writer into a scared baby. Every time the road conditions turn bad, I begin to have panic attacks. I know it stems from the accident on Valentines day, but I dont know what to do about it. If I feel the car start to lose controll I lose my cool.

On thte frustration part. i wrote almost 2,000 words the day before, iu was so Psyched i brought in a "Wicked cool" bad guy and wrote a chapter in his POV I was so excited and ready to tackle my book. Yesterday I went back to where I had stopped writing to add the bad guy chapter and started again. But I realized that my plot needs some major help and I must either scrap it all togather or rewrite not just revise. So I spent very little time writing yesterday and alot of time thinking. I'm sure my hormones and lack of chocolate didnt help either.

So if it would stop snowing , I mean it IS April, and i could figure out my plot I'd be just dandy right?

Farworld 1 Water By J. Scott Savage

His new book comes out in September and to promote it he is planning among other things a world blog tour. He is sending out 200 copies of his new book. In exchange for the book you are asked to create questions and pose them to Mr Savage in July or August. So here goes... go to

http://jscottsavage.blogspot.com

He has an awesome blog and there is alot that any writer could learn from him. I can't wait to get my copy.

Goldfish......

My four year old has adopted my next door neighbor as his local Grandfather. He talks to him all day through the fence or when he gets out of the yard he follows this poor neighbor of ours around. Our neightbor has a pond in his backyard. It had a selection of goldfish in it last year. He guesses he didn't winterize it that well this winter, because a number of the goldfish in it died.

My son stood on the edge of the pond as my neighbor cleaned it out just a few days ago. He asked my neighbor if he could take the dead fish home because they were his friends. Of course and thankfully my neighbor said no. But that didn't deter my son at all. When my neighbor turned his back, my son stole the dead goldfish (his friends) and took them home and buried them in our garden plot.

When I asked him why he did it he said, "But MOM I wanted them." We laughed long and hard. The question is how do you teach your little one that stealing something from someones yard is wrong, when everytime you think about it you begin to laugh?

Why vampires.....

As a writer I read ALOT of editor, agent, and publishers blogs. I think they are not only interesting, but necessary. Today as I made my daily rounds I read a comment where one of the aforementioned people said they will not accept any more vampire books. She said she didn't see how they could be different enough to catch her attention. This isnt the first person who I have heard say this either.

Yet I am 73 pages and, 20,000 word into a vampire story.

You might say why bother? But I believe that this is that one story, that plot diferent enough to be the one that catches their attention.

I was sitting in the mothers room, at church of all places, having just finished a popular teen vampire romance. I myself was tired of the undead, never channging, woe is me vampire. So I started to play the "what if" game. What if vampires were... What if... What if... And soon enough this world of vampires exploded in my head and I was writing notes on any scrap of paper in my diaper bag I could find. (note to writers keep a pad of paper and a pen in your reach at all times.) lesson learned.

The working title of my story is Intercession, it is about a vampire named Dacias who intercedes between the human world and the vampire world to keep the vampires secret. I just re-read my 73 pages on monday in preperation for working on it for the April book in a month challenge hosted by Tristi Pinkston. I am pleased to say that I am in just as much love with Dacias and the story as I was when I started it at the BIAM challenge last year. I am looking forward to getting this book fleshed out, I have about 50-60,000 more words to write but have a firm grip on the plot and what needs to happen.

So look out world, this might be the one that is different enough to be considered in the midst of what I percieve as a massive vampire story glut.