Pippa

(Sometimes I write these short pieces to clear my head, break up--dare I say it--writer's block, or to hang out with a character I can't get a handle on. Not sure what to call them, but here's another one.)

Pippa

When she pulled the magic, it was like drawing a thread from a spool: slow, steady, friction warming everything. Pippa gripped the spell’s silver coil and grazed her finger over the surface of her own power. Technically, the world could wait for the enchantment. But for how long?

A rustle sounded in a dark corner of the vacant motel room.

“Quiet, you,” she shouted to the nothingness behind her. Her hair bobbed in front of her face, red ringlets corkscrewing into her vision.

She sidestepped to the window and glanced across the parking lot. Rain tossed itself about in waves, falling into shallow cigarette-littered puddles like pennies in a fountain. The candlelight flickered. The storm’s heart wasn’t far off.

The shuffling came again. A deep whispered voice followed by a hush. “What’s she doing?” it said.

Pippa slid her feet along the baseboards, marking the parameters of the dark, empty room, feeling for the creature her eyes couldn’t see. “None of your damn business, that’s what.” Her fingers went to work, toying with the spell coil again. Once she released the fibers a sequence of events would begin. Sorcerers should calm. Warlocks still. Witches would reign supreme.

“Don’t toy with it,” a growl came from the darkness. “Don’t play with us.”

“Shut up.” Pippa tugged her leather jacket around her shoulders and zipped it tight. “I’ll do as I desire.” She inspected the silver shimmer in her palm. The magic called to be used like a dog holding a leash between his teeth. “It doesn’t control me.”

Grating giggles ripped from the corner before twisting into a gravely hiss. “Then do it.” Panting followed rapid footsteps. “Spellcast. Let us out.”

Only because I want to, she thought. Pippa threw the coil into the air and ran from the abandoned room into the downpour. She slammed the door behind her and snatched the knob to keep it closed.

Vibrations shook the entire structure. Flashes of light exploded outward from inside the tiny room. The knob heated.

“No,” she screamed. Her skin pricked with pain as the metal grew orange. “Stay back.”

High laughter stung her ears. A bang knocked her backward. Her fingers slipped. Nursing her hands, Pippa watched the knob turn. The door squealed open. They were free.

New Territory and a New Title

I've done it. The book I've been slaving over for the past two years is nearly out of my hands. In the next few days, I'll submit this precious, powerful, exciting, deep, complex, and magical story to total strangers (aka: agents). To be clear, the road to find an agent is not just bumpy, it's down right uncharted. I know that I'm in it for the long haul and it may take several hundred dozen attempts before the right person comes along for this book. That's fine with me. The point is that I believe in this story, my characters, and my dream to share it with others. Sounds cheesy, yes. But, true is true.

And then it occurred to me: I'm in a brand new territory I've never seen before. I've written many books, but never taken one of them this far before. This is the farthest I've ever been from the Shire. (*If you're a geek and got that reference, pat yourself on the back.)

I want to underline for you how great it feels to push yourself. Challenge yourself daily, weekly, monthly, whatever. But do not let your days bleed into one another. Instead, mark each day with an asterisk. Make them noteworthy in your life and for yourself and/or others around you. (Note the "and/or" there. It's okay to pick you as the only one enriched.) That's what I feel like I've been doing by quietly working on this book while the rest of the world slept. I'm proud of each day I put into it.

That said, I've also played around a lot with the title. Burning Spirit always felt like a placeholder for me, so now, the current working title is The Flame Wars. That's how I'll pitch it from now on and if further down the road it needs changed, then I'll change it again. So there you have it.

* The Flame Wars by Margaret Telsch-Williams *

I rather like it. What do you think?

Getting Shit Done

So I started to write this almost apology blog post about why it's been so long since I've updated the blog. But it's been discussed before. (I'd link to all the times I've mentioned it, but I'm too busy to find them.) When I focus on writing, the blogging goes to the back burner. Not you, of course, dear readers, but the blogging. Instead this will be a post about getting shit done.

While you've been missing me terribly and suffering through having to read other fantastic things, I've been editing. If writing a novel from beginning to end was a fifty step process, I'd say I'm somewhere near forty-four or forty-five steps in.

Today I'm prepping the novel Burning Spirit to be sent to beta readers. While I'm glad to be nearing the end, I'm terrified of how much these amazing readers may point out my flaws. That's writing in a nutshell, I suppose.

Self doubt + hard work = a better book than when you started.

Take away either of those elements and the story/characters/magic may fall flat. But this isn't a writing blog, you say, so what else has been going on?

We moved! Yep, through all of this novel writing journey, the fam and I picked up and moved across town. We've done a move like this before, but for whatever reason (perhaps because it feels like I lost about 40,000 square feet of space), this move has been a challenge. I don't know where anything goes, and I don't know where anything is. Don't ask me, okay? 'Cause I don't know where it is. I'm just thankful I know where my laptop is and I can find the printer. That's really all a girl needs anyway, right?

Also, I'm still getting the plot and first draft of Burning Spirit's sequel on paper. Everything I've written I cannot wait to share, and then--much like our move--I don't know where anything goes or where it is after that. Don't worry though. About eighty percent of the story is in first draft form, so it's just the last twenty percent that needs to be written and I'm working out the best place to stop and leave off for the third book in this series.

Lastly, when I haven't been pulling my hair out with edits, I started a few boards on Pinterest. There's one for each book, in fact, so check them out and see what interests you over there. Now that's a website I could get addicted to.

There you have it, so I better get back to edits, huh?

This Crazy Hectic Life

Believe it or not, I wrote an entire post for you about 2013. I spilled my guts, stated my goals in writing and life, and sounded really optimistic. And then that post sat there in the "draft" stage for nearly two weeks and I never posted it. Why? I don't know. I really don't. Maybe because I don't have any mountain moving things to say, or because my goals sound like those of other writers out there: query agents, edit, write. It's not that this aspect of my life is bland, it's just that the whole post started to read like my laundry list, and you really deserve better from me than reading my laundry list.

That list is for me to check things off from, not for you to go, "oh look who posted, and what drabby-shabby information she shared."

 

Basically, if I had to sum up in a word how my life is going right now, I'd say things are simple and straightforward. There's three words actually. Sure, I struggled with depression over the holidays and will continue to (I've blogged about depression before), but things aren't horrible and I know they'll improve.

 

But if I step back even a few feet from my mediation and my obsessive nature about being near my laptop, my life is more like this crazy juggling act that involves flaming knives and maybe a few cats.

 

As of right now I'm editing Burning Spirit (teaser on that here). So far Burning has been all the way through my critique and I'm planning to spend the next seven months cleaning it up real nice like. You read that right. The groundhog saw his shadow, seven more months of edits. 

 

I'm also two-thirds done with writing the first draft of Darkened Sky, the sequel to Burning Spirit. This is where my brain lives right now. When I'm sitting at work, I'm thinking of Elsbeth. When I'm cooking dinner, my mind is deep in a cave spending time with warlocks. When I'm in the shower, you guessed it, I went to work with conditioner in my hair because these characters took over my mind.

 

Add all of that work to my day job, which I enjoy, and being a wife and mother, which I also wouldn't trade for anything that isn't dark chocolate, and my schedule was definitely too full when our car broke down for two weeks. Stress, yes. How life goes, yes.

 

I guess the real point of this post then is to say, yeah, it's a crazy, hectic life--we should enjoy it while we have it. If I quit writing, my heart would feel like something's missing, so I'd rather have the crazy any day than sit on the sidelines and watch it all go by.

 

 

How are you holding up in 2013? Leave comments below.

Becoming

There's a phrase that often repeats itself inside my head. It says, "I am becoming."

You see there's a gap between the person I was and the person I am going to be, so within this gap I am becoming the person I want.

Anytime you've had a goal or a vision but aren't there yet, it's okay, because you are becoming.

You are reaching down, digging up the courage/ability/willpower/gusto to do this thing you want to do, and once you've done it, you will "be." "Be" is a good place too, don't get me wrong. "Be" is like a beach resort destination, but "becoming" is where you live the other 360 days of the year.

I've been away from the blog for a few months, but it's because I've been busy becoming. In the last two months, during this year's NaNoWriMo, I wrote the sequel to Burning Spirit, which is currently titled Darkened Sky. I've never written a sequel before. I had to adapt--to learn how to be a new kind of writer. Again, "becoming."

So, I am still becoming. And I don't mind if I wear this title for years because "becoming" is a state of constant change. Always striving for the better element.

I'm certain if you think about it, there are elements of your life you want to improve on, and so I wish you a safe travel through your "becoming" no matter how long it takes. I'd love, however, to hear where you're going, so feel free to leave a comment on your journey.

Wiping the Slate Clean

Life has a way of becoming terribly busy on you even when it seems like nothing is happening, and when it appears you're moving painfully slow.

That's been my experience lately. I turn around and it's been two months since I've posted on the blog and really gotten a chance to touch base.

Well, first and most important in my heart: I've been writing. Without question, anytime I disappear from the blog it means I'm writing harder, working toward a self-inflicted deadline, or overwhelmed with the quantity of work I want to do but can't get my body to run without sleep.

I've also been doing critiques for my writing group, which takes its own amount of time to do well and helpfully. If writing is my baby, the critique group is my stepchild; these are the people that will pull me out of a burning building with their words and I would do the same for them--they cannot be neglected.

In the process of incorporating their notes about my chapters into my chapters, I had an epiphany and this is the nugget of wisdom I wanted to share that started this post in the first place.

...Makes You Stronger

Last Friday, when the summer sun had set and we had just returned home from a day out, a windstorm of twisting momentum crashed into our neighborhood. The Derecho was widespread over multiple states with little rain and maximum fury. Like a lot of others, we lost power.

Being the farm girl I am, I diligently lit candles and waited for the lights to come back on. That's what you do where I'm from. You play board games, fill tubs with water (just in case), and read by candlelight for two to three days. Since moving to the city, power normally is restored in a few hours.

The first few days passed without even a flicker of light, and the temperatures predicted to be near or over one hundred degrees kept their promises. With no air conditioning and no breezes, you can imagine the house heated effortlessly during the days to ninety degrees inside, and barely cooled off to eighty during the nights. The Hubs, our daughter Z, and I sweat along with the best of them. I washed clothes in the bathtub and hung them to dry each day, and we cooked food and made coffee over an open flame.

Day five brought with it an overheated car and then an abrupt complication which left us not only hot and sticky, stinky and hungry, but motionless. The idea of running out for a cool drink or going somewhere with working A/C was gone. With no power to recharge my computer and now no way to plug in somewhere else, what's a girl to do?

Life and Busyness

I've always been pretty clear about times when I drop away and times when I post on the blog with regularity. I'm here to say, that life has gotten pretty busy and that's when the blog posts slow to a trickle.

I'm of the belief that people need to know how to prioritize. That's how you tackle challenges and follow dreams: prioritize.

So when I'm overwhelmed with things that need to be done, I drop back on the lesser items to keep my focus on the most important items. For example, this blog is my connection to you. I love this blog; it's not a burden, but a fun retreat to peek in and see the world.

That said, when I'm choosing between blog posts and revisions on my novel, I'd be a fool not to chose the novel. Burning Spirit has to come just a notch ahead of the blog. If I addressed the blog first, and the novel later, I'd be sinking my own ship. It's just not good for business, for myself, or my soul.

A lot of new things have happened which have been great, and fun events have occurred, I just don't have the time now to share them weekly. I need to sleep sometime, right? What I'm not doing is quiting posting on the blog or quiting adding to The Trusting. What I am doing is refocusing, prioritizing, and refinding my balance in a new schedule. That is how you build a nest to comfort and protect yourself. And it is from within this nest that you can work, define yourself and your core, and create your most priceless eggs.

Putting Yourself Out There

Yesterday I shared with everyone part one of my six-part fiction series The Trusting. I've written, edited, and revised this story for weeks now, and after the countless hours spent working on it, there wasn't anything left to change. Well, onto the blog it went, as promised, and I made announcements across the Internet so the world would know I checked into work at Writerville for the day.

Then I promptly closed my email, blogger, social media websites, and I left the house. I couldn't take the waiting while I knew others were reading my work. I wanted to know what people thought, but couldn't handle staring at the screen in silence. The waiting period is an aspect author C. Hope Clark just recently blogged about, and I couldn't agree with her more.

Yes, it can be terrifying to share something so close to your heart, whether it's the project you've been working on, a piece of artwork, a fashion design, a novel, even a new recipe. Yet, you can't let that fearful moment between, "here, I made this," and "what do you think?" stop you from creating or sharing.

That's why it's so important to be brave enough to put yourself out there.

Item of Importance: The Key

A few weeks ago I wrote about Items of Importance in books and movies, and how much I love them. I also mentioned that I'll be sharing my own Items with you as I write and edit my novel, Burning Spirit. My hope is they are intriguing enough that you get a feel for the book through these items before you have the chance to read the story. Well, today I'm happy to share with you the first Item of Importance from Burning Spirit, and that item is a key.

Elsbeth, the main character, first receives this key when she goes to an inn. While it seems simple enough--insert in lock, turn--the key represents something more, something Elsbeth herself isn't aware of.

Elsbeth lives a life of secrets as she searches for other witches, but the person who gives her this key knows all too well who, and what, she is. What other doors could this key open beyond Room 9?