beaches

Visiting the beach is so nice. I'm back from a week on Anna Maria Island, which sounds so glamorous, but it was just the beaching I needed. I caught up on a ton of reading and started a new book that is actually out-of-genre--the first I've read in what feels like a long while. The Teahouse Fire, by Ellis Avery, is one I heard a KQED podcast reading of (by Avery) and picked up for the trip. It's perfect for transporting you to 19th century Japan, inspired by Avery's five years of weekly tea ceremony study in New York and five weeks of daily tea study in Kyoto.

After spending time on Anna Maria, I think I might just have to step up the beach scenes in my novel. It already has a bit of beach in it, but it happens to be around a lake. I may make it an oceanfront beach instead--there's nothing the ocean waves can't do for the soul. And now I'm refreshed, ready to start back on novel revisions for the WISCON workshop.

Here's a drawing on did my first day on the island:

if only

While underwater collecting

Whew. Applications for Clarion SF and Clarion West have been submitted. After a ton of work, I keep all toes and fingers crossed. Next up is entering next quarter's Writers of the Future contest and applying for the Odyssey workshop. And then, the first few chapters of the novel go in for review at WISCON.

So, now it's back to novel writing, which I love. I picked up a few more children's books from the library. Some I have never read like Eoin Colfer's "Artemis Fowl." Others are old favorites like C.S. Lewis' "The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe." What better way to move from writing short stories back to young adult fantasy? I'm also rereading Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland.

And doing lots of drawing. Here's the latest (that may or may not be me):

Wings

snow provokes hat wearing sentiments

Sometimes you get to a point in writing where it seems no good ideas come to you. You have ideas, but know they don't fit what you're working on. Then, you start believing there will never be another good idea, maybe nothing new.

Drawing helps. And now the revision of Chapter Two is almost complete.

Write those new ideas down as soon as they come or you may lose them again, forever, just as quickly as they arrived. But good ideas will always come. Keep working and believing and something new will slip into consciousness and soon you'll be obsessing over it too.

Here's the drawing I came up with to get thoughts going...

The King Begins

As I'm going through my plot grid, I know something is missing in my story. I can feel it. So I started to draw. Now I haven't drawn for ages, but I think it's my new way to get unstuck from things. I have so much imagery floating around in my head, getting it down on paper makes it concrete and I see what is missing.

So here is a little plot preview: The king, having just escaped with his lizards, and a few flat men thrown in...


Click the drawing and it will enlarge in a pop-up.