One more day!

I'm totally in!  I may stay up late tonight just to write a few pages when midnight hits.

I embedded a page count widget over on the toolbar on the left there if anyone wants to keep track of how I'm doing.  Expect me to cruise the first several days and than slam into a concrete wall at week two.  At least that's what happened with NaNo.

Still, I'll be shocked if I don't finish the 100 pages.  I've written entire scripts in a couple of weeks before.  NaNo was hard for me because I tend to be a slow writer and I tinker around with the prose quite a bit before moving on, but script writing is much less about prose and more about flow, although good prose should flow, but I digress...  Also, I owe script writing for taking my dialogue from dismal to sometimes surprisingly good!

The bottom line is that script writing and I are old pals and I can't wait to do a little dance together again.

7+ hours and counting!

Writer Wednesday presents a cowgirl and her horse.

Say what now?

Last night I was going through my file cabinet and came across some of the stories that I wrote as a kid.  The very first chapter book (no pictures!) that I wrote was at eight or nine.  I was really big into horses back then and had lots of horsey paraphernalia.  I also loved (still do) notebooks, journals, diaries, any kind of bound object with paper inside.  Put those things together and you've got a spiral bound notebook with a cowgirl and a horse on the cover.

Don't you wish you had a notebook exactly like this?  If the sheer magnificence of it isn't enough to sway you, it only cost $1.16! 

I wrote that first chapter book inside it.  It was called Maybe in a Million Years. Reading through all fifteen chapters of it I still have no clue where that title came from and what it has to do with the story, but hey, the logic of an eight year-old...  

It even has a synopsis on the inside of the cover which says:  Lisa and Jessica sent Joey to military school to shape up, but Lisa's parents decide to go live in France.  What will they do?  They can't get Lisa's parents to change their minds without Joey's help.

I don't know about you, but I think that is riveting stuff right there. I should immediately book a ticket to NYC and march myself over to Random House and demand publication.  No other course of action makes sense. Am I right?

Sometimes I think it's silly to want to be published.  I joke about being the next J. K. Rowling, but really I don't expect to make $1000 much less billions, so it's not like I've got unrealistic expectations. Yet I still have those thoughts from time to time (probably more often than I want to admit) where I wonder if it's all just a colossal waste of time.  I mean isn't everyone writing a book at some point in their lives?  It sure seems like it.  

I need to keep reminding myself that even if I don't ever get published, or if I do, but don't make a dime, writing is something that I've always done because I enjoy it.  Or at least I should enjoy it (more).  I certainly enjoyed it at eight or I wouldn't have made it through fifteen chapters.

Writer Wednesday.

I've decided that every Wednesday I'm going to blog on the topic of writing.  Sometimes about how my own writing is coming along and other times about the art of writing in general.

Yesterday I realized that I have a big writing project starting in about a week.  It's something I decided to tackle while I was participating in NaNoWriMo last year, but I didn't think about it again until yesterday which means I have little time to prepare.

100 pages in 30 days!  Starting in 9 days!

Still though, not nearly as bad as the 50,000 words in 30 days for NaNoWriMo.

That I decided to try the day before it started.

With no hint of a plot or main character.

Yeah, that was interesting...

I didn't make it to 50,000 words because eventually my lack of preparation caught up with me, but I was so glad that I tried.  I came out of it with the beginnings of a story that I love just as much as the one that I've worked on for over a decade.  And the comfort in knowing that I'm not a one trick pony.  I have other stories to tell if I decide to.

Prior to NaNo there had been times that I wondered if I was just going to finish my little fantasy story and that would be it.  There had never been any story ideas that I loved as much as that one.  Of course I'd never tried to seriously come up with others, but whatever...  NaNo taught me that I could care just as much about another project which was a huge relief to me.

I don't know what will come of Script Frenzy, but I know at the very least it'll be a lot of fun!  I love the actual process of screenwriting more than any other form of writing.

Headboard love too.

I couldn't in good conscience let the new headboard feel inferior to the steamer trunk, so here we are.

It arrived yesterday.  I do love it.  And I don't have any guilt over waving goodbye to the old headboard despite the fact that it was the first domestic item that D and I bought together.  

Should I?  

Eh.  It was a good six years past its expiration date.

Here's a glimpse of the old headboard.

The new headboard freshens up the room so much.  And it has more presence.

I'm kinda loving it more with the coast bar too.  That's what D dubbed the painting above the bed.

Yep, it looks like a bar of soap.  I painted it years ago to temporarily hang above the bed until we could find something we really liked, but we loved the coast bar day one so it has stayed.

The finish on the headboard is really beautiful.  It's this swirly brushed nickely coppery color.  As much fun as the Hipstamatic camera app is to play with on the iphone, I'll have to wait until I properly figure out how to work my dslr camera before I can get any decent close-ups of it.

I debated buying the footboard because it's pretty nifty too, but sometimes D and I like hanging our feet off the end of the bed while we sleep.  Are we the only weirdos that do that?

Final thought for the day:  What's with the funky formatting on this post?  No matter what I did I couldn't get rid of those extra spaces after the photos.  I didn't have that problem with my other posts. Stupid Blogger.  It's already driving me nutty and this is only my third post.

Anybody have a clue what the deal is with that?

Steamer love.

It's finally here, after spending 3 days in New Orleans.  I could have walked there and back faster. 

Maybe twice.  

I suppose I should cut it some slack though.  It is older than dirt.  

The steamer was made sometime between 1910 and 1921 by William H. Winship.  The Winships (there were several in the business) were well known bag and trunk makers out of Boston starting around the mid-19th century with William's uncle, H. A. Winship.  I mention all this because I know I'm not the only steamer/old trunk geek out there.

The trunk is covered in white(ish) leather that though not pristine is still completely intact.  I've never attempted to restore a trunk before, but I'm going to try to clean it up as much as possible.

The inside paper lining is also still intact which is even more shocking.  From what I've read that tends to be the first thing to go. I'd be convinced that the trunk had been stripped and relined if it wasn't for the fact that the original label is still there.  I didn't think to take photos of the inside, which j'adore, but maybe another day.

Isn't it beautiful?  I'm really feeling it up on top of the antique furniture cart.  I just need to find something to put next to it. Something small and round(ish) like a vase or a bowl.  More modern too. Maybe metal or a bright color?  Any ideas?

Blogs scare me.

At least the idea of creating one does.  For many different reasons.

What do I blog about?  Will anyone care?  Just how much will I obsess over each post?  Still, if nothing else a blog serves as a journal of sorts and I like the idea of documenting what I've been up to, no matter how mundane.  I've never been very good at the traditional form of journaling.

I've read lots of "expert" advice saying that blogs should be focused in order to be successful.  Evidently, the broader the blog the smaller the number of people that'll give a rip.  The problem with that, for me for you (just a little American Idol humor, dawg) is that the narrower the blog the less I'll give a rip.

I love reading and writing.  I love good food.  I love drawing, painting, music, dance.  I love graphic, interior, and exterior design.

If I had to boil my interests down to a single statement it would be this:  I love art.

Period.

In all forms.  (Well, most forms.  Ke$ha perplexes me.)

So I'm going to go with that.  I may eventually assign different days to different topics so it's not complete chaos, but I'll be bored inside a month if I stick to one topic and I'm pretty sure that an abandoned blog would be considered even less successful than an unfocused one.

Back to that question about how much I'll obsess over my posts? Apparently, 45 minutes on a 200 word rambling wonder.  I plan on getting over myself as quickly as possible.

Final thought for the day:  I'm impatiently waiting on the arrival of an antique steamer type trunk and it has either stopped to enjoy a post-Mardi Gras bon fête or else nobody's bothered to update the tracking info on the thing because it's been sitting in New Orleans for a day and a half now.

Ugh.

Pictures when UPS deigns to make an appearance.