Camp NaNoWriMo is next month and I am very nervous about it. Very. I’m going in nearly blind, and midway through another huge project (revisions on Twixt) which seems like a recipe for disaster but…well, it seemed like a good idea at the time, and now I’m committed. I freaking hate breaking commitments so, despite how unprepared I am, I’m going to suck it up and give it a shot. Who knows, maybe something awesome will come out of it and I can’t possibly end Camp NaNo with less than I started with, right? So, there’s that…

My project in June is going to be Hollow Children.

A few months ago (man, it might actually be a year ago now :-/) my daughter, Danica, and I decided we wanted to write a novel together. We searched through stock photography sites to find an image that sparked both our imaginations and chose on the image you can see to the left. We brainstormed together and came up with a couple characters then borrowed a story concept I’d been working on before and combined them.

I wrote an opening scene and passed it over to Dani to write the next one. She struggled with it. She’s possibly even more of a perfectionist than I am, and writing isn’t usually her “thing”. So we decided instead of sharing the writing duties, I would write the story and she would illustrate it.

And then I got stuck.

History has shown when I get stuck like this it’s because I’m starting the story in the wrong place, or haven’t really gotten into the brains of my characters. I suspect both are issues when it comes to Hollow Children. To make things even worse, our plot is only a nebulous concept still so I have no freaking idea what is going to happen in this book.

Ugh.

And now I’ve committed to writing 50,000 words on it over the month of June.

What was I thinking? LOL

Right now I’ve got the cover image (which I purchased the right to use) as my desktop image on my laptop so I’ll see it all the time. I’m hoping it will spark something in my brain but if all else fails I’ll draw a couple characters out of my fishbowl (or traits to help flesh out the characters Dani and I created earlier) and write random scenes. I can always try to fit them together once it’s time for revisions, right?

That being said, I’m very open to any suggestions anyone might have about how to find the skeleton of a story in a hurry LOL

Help?

Originally published at Rhonda Parrish dot com. You can comment here or there.

I decided it was time that I set up a weekly recurring “thing” on this blog again. The problem is I struggle a little bit with consistency at the best of times so I didn’t want to constrain myself too tightly. For example, if I were sharing a photo a week, that would either begin to bore me after a while and I’d let it slip, or during a time when I wasn’t taking a lot of photos I’d have to use old content and that would bore you. That same basic idea applied to pretty much everything I could think of doing so I decided to keep things pretty open to avoid boredom while still forcing myself to post something on the same day every week. In the end I decided on:

Two for Tuesday

Starting today I’ll be posting two somethings each Tuesday. They could be anything. Two words, two pictures, two recipes, two quotes, two poems, two stories, two links — you get the idea.

It should be fun

I’m going to kick things off with two pictures. These are both images of Danica’s eye. I took the pictures within seconds of one another and then just processed them differently. They are some of of my favourit images (a’la moi) that I’ve done recently. If you like them, I invite you to pop over to my Flickr page to see more of my photographs, and if you use Flickr why not add me as a contact? I’ll be happy to return the favour

Originally published at Rhonda Parrish dot com. You can comment here or there.

I may be crazy. Ah hell, I might as well own it, right? I am crazy.

I just signed up for Camp NaNoWriMo for June. Camp NaNoWriMo is the same as regular NaNoWriMo but it takes place in June or August rather than November.

I signed up because I’ve really been struggling with writing new fiction this year. I’ve created several poems I’m really fond of, but when it comes to fiction I haven’t written anything new all year. I’ve re-written a few stories, and I’m up to my eyeballs with HTRYN revisions on Twixt, but brand new from nothing drafts? Nada. In five months. That’s unacceptable.

So, that’s where Camp NaNoWriMo comes in.

I have a story I’m meant to be working on with Danica. It’s called Hollow Children and the idea is that I’m going to write it and then she will illustrate it. I’ve decided to make it my Camp NaNo project. Perhaps the daily word counts, accountability and a NaNo-light atmosphere will help me get it done. It will then sit for a few months until I find time to revise it, but it will be written and maybe that will break through this wall in my brain that is keeping me from getting any new fiction written.

Or, maybe I’m just crazy.

Originally published at Rhonda Parrish dot com. You can comment here or there.

Warning: This post doesn’t have anything at all to do with writing. I have Danica’s permission to share this story about her.

This is Danica. This isn’t the most flattering photograph I have of her, but she looks angry in it, and that makes it the most appropriate photograph for this post.

Thursday was Dani’s track and field day. This is ungood for a few reasons

- Like her mother, Danica isn’t much into sports. That includes track and field.
- Dani’s birthday is in October, which means she has to compete against kids a grade higher than her
- We, as a family, haven’t really had a very active lifestyle until recently which means we’re all somewhat out of shape.

So, Dani was not looking forward to track and field day, but, like a champ, she sucked it up and was going to make the best of it. Still, she did call me from the track and field day to complain about the weather, and then again in the afternoon to tell me that the event had been canceled on account of snow (gotta love springtime in Edmonton, right?) and would be continued on Friday.

Then she came home and wanted to talk to me. There were tears in her eyes.

She cried as she told me about how the people who were measuring and raking for the triple jump event had made fun of her performance.

*sigh*

I was furious. Mean people suck. And people being mean to my kid, well, they suck even more than most.***

One of the worst parts of the whole situation was that she would have to go back to school the next day (Friday) and compete in two more events.

Could I force her to do that? Turns out the answer is no.

I know we can’t shelter her from everything, but I asked myself, what would she learn from going to the track meet that would make it worth the anxiety she’d feel and the potential for having to deal with insensitive people. In the end I couldn’t see any valuable lesson to be learned other than ‘sometimes you have to do stuff that sucks’. I decided she’d done that when she’d participated in the track meet on Thursday, I couldn’t force her to go back on Friday.

Jo and I discussed it and we agreed. We decided that if Danica asked to stay home on Friday we’d let her. She did, and we did.

My point?

“Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.”
~Plato

It’s something I sometimes struggle with** and maybe this was life’s way of reminding me, so I thought I might help spread the word, in case I’m not the only one who could use it.

~*~

On a sideways-related note*, Danica has decided to get into better shape and so she and I have commited to doing the Couch to 5k program starting today. Monday, Wednesday and Friday will be our running days. We know it’s really going to suck at the start, but we’re determined to stick to it.

That’s one reason why I’m making this blog post, actually. This is going to be hard. Super hard. I would have a difficult enough time keeping myself motivated to do this. Now, not only am I going to have to push myself to do this, I’m also going to have to push Danica.

Did I mention that it’s going to be tough?

Yeah. So I’m hoping by sharing this it will not only provide a little accountability, it will also give me a whole bunch of people who will be able to remind me that I’m doing the right thing. The right thing for myself and for my daughter.

Yeah. I’m definitely going to need that.

*The kids at the track meet were just the proverbial final straw, not the sole motivation for this. It had been a long time in the making.

**As evidenced, I suppose, by the fact that when I originally wrote this post I referred to the children who mocked Danica as jerks. Not very kind there, Rhonda, not very kind at all.

***It could be that those kids are actually good people who are usually very nice. It could be that they didn’t know she could hear them. But what they said was mean, and she could hear them so whether they know it or not, they really hurt her feelings. I grant you that there is a huge difference between intentional and unintentional meanness, but when I’m in ‘protective mother’ mode I don’t clearly see subtleties like that.

Originally published at Rhonda Parrish dot com. You can comment here or there.

I’m pleased to announce that my poem “Broken” will be included in the next issue of Trembles Magazine. “Broken” was written as a part of my (still ongoing LoL) November poem-a-day challenge from 2011 and I’m so very pleased that it has found a home at Trembles.

Originally published at Rhonda Parrish dot com. You can comment here or there.

April was freaking crazy. I think when I described it as a vampiric month I hit the nail on the head. Now that I’ve had a few days away from it, however, I can see that it was also a very energising month. I think it was good for me. I tend to shy away from taking on too many things at a time, but April pushed me in that regard and showed me that I really can funtion outside of my comfort zone. Now, I’m not going to be signing up for multiple challenges like this again anytime soon (if ever) but I have a strong feeling of accomplishment for surviving it when I did, and I’m finding that very motivating as I move deeper into May. I’m going to take a quick look back at the three main challenges I tackled in April.

The Blogging From A to Z Challenge: This was by far the most time-consuming challenge. Not only did I have to publish a blog post almost everyday of the month, but I had to visit 10 other people’s blogs, take a look around, read thier posts and leave a comment. What’s more, I replied to every comment left on my blog and visited those people’s blogs as well. Now, from what I can tell, a very large proportion of people who did this challenge skipped that part, and frankly, that kinda pissed me off.

The challenging part may have come from writing blog posts everyday, but if that’s all you did, you missed out. What’s more, you took advantage of the people who embraced the challenge in its entirety. The point (at least in part) was supposed to be to meet new people and expirience new blogs, not just sit back in your cozy hole and enjoy free traffic from the Blogging From A to Z participants list. /rant

Anyway, I did meet some new people and added a couple new blogs to the list of places I’ll visit regularly, and I did get to blog about somethings that I might normally not have had an excuse to. I don’t know if I’ll do this challenge again though, because I worry that it was a bit too much. Not necessarily for me (if I were to do it again I would have a theme, shorter blog entries and they would all be pre-scheduled LOL) but for my readers. There were far more comments on my posts at the beginning of the challenge than at the end, and I suspect that’s at least in part because people were tired of hearing from me everyday So… I’ll consider doing this again next year, but I don’t know. I don’t know.

The Platform Challenge: Robert Brewer offered  his readers the first annual Platform Challenge this April, and I participated. It was, by far, the easiest challenge I did. In fact, it wasn’t much of a challenge at all. For me. I know it was a huge challenge for a lot of people, but for the most part the daily assignments were things I’d already done or do regularily (sign-up for Twitter, get a blog, make a blog post…). If you are just starting out in social media/platform-type stuff than this challenge would be great for you. It would push you to jump into the fray, but at a pace that was designed to avoid overwhelming you. If your already social-media savvy and running a blog, however, it will be less helpful. That being said, I did learn a few things and discovered several ways to tweak my blog to be more betterer. Those share buttons at the bottom, for example, and the ability to follow the blog via email from the thingy to the right there (not available on LJ, sorry). So, yeah. I’m glad I did it. I won’t be doing it again though unless Robert puts out an intermediate version.

The April Poem A Day Challenge: This challenge was also hosted by Robert Brewer on the Poetic Asides blog. The idea was a poem a day for thirty days. I finished up to and included Day #26 by the end of April. That means I have four more prompts to write poems for over the month of May. It was a struggle this time around. I think largely because I didn’t have any focus, I didn’t have a theme. Allow me to illustrate:

Day One	Day Two
Day Three

Day One. A fresh new notebook, a big fat blank spot where theme should go. Not a great start, right? Okay, so, then we have Day Two over to the right there. Happily I have a theme, a theme I really, really like. In fact, someday I will write a poetry collection with a corvidae theme. Alas, that day was not situated anywhere in the month of April 2012 LOL

Day Three. Okay, says I, maybe corvidae is too narrow a theme for this particular poetry challenge. If I broaden it to be ‘Wings’ that can include birds, and planes, and angels and metaphoric wings and… Yeah, so that theme last until about day six when it, too, got crossed out and I went with a big fat question mark for a theme LOL

I think I have a few poem seeds as a result of this challenge that I’ll be able to make grow into something cool, but right now I’m not blown away. Many of the poems feel unfinished, like I had the start of an idea but I didn’t know how to end it. Or there’s the gems where I obviously just wasn’t feeling the prompt, like the haiku I wrote as my rejection poem for Day Eight:

It’s not quite for us
but please submit again
stabby, stabby, stab

Still, it’s a bunch of poem starts I wouldn’t have had without this challenge, and you bet your ass I’ll be doing it again next year

Originally published at Rhonda Parrish dot com. You can comment here or there.

This is just a super quick update post because I expect you’re kind of tired of hearing from me everyday after the blogging challenge I did in April. No matter how much you might like someone, hearing from them every. stinking. day. can begin to wear you down, right?

I had a very productive month in April, and remain on track for my W1S1 goals. I didn’t write any new fiction but I participated in the April Poem a Day challenge (as of this post, which I’m writing on the morning of April 30th, I am a couple days behind but I expect to catch up this afternoon. I’ll update you next week when I write a post about all the challenges I did this month). I read through my poems the other day, to see how bad they were and discovered a great many of them are unfinished, but several have potential so… Yay?

I also made three sales this month and added at least one more poem into the pool of work I’m actively submitting which gives me 13 pending submissions right now.

Not too shabby, eh?

Originally published at Rhonda Parrish dot com. You can comment here or there.

This entry concludes the Blogging from A to Z challenge! Yay! I’ll be doing a W1S1 summary post for the month of April tomorrow but after that I won’t be blogging before next week. At that point I’ll do a sum-up post for Blogging from A to Z, the Platform Challenge and the April Poem a Day Challenge. Thank you to all my existing readers for sticking around while I did this blogging challenge, and welcome aboard to the new readers who found me because of it. You’re awesome. All of you.

Z is for zombie. It’s also for Zamboni. Sadly I don’t have any zombie or Zamboni photographs handy that wouldn’t require effort to locate and edit, so I went with this picture. It’s not apocalyptic-y, but it’s kinda forlorn, so… Close enough

So yes. Z is for zombie and Zamboni. A couple years ago my NaNoWriMo novel was a zombie novel set in Edmonton which I, oh so cleverly, titled Deadmonton The spark that set me thinking about Deadmonton was the idea of having a book which included a scene where a zombie gets killed with a zamboni.

Deadmonton, in its current incarnation is deeply flawed and I’m not sure I’m ever going to get around to fixing it, to be honest. The good news is that means I can share a scene from it with you here. Which scene? Well, the zombie vs Zamboni scene of course. This scene has a lot of problems with it, but if you read it without your editor hat on, it’s kinda fun too.

Warning: There is plenty of violence and profanity in this scene.

Zombie Vs Zamboni
(A Deadmonton excerpt)

Leading up to this scene Ashley was skating on freshly Zamboni-ed ice at Hawrelak Park when zombies start coming from all directions and surrounding her. The driver of the Zamboni has helped her onto the Zamboni, presumably to get away.

( Read the rest of this entry » )

Originally published at Rhonda Parrish dot com. You can comment here or there.

Y is for questions that You Asked

Last month I asked people to ask me questions that I would answer for letter Q. I’ve cheated a little bit and used them for Q is for Questions as well as I is for I Lied. I still have a lot of questions left over though so I thought I’d cheat again today (just a little, sheesh :-p) and answer a couple more.

Beth asked:

You juggle so many things at once right now. What is your favorite writing-related thing? What fills you with dread (other than rejection!)?

My favourite writing-related thing in the whole world is when someone reads something I’ve written and likes it. I know that sounds a bit cliche but it’s totally true. I treasure every comment and the couple times I actually received emails from strangers saying they liked my work (!!) I got all weepy. Acceptances are a close second on my favourites list, but approval from readers means more to me than approval from editors (sorry editors).

The thing that fills me with dread is the idea that someone will mistake what my characters think and say as being what I think or feel. I’ve got a homophobic character in a recent work, for example. A very vocal homophobe. I worry that people will read that story and think I am using him as a mouthpiece for my own opinions. I guess that’s actually rather unlikely given how vocal I’ve been known to be about gay rights and equality, but the idea remains the same. I don’t want people to think my characters are myself. But, that’s one of those things I can’t do anything bout, so *shrugs* I guess I better learn to let it go LOL

BD asked:

If you could only ever play one position again, would you DPS, heal, or tank?

^_~

This is a seriously bratty question and BD knew it. I have a lot of alts in World of Warcraft because I’m fickle. I want to play one role one week and a different role the next LOL

For those of you who don’t play MMOs, DPS, heals and tanks are the three different roles in a typical game. The tank is the person in heavy armor whose job is to keep all the monsters mad at them so they don’t run around and smack all the other people in lighter armor (the squishies). The tank is the person in charge, they maneuver the monsters, positioning them how they want and leading their group through the dungeon or raid. I tend to have control issues, which is why I like tanking. At the same time, I get frustrated if I have DPS who make my job more difficult and it’s a pretty high-pressure job. That’s great if you’re in a group of your friends who like you and won’t freak out if you make a mistake, it’s less great if you’re in a random group of people you’ve never met before and who have no expectation of seeing you again. That combination tends to make people be bigger jerks than they otherwise would be, and the tank is a great target for all that vitriol if things aren’t going exactly how they expect. If I could only play one role ever again it wouldn’t be a tank. I could get my tank-y fix by soloing with a tanky character

DPS classes are the damage-dealing ones (DPS stands for Damage per second). These characters are in lighter armor than the tank and their number one job is to avoid drawing the attention of the monsters you’re killing. Their second job is to kill it. Each class has different skills and abilities that they use to buff their party members, kill monsters and offer support to their team. DPS is the lowest pressure position in any MMO because there are more of them in any group so they can pick up the slack for each other if necessary (a dungeon group is 1 tank, 1 healer and  DPS, for example). I like being a DPS because of the lack of pressure but DPS comes with a whole different set of pressure — competition. People run meters that track how much damage they are doing and how quickly and they are very competitive. You don’t want to be the person who is doing the least, let me tell you.

That’s why, if I had to pick one role to play for the rest of my life it would be healing. It was a very tough call because I like DPSing, but I think healing wins. I think their role is kinda self-explanatory. The healer’s job is to heal everyone in their group to keep them alive and kicking. This is obviously a pretty high-pressure position, but it’s not high pressure in the ‘You’re in charge so if anythign goes wrong it’s your fault’ way, nor is it in the ‘Numbers matter above everything else no matter what the extenuating circumstances are’ way. It’s high pressure in the ‘If you don’t do your job people will die’ way and that’s the best possible way. It means you have very finite and obvious ways to measure your success. Is the boss dead? Are at least one of your teammates still standing? Congratulations, you win!

That would be my choice… I think.

Arlee Bird asked:

Why do you blog?

Ooh, good question. When I started blogging on Livejournal in 2002 I think it was partly because everyone else in my circle of friends was doing it, but mostly because of a bit of an exhibitionist streak. Then when I gave up my other job so I could focus on writing (ha! focus. I wish LOL) it seemed like it would be a good idea to have a website that represented me online, as well as a central place to list my publications. Thus, this blog was created. That’s why I started it, but I guess the reason I maintain it is a combination of professional obligation, to connect with friends and readers, and an exhibitionist streak.

So now I’ll ask you, readers, why do you blog? I know most of you do because I follow your links to your blogs every day LOL

~*~

This blog post is part of the Blogging from A to Z challenge over the month of April and was brought to you by the letter Y. On Monday I’ll be blogging about something that starts with the letter Z. If you know me at all it’s probably not difficult for you to guess that that might be

Originally published at Rhonda Parrish dot com. You can comment here or there.

It’s snowing again today. Not nearly as much as in that picture I took a couple weeks ago, but enough that it’s staying on the ground and ruining my weekend yardwork plans. The weather *sigh* whatcha gonna do, right?

So, I don’t know about you, but I’m exhausted. I honestly wanted to come up with an X word that wasn’t a cheat, but April has been an energy vampire and my creative gas tank is running on fumes right now. I have a very finite amount of emotional, physical and creative energy (which is likely thanks to depression.) and I took on far more this month than I should have. Let’s take a peek at what I’ve been doing this month:

- The Blogging from A to Z Challenge

- The April Poem a Day Challenge

- The Platform Building Challenge

- The NaNoLJers Anthology

- The Niteblade Fundraiser

But wait, there’s more! This is a busy Niteblade month because I need to have the table of contents for the June issue set and good to go by the end of this month, which means getting all the edits and paperwork and stuff done. I’ve also been managing to stick to my exercise goals despite the fact my weight loss has hit a plateau (how depressing is that? Ugh). Also, there’s all the ‘life’ and ‘wife‘ and ‘mother‘ stuff. And stuff. Yes. Lots of stuff :-p

Overall, I’m pretty stinkin’ proud of myself, but I’m looking forward to the month being over so I can have some recovery time.

Then Amber posted the sign-up form for Writo De Mayo (the annual challenge NaNoLJers hold in May) and I went ‘Oh. Shit.’ I thought about not signing up this year, but I think I should. If I don’t have some solid goals for next month I may well spend my days curled up in bed getting nothing done and turning into a lump. So I signed up, but I didn’t pick super challenging goals. Their job won’t be to stretch myself but just to motivate me to keep going.

Writo De Mayo goals for 2012:

• Do the 200 Sit Ups Challenge (beginning on Week Two in Column Two) without straining or otherwise injuring my neck in the process
• Stay on track for W1S1
• Write the first draft of at least one new short story (not a poem)
• Write the first draft of a query letter for Shadows and get feedback on it
• Get back to the HTRYN course I’m using to revise Twixt (and that I’ve neglected all April)
• If I’m not successful in finishing up all the prompts for the April Poem-A-Day Challenge finish up any I missed.

What are your goals for next month?

~*~

This blog post is part of the Blogging from A to Z challenge over the month of April and the letter X. Tomorrow I’ll be blogging about something to do with Y (actually, I expect to go with ‘Why?’ but, ya know, it’s the thought that counts) so pop by then to check it out

Originally published at Rhonda Parrish dot com. You can comment here or there.