I haven’t been a very good blogger lately. Things keep coming up and most of my blogging energy goes into Twitter, but I’m going to do better from now on. While I absolutely love Twitter, there’s still a lot of value in longer-form postings, and so I’m retraining myself to start posting at least every other day from now on.
Let’s see, where did I leave off? (That’s the problem with blogging so infrequently — I can’t even remember what I’ve been talking about on here.) This is going to be a buckshot post since there’s a lot to catch up on and I don’t have a whole lot of time.
First off, the five-books-at-a-time thing. It’s going really, really well, actually. I’ve finished several books since limiting myself to five, I feel more inclined to read than I did before, and I’m absolutely loving it. (For the books I’ve finished since then have been Ron Paul’s The Revolution: A Manifesto, Nancy Kress’s Beginnings, Middles & Ends, Tom Shippey’s J.R.R. Tolkien: Author of the Century, Becca Wilhite’s Bright Blue Miracle, Melina Marchetta’s Jellicoe Road, and Scott Westerfeld’s Uglies. I’m currently reading Megan Whalen Turner’s The Thief, Derek Landy’s Skulduggery Pleasant, James Scott Bell’s Write Great Fiction: Plot & Structure, Neil Postman’s Building a Bridge to the 18th Century, and (gasp) Twilight.)
Last weekend I attended the annual LDStorymakers conference. I heard about it from my friend Josh Perkey, who I met at the publishers fair (he’s a senior editor with the Ensign) and then in Brandon Sanderson’s creative writing class. I’m very glad I went — it was lots of fun meeting other writers and editors and just talking about books and the publishing world. I only wish I’d started going years ago. :)
At one of the sessions at the conference on plot and conflict, the main plot arc for my Tanglewood novel fell into my lap. It’s been slowly coming together over the past semester, but the core part was missing until now. I’m super excited about this book — it’s much better than any of the fiction I’ve ever written before — and I’m going to make May my own personal NaNoWriMo, writing at least 2,000 words a day until the first draft is done. Lots of other things keep coming up, but I’m going to try to get rid of all the distractions so I can focus on this.
I’ve also decided to force myself to learn how to cook. How? By not letting myself rely on my usual crutches — frozen burritoes and canned soup and the like. It’s only been a few days but it’s actually working, to my surprise. I bought a nice big 50 lb. bag of jasmine rice and have started making Thai food again (curries and omelets, mainly), and I’m now packing sandwiches for lunch again instead of eating out at the Cougareat. It’s a cheaper, healthier, and more relaxing way to live, I think, even if it takes a little bit more time for food preparation.
Alrighty, that’s enough for an update for now. Expect regular postings from now on (and somebody please complain if I slack off again :)).
Comments
If you find that the time it takes to make a lunch is a hassle, try making twice as much food for dinner and then pack the leftovers in a lunch-size tupperware. Throw in a piece of fruit and maybe a string cheese and you’ll have a lunch with under one minute of prep time. :D
This comment is completely unrelated to your post. I would just like to say that I just downloaded google chrome yesterday and your web page (including the blog part) runs beautifully in it unlike in IE. I am now addicted to google chrome (not for that reason alone of course).
Liz: Good idea. I like leftovers. :)
Ginger: Awesome. :) (I stopped caring a long time ago what this site looks like in IE, and I figure that if people do look at it in that browser-which-shall-henceforth-not-be-named, it’ll be an incentive for them to upgrade to a real browser.)
Throw in your two cents