Archive | February 2014

Really Bizarre and Totally Fascinating

Feb5

At least to me.

I’m usually fairly observant about things around me. So yesterday when I was taking photographs of birds being birds, I suddenly saw the tree in front of me. Not the birds. Not anything else, but the tree. It had character. Age spots. Old moss, new moss, it was beautiful. More interesting at that moment than anything else in the world.

I wondered why I  hadn’t noticed it before. How could I have missed it? It’s big as day standing right in front of the window! Well, I did what I usually do when I find something fun and interesting, I took pictures, still not believing I hadn’t seen it before.

Have you seen Limitless? It’s violent, but it has an interesting premise–that a chemical substance can tap into all those unused brain cells of ours and make us see more clearly. The man whose story is being told is an unpublished writer who has an advance to write a book (remember I mentioned fantasy??? And how sometimes we just have to go with the story???) and he’s not written a single word and can’t. This had been going on for months. With this pill, he suddenly has the clarity to write the book in four days. And it’s brilliant. Well, it’s a dark story, but I felt like him yesterday, looking at that tree and wondering why I had never seen the beauty of it.

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I just want you to know it has NOTHING to do with me. Today when I went to get my cup of green tea, it is a gray tree, nothing more.  I need another one of those pills!

In reality, what happened? Somehow the sun and the moon and the shadows and nature revealed the beauty of that tree, and then, the combination of these things went away. And now it looks like it usually does. Nondescript and the birds have all the attention again.

So if something like that catches your eye, and you think how utterly bizarre that you hadn’t noticed it before, capture it, because it may never happen again. 🙂

Terry
“Giving new meaning to the term alpha male!”
www.terryspear.com

Multi-Tasking

Feb4

Are you the type of person who has to finish a project from beginning to end? A linear type of person?

When I was playing RPGs, role-playing games, I hated the ones that were super linear. My mind doesn’t work that way. If I get stuck, I’d want to be able to either figure out a different way to solve a puzzle, or be able to solve another and then go back to that one.

That’s how I am with everything. I have a ton of things I’m working on at any given time. I love it when I accomplish something, but I always have several more things take its place.

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So the day before yesterday, I worked on The Viking’s Highland Lass and added another 4,000 to it. And yesterday, I made edit changes to Cougar’s Mate, and I just went to town on it. So I ended up writing 6,000 words on it.  This is the story that I threw out 20,000 words of the 30,000 word beginning of the story. 🙂 I saved the “cut outs” because I will be using some of it. But I needed to start over and write it differently. Now it’s working. I do that every once in a while. Write 1/3 to a 1/2 of a book, and then decide I need to go in a different direction. It’s not action packed enough, not enough of a mystery, whatever. 🙂

Sometimes when something isn’t working, and I mean with anything, I take a break and work on something else. Like I took pictures of all the birds in the bird feeders. Yes, I know that one isn’t a bird feeder, but the birds don’t know that, so we’re good.

I would have written more on Cougar’s Mate, but I needed to take a break, so I worked on two bears for a bear order.

Now it’s time to read the last of the Rita books I’m judging.

So do you ever do something different so that you can come back to it and then all of a sudden it all falls into place?

Is it really Tuesday already?

I need more hours in a day.

Terry
“Giving new meaning to the term alpha male!”
www.terryspear.com

 

In the Beginning

Feb2

Yesterday, I had a winning start on the next book. Well, actually, I  have several in process right now. But I was reading a medieval romance and it finally got me into the mood to write The Viking’s Highland Lass and so I wrote 6,700 words yesterday. It doesn’t always happen that way. Often, I’ll be thankful to write a 1,000 words, 2,000 words being my goal for a day. But one scene led to another, and I finally had to quit, well, printed off pages of that and Cougar’s Mate, and edited them last night so I’m working on the revisions next, hoping to have 10,000 words by today.

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Sometimes, we just need a little inspiration–seeing a movie, or reading a book. Some writers say they never read. Ever. How can  you not read a book? And be a writer of books?

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The joy to me is in creating a story, but I love jumping into worlds other authors have created too. To lose myself in the conflict and the fantasy and just enjoy. Sometimes I’ll watch a futuristic story and think, oh, what if my character has a similar vice or strength? Not that it would be futuristic in nature, but just something about the character resonates and I want to make my character like that.

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The temperature went from a high of 73 yesterday, to a high of 37 today. There should be a law against temperature extremes like that. But in the story, a snowstorm is wreaking havoc.  Did you know that a storm or a setting can be as much of a character in a book? Anyway, we have 80% of rain, with 25 wind chill right now. So you know what that means? Perfectly stormy weather to write my snowstorm in.

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The other day I saw the movie Shadow Recruit with my daughter and son-in-law. Lots of action, CIA is soooo perfect, it’s funny, but it has a lot of suspense, thriller, cute love story, and I enjoyed it.

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Sure, it’s a total fantasy that they can take a guy who doesn’t know how to be a real agent–despite that sure, he’s an ex-marine, and really, really smart–but it’s fantasy, folks. LOL

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Have you ever noticed stories that say: Based on a true story? Based on actual events?

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But how much of it is true? Okay, so the sun sets every night, and it rises every day. Now, we know that’s true. So if we have a story where it shows the sun setting and the sun rising, then we can say it’s based on actual events, right? Those are two events that truly happened. Really.

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So here’s my rendition of a true event:

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trees with moss in magic light and haze in background
The bears and the girl and the forest are real.

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The fantasy? She is not sitting in that forest. And the bears are the same height, 10 1/2″ tall.

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I rest my case. And now I’m back to creating my fantasy worlds!

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Stay warm if you’re cold and cool if you’re hot, and I’m off to write!

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Terry
“Giving new meaning to the term alpha male!”
www.terryspear.com