Cat herding progress

Not only is the reference to herding cats accurate in the sense that my characters (or more precisely my MC) where being unruly, but I also find it a slightly funny (though completely inside) joke since my MC is called Kat. But I decided to suck it up and put on my big girl pants and let her do what she wants.

In the process of letting go of who or what I thought my MC should be the strangest thing happened. I am not only probably just one more editorial pass away from publishing book one in the series, I got about 1300 words into book two in about an hour and have sketched out the general path of a 5 book series in the little notebook I call my brain.

I say sketched out because I am not by any stretch of the imagination a person who likes or ever uses the word outline. So I am calling my quickly scribbled notes anything but an outline. They are just brief paragraphs of things I don't want to forget to include in each book. Please don't be pedantic (aka accurate) and insist I call it an outline in any sense of the word. I am still a pantser at heart and can't handle the idea of converting.

If anything, this sudden glut of ideas assures me that despite what I thought should happen, the story really did know better. And that it was my preconceived notions that were in the way. So, if anything, it was not having an idea where I was going that allowed me to figure out where I was going. And it was the thinking I knew where it ought to go that stopped me in my tracks.

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Book Review - Three Tides - Part 4

Pineda’s ‘gathering’ chapters are all about the epic destruction of Katrina. I come away from this reading feeling some sense of relief that many people are decent human beings who will help others in times of need, including Pineda herself. Pineda talks a lot about the strong sense of community in New Orleans before the hurricane and that during the hurricane the effected people were repeatedly “helping one another, sharing what they had.”
But the sense of relief at the humanity between individual people, gave way very quickly to disgust at the negligence of the organizations meant to help. Starting with the callous government officials who actually seem to have viewed Katrina as an opportunity to ‘clean up’ the “public housing” of New Orleans in favor of “urban renewal.” Rep. Richard Baker actually said as much, adding, “We couldn’t do it, but God did.” Apparently, they blew up the levees intentionally to sacrifice the poorer parts of town, in order to save the richer areas and tour…

Review: You Are a Badass: How to Stop Doubting Your Greatness and Start Living an Awesome Life

You Are a Badass: How to Stop Doubting Your Greatness and Start Living an Awesome Life by Jen Sincero
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Listened to the audiobook version. While some of the advice was stuff that could be found in any other self help book, some of it was wholly original and exciting. And the author fully owned that not every word she was communicating could be called earth shattering. But the best reason to read this book as opposed to others is the style of the author. Jen Sincero writes like your best friend telling you the truth. She writes without pulling any punches, in a straightforward vernacular, but with a perceived underlying concern for your well-being and self improvement. It's basically impossible not to listen.

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Consolidation

I'm something of a compartmentalizer.

I had a personal blog and a writing blog. I had a website to advertise my freelance writing and other marketable skills, and a separate site to talk about my fiction writing saga. I have a personal twitter and a writing twitter. I didn't want to "bother" people from one area of my life with stuff from another. Didn't want to bore personal friends with talk of writing, or posted poetry. Didn't want to offend fellow word-lovers with my politics, or bore them with monotonous check-ins to the same handful of places (I'd be depressingly easy to stalk if anyone were so inclined, lol).

But I'm done with that.

Maybe it's the New Year, or my new word. Maybe it's just my age showing - I am in my fuck-it-forties, after all. Maybe it was an article I read which said that having a website under a cutesy online pseudonym (like my qwertyKayt) is best if your 'brand' is talking about writing, while having a site …

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