Word Count: 1535

Current Works
Dayjob: Things have been a bit slow at the dayjob. I did get to write a first draft of a white paper, which was fun. I’ll be linking to it when it gets approved in the future. I’m also learning a lot about interviewing SMEs, which is something I could use the practice with.

DIY Planner: Finished writing and revising draft of this Thursday’s article. Sent it out to two friends to edit. Got some good feedback and I’m excited to release it on Thursday. I hope it generates good feedback. Also edited my friend Taylor’s article, which we posted today. I did a bit more work on it than I did last week and I think it’s paying off as people are already commenting on it. Readers in the blogosphere are a hard group to understand. Just when you think you’ve written something great for comments, they don’t post. Still trying to get ahold of how they think and what the trends of my readership there are.

Daily Sketch: It’s been awhile since I’ve written one of these. Need to re-form the habit of doing it daily. Tonight’s topic, “a painting comes to life”. I sorta cheated on this one as the story wrote itself onto two index cards instead of one. Oh well, it was worth the set-up, I think. It’s a bit surreal, I call it “Come to Life”.

(Did anyone else notice that all the paragraphs in this section started with a D? Go figure.)

Mundania
Sorry I’ve been gone for a bit, I get caught up in life and whatnot and sometimes just am not able to get writing daily posts or other news on my own site. I’m trying really hard to change that tho. A lot’s been going on in the industry and I do have a few thoughts on some big news. Expect to see that soon.

Had a busy day at work today. Still not really doing much writing or “real job” work but I had a lot of meetings. Learned just how detailed the engineers need to go in making the products work. As in micron. Very eye opening. Also had an interesting discussion with the lead today. Won’t go into it here but it left me with a few more to-do items on my soul searching and personal improvement front. Some things I’ve been working on for years. (Aside: need to start working on grok again, so i can post these things there!)

To Do List
– edit Taylor’s DIYP article
– finish writing my DIYP article
– read

Ye Olde Linkfest
–Is it Prime? Here’s an interesting post about quickly identifying prime numbers. While it’s not directly related to writing per se, I do see this as a great exercise to keep your mental health up to par. That and it DOES mention Neil Stephenson in it. He’s a literary god.

– Setting up a Moleskine This post caught me by surprise. I love reading how people set up their journals and notebooks and this one is a great example of that. Perusing thru the site, i’m even more surprised at the content and the level-headedness and value this Pastor has to offer, even for someone like me.

Administra
Happy belated Ostara and Spring Equinox.
Word Count: 74

Current Works
Dayjob: Continued sponge mode. Played with Epic Editor and Vasont. Learned a bit more about the process i’ll be using to write service notes.

Sketch: Tonight’s entry, Threading a Needle, is brought to you by a very tired kender. Tried to write this one as fast as I could. I’m tired too.

E-Book Review: Requested a review copy of an e-book a friend wrote about how to use WordPress as a CMS application. Need to read it over and then send her a quote for her website. Will also make a longer review for DIYP, to be published in the future.

Mundania
Gawds, last week and this past weekend was busy. I had a wonderful early Friday as work sent us home early. Spent the day writing in my journal, and playing catch up with some chores. Went out to dinner with Michelle at a new indian place that served good food. And read. Played with tarot a bit too. Which, while most would wonder why I mention it here… but I do see this tool as tied directly into my writing practice. I’ll write more about this later, some day.

Saturday and Sunday were spent moving ed. What was supposed to be one day, turned into two and tired me out. I barely had time to do what I wanted to do. No sketches for the weekend and I didn’t really write much. I *did* get to do a tarot reading for my good friend Ember, I hope that helped her out. She’s going thru some tough times and I just want to be there for her as any good friend would be.

Feeling run down today… I hope I’m not getting sick. That’s the LAST thing I need to hit my immune system to drag me further away from my writing/reading/tarot goals.

To Do List
– Need to get back on a real schedule.
– Contact Wine Adventures for writer’s guidelines. Will email editor to see if they can send them electronically.

Ye Olde Linkfest
–Writing eases cancer This article, straight from the BBC, describes how journalling helps improve the quality of life in cancer patients. This is no real big surprise for me, seeing that journalling is a great way to get all those ideas, thoughts and feelings locked inside one’s brain, out and on the written paper. Once they’re out and in ink, it’s easier to identify how you feel, and what needs to be done on occasion. I’ve always hated bottling up how I feel.

– 2008 Hugo Award Nominations They released these nominations a few days ago, and I’m proud to see so many good reads show up. What really makes me happy tho is the category for “Best Dramatic Presentation, Long Form and Short Forms”. The screenplay for Stardust made it to the list, as well as, several of my favorite Dr. Who episodes (including Blink! OMG, best episode ever) and one Torchwood episode (mmm, Captain Jack Hotness).

Administra
Happy St. Patrick’s Day
Word Count:

Current Works
Dayjob: Continued on with the glossary. Tomorrow I get to switch gears a bit and work on a new project. Exciting.

ClearAccess: Finished round one of the doc revision. Sent this off to review with the marketing director. Need to make final touches to the Word doc version while at work and have a PC running MS Word available. Sorta wishing everyone there had a mac and Apple Pages. Currently coming up with quotes and estimates for 2 other projects.

Sketch of the Day: Kender tossed me an easy one today, “The Floating Castle”. I sorta like this one.

Researched potential market: While reading the Writer’s Journal, I came across a magazine, Wine Adventure, who is accepting essays that fit into their magazine. For my last birthday, my friends kidnapped me and surprised me with a wine blending class. It was a good experience and I think it’d make a good essay. Need to find a copy of this magazine to read and request writing guidelines.

Mundania
Been thinking a lot about time and personal projects. Part of me wishes I had more time to work on my personal projects, while the other half thinks I should figure out how to utilize the time and pockets of time I have now a bit better. I feel like my work is on a rushed schedule and that my writing style and voice suffers. I wish I could write more like Jenn and carefully craft my prose so it turns from rough uncut crystals into polished gems.

I went to bed last nite remembering my college creative writing classes and how much I miss that atmosphere of focus and dedication. I wish i had more writerly friends around so i could talk about words and story ideas and plot lines and characters. And to have a team of dedicated writers who read thru my drafts and gave me the high quality feedback that i crave.

I could apply for an MFA somewhere. But the thought of doing that terrifies me… it’s the cash, the extensive time sink and the loss of some of what I am currently doing. I dunno… i just want to be better at writing, to make fun and meaningful fiction and on occasion get published for it. In addition to writing essays on tarot and writing and creativity. *gryn* Is that too much to ask for?

To Do List
– Beer30 with the crew
– visit with joel
– come up with estimates
– read
– write

Ye Olde Linkfest
– 8 Ways to Train Yourself to Be Creative Nice essay that teaches you how to boost your creativity with 8 different techniques. I like that this essay comes at creativity from the perspective that EVERYONE is creative.

– Kids say the darnest things 25 funny analogies brought to you by english school teachers. Oh man, these are hilarious. Makes me wonder if what I wrote in HS was as bad as some of these sentences. Too bad I didn’t really keep any prose I wrote from that period.

Administra
Word Count: 110

Current Works
Mythic Writers: Got together with Kim, purchased domain account and created the website for our mythic writing non-profit org, Mythic Writers. Not much is there yet, but we plan on getting a blog, forums and a few other goodies up and running soon. I can’t wait for us to get this up and off the ground.

DIY Planner: Finished the spring cleaning of non-published works. Approached writer who had submitted article for publication about getting it on the site for tomorrow. He agreed, and the article is now in the que for tomorrow. Also going over more apps for review for site.

Sketch of the Day: Ok, kender’s trying to get tricky on me. Tonight’s bit, “the faerie makes good it’s escape”, is now up for your reading pleasure.

Mundania
I really should not be allowed to drink anything with caffeine. Even just a little amount gets me so hyped up. But yeah, wanted a chai to sip and drink while working on the Mythic Writers site. *gryn* Fast forward to now, 3 hours later, and I am still all hyped up as hell and trying to get my mind to slow down so I’ll be able to focus on getting some creative writing and reading done after dinner.

Overall, I feel like it’s been a really productive day and weekend. On Friday, we went to Powell’s where I found a free book that’ll become the basis for an art class in October. I also received a new doc to go over and format for Clear Access. Spent 3 hours on that, and will spend another couple of hours on it between today and tomorrow. Love my books. Have so many new ones sitting next to my work area that the stack is almost as tall as the windowsill. Gotta start reading faster. And then, of course, got work done today.

To Do List
– meeting with kim, re: mythic writers, at the Ladybug Cafe
– go thru unpublished entries in DIYP
– write
– journal
– read

Ye Olde Linkfest
– Fun Dashboard Widgets for Writers This post, from Poynter Online, gives a list of fun dashboard widgets for us Mac OS X users who also write. I personally love the TPS Reports widget (gives you fake place holder text for projects) and the Word Counter Widget (does the word counting for you).

– Literary Rejections on Display Blog Here’s a site that is entirely dedicated to writing rejections. Jenn showed me this site the other day as we were talking about fears of writerly rejection and jealousy. I started poking around here but need to do some more.