Yep, that's me.

Gotta say, I never really thought I'd become so hopeless at blogging that I'd average one post a month. But it's a sad indication of how little time I've been able to devote to my world of writing.

Just to clarify - yes, writing is my passion. No, truly. I know it doesn't seem like it, what with the lack of writing and all.

I seem to be having some trouble juggling all the commitments in my life and for some reason I keep taking on new things. I try to keep all the balls in the air and keep everything moving a few steps forward. But geez I wish I could just write all day long. That would be sweeeeeet.

I won't bore everyone with the details of exactly what I try to squeeze into any given day, week or month, but it involves full-time care of two little boys, running a very busy graphic design business, creating an art for charity project, keeping an Etsy store updated, house-hunting and preparing this house for sale, cooking, cleaning (occasionally) and no more than six hours sleep a night.

Okay, so I guess I did bore you with the details.

Hmmm, I think I might let the other balls drop tonight and just do some writing. I think I might be able to manage it if I stay on a steady course of caffiene beverages until the kids go to bed.

Go me!

I can't get enough of this song or video.

Okay, I wonder how many times I'm going to write that during the life of this blog?

Yes, I've been a naughty girl and haven't updated for weeks and weeks. I won't bother going into the gory details except to say that my paying job got in the way *big time*.

But I have actually managed to get some writing done and I'm almost at the half-way mark of my WIP. I can't believe I still have my bottle of French champagne chilling in my fridge - how have I not caved and drunk it by now?! A few posts back I mentioned how I had been given this bottle of plonk for my birthday (back in March!!!) and decided to save it for when I reached 30K on my WIP, to celebrate reaching half-way.

So here I am 5 months later (!) and I'm still not at 30K. Wow, if I don't seriously get my butt into gear I am not going to have a first draft finished by the end of 2009. Why-oh-why did I make the new year's resolution to write my first novel in 2009? Well, I suppose because it seemed feasible at the time. And then my graphic design business took off like a rocket and I'm still a full-time stay-at-home-mum to my two littlies. Ahhh life...

I have been managing to get some reading done. Here's a few I've read recently:



PRADA & PREJUDICE by Mandy Hubbard
I loved this book. I got sooo sucked in and read it in a day. It was so much fun! I had a few good belly laughs out loud too.



JUST LISTEN by Sarah Dessen
Hmmm, the jury's still out on this one. I quite enjoyed it while I was reading it and I read it very quickly, but mostly because I wanted to MC to kiss her love interest already (LOL) but for some reason I felt a little flat after reading it. I'm still trying to determine why but I think it's mostly because I didn't connect with the main character.



GENERATION DEAD by Dan Waters
This one had me sucked right in from the get-go. I love the opening line of this book:
"Phoebe and her friends held their breath as the dead girl in the plaid skirt walked past their table in the lunchroom."
How can you not want to read more?
Anyway, I already knew there was a sequel to this book before I starting reading it and the way it ended felt very much like I'd read only Part One of a larger book. If I'd read this when it first came out (and didn't know if there was a sequel coming), the ending would have really bugged me (I hate to be left hanging!). But I have to say my favourite part about this book is the dialogue. It is so snappy and funny and I really like the interactions between the characters.

I'm currently reading:



A GREAT AND TERRIBLE BEAUTY by Libba Bray
I am really enjoying this book. Libba Bray has the most amazing way with words. She paints such gorgeous imagery and this book is deliciously dark and gothic. Forget the supernatural elements - it's the snotty boarding school girls that are freaking me out! LOL. Great MC in this book - insecure in her desire to be loved and wanted but also clever, smart and brave. Can't wait to see what happens to her.

Okay, that's all for today folks. I'm spent...
(and it's 1.40am here and my kids will be up in 5 hours...oh dear...)

It's been three weeks since my last confession entry, and I'm feel rather guilty. But mostly frustrated.

Not only has my blog been neglected, so has my WIP. I have been so busy with design work that I have just not been able to get any good writing done - just miserable little snippets here and there that I end up rewriting or deleting because I was way too tired or grouchy when I wrote them.

It's not all doom and gloom - I did manage to write a FABBO kissing scene between my MC and her love interest. I think that's the most fun I've had in this writing caper so far and I wish every time I sat down to write was like that. But tonight, for instance, it's been a lot more like staring at the screen and feeling just plain exhausted and uninspired. I know what I need to write, but I just can't seem to find any words. Well, no good ones anyway.

TBH, I am so sick of deleting stuff (one step forward, three hundred words back) that some days I can't even be bothered to write anything. I just know I'm going to delete it the next day. *sigh*

Plan of attack: give up tonight and write tomorrow morning when I am rested, refreshed, and the house is empty of children requiring things from me (love, attention, food, cubby houses being built under the dining table etc).

Anyone else feel like this? I know the answer is to just keep writing and work my way through the slump, but does anyone have any other tips? (The chocolate remedy has already been tried many times and failed).

I had one of those awful moments today when you delete a couple o' hundred words because they were crappy and didn't make any sense. I've got to stop obsessing over this word count. Or stop re-reading my previous day's work and making changes.

Must...reach...30K....goal...*gasp*

Latest stats:

YA WIP - 18,609/60,000
YAMGWriMo - 5900/30,000

I've been AWOL from LJ and writing in general for a week.

I'm not sure what happened, but the planets aligned and every client and their dog decided to ask me to design something for them this week. It's a good problem to have, because I haven't had to chase a single job, and they've all come to my via word-of-mouth.

But.

It means I've been working during my usual writing time slots - kiddie naptime, and after 8.00pm every evening. And since I'm supposed to be writing 30,000 words by June 30th, it has seriously jeopardised my goal.

So, today my hubs kindly got the kids out of my hair after naptime, so I could continue writing from about 1.30pm through till 6.00pm. As soon as the kids were tucked in bed this evening, I got stuck back into it and wrote from 8.30pm til 12.30am. And I have 3347 big, shiny words to show for today's efforts! Yay me!

Which brings the stats to:

YA WIP - 17,128/60,000
YAMGWriMo - 4419/30,000

Now I have to figure out how I can make up the 3000-word slack to catch up in time to meet my YAMGWriMo goal!

Okay, so I'm going to try and do this thing.

It's the YAMGWriMo, created by thefiverandoms , where you have to write 30,000 words on your WIP by June 30. I would dearly love to have another 30K added to my WIP in four weeks, because that would bring me up to about 45,000 words and edging closer and closer to THE END.

At the moment, I am being spurred on by the fabulous 1K-a-day support group on the Blueboards, and whilst I am not making 1000 words every day, some days I am making up for it by writing 1500-2000 words.

So.

I'm feeling kinda pumped right now. And there's a whole new support group for those of us participating on the Blueboards, so all of those fabulous writers will keep me inspired.

And so far today I've managed 1072 words! Yay me. Off to a good start.

I've been pounding the keys this weekend, so I haven't found too much time to be on LJ. I ended up totaling 2624 words for the weekend, so I feel quite satisfied tonight.

On the weekends, I actually get a chance to write during the day, and what a difference that can make to my productivity! I usually start when I put my kids down for their nap (after well and truly tiring them out in the morning so they fall in a heap after lunch! :o) ) and, if my hubby is co-operating, I can continue through until dinner time. So, that's about four daylight hours of writing time each day. This makes me a very happy woman.

Don't get me wrong - some evenings I can be super-productive between the hours of 9.00pm-1.00am. But mostly I am very tired and so is my muse. So very, very tired.

Anywho, I am thinking about swapping my routine around a bit, and trying to write in the 1-2 hours during the day when the kids are napping, and leave the evenings for my other work (graphic design) which I can do even if my body is weak, I am asleep on my feet AND my design muse is off on a Fijian vacation. Fifteen years in the design industry will do that to ya.

I'll try it out this week and see how it goes...

Things are moving again with my WIP and I'm feeling good about it. Actually, I'm feeling great.

There's a lot to be said for outlining. In my case, there's an awful lot to be said, because I don't think I'm capable of writing a good story without one. I've recently completed a 5000-word outline for my WIP, to help me keep my scenes in order and basically create a thread in the story that makes sense. And, in this writing journey so far, it is one of the smartest things I've done (take *that* plotholes!)

I'm now back into the nitty, gritty, glorious actual writing again, and with my trusty outline by my side, I'm feeling invincible. I'm aiming for 1000 words a day (that is, the days I am actually able to write - when family, work and other commitments don't get in the way). But so far so good. The 1K-a-day club on the Blueboards is keeping me inspired to get my butt-in-chair and get 1000 precious words - good, bad or ugly - down on screen.

AND!!! I've finally named my WIP something other than Untitled. I'm not sure if I love my new title, but for now it fits. I thought I probably wouldn't name my book until after it was complete, when the perfect title would just magically become clear. But the name I've chosen has a double meaning which describes a theme running through the book, as well as a climactic scene.

So, all-in-all, a productive weekend!

I've been a bit lazy in the LJ department this week, and here are my excuses:

1. I got a nasty bout of food poisoning. Yuck, yuck and gross.
2. I've had design jobs to do in the evenings.
3. I've been throwing myself head-first into outlining my WIP, any chance I get.

But having food poisoning meant I really had to slow things down for a couple of days there, and I had a chance to do some reading.

I read GOLDEN by Jennifer Lynn Barnes on Sunday night in one sitting. And I LOVED it! I have to get my hands on the sequel, post haste.



Here's the synopsis:

---------------------------
Golden

When Lissy James moves from California to Oklahoma, she finds herself in the middle of a teenage nightmare: a social scene to rival a Hollywood movie. And if understanding the hierarchy of the Goldens vs. the Nons isn't hard enough, Lissy's ever growing Aura Vision is getting harder and harder to hide, and if she's not careful, she’s going to become a Non faster than you can say "freak."

But it's becoming clear that Emory High has a few secrets of its own. Around the halls, the term "special powers" goes way beyond one's ability to attract the opposite sex, and there may be something more evil than the A-crowd lurking in the classrooms. Lissy can see a lot more than the average girl, but she's about to learn the hard way that things aren't always as they appear and you can't always judge a girl by her lip gloss.

---------------------------

I think what I loved about it was how easily I slipped into Lissy's world. When it comes to books about ordinary people and the paranormal, the key to how much I enjoy the book is how much I *believe* the characters and what is happening to them. I also need characters I can care about, and GOLDEN delivers on all accounts. It is also well-written, funny and has some fabulously witty dialogue.

Big thumbs up! I'm off to find the sequel - PLATINUM.

Yes, I am that excited about the prospect of reading more of Maggie Stiefvater's books!

I recently read LAMENT and I just loved it. The sequel, BALLAD, is due out in October. And another of Maggie's book debuts on August 1:



SHIVER - Pre-order now!

Here's the blurb:

How GOOD does that sound? I love me some wolves!

Go TEAM Raving Pen! :o)
 

(awww geez that picture's making me thirsty)

For my birthday, my sister-in-law bought me a fancy-lookin' bottle of French champagne. Yum, yum and yum. Now, I don't know about you, but I don't often drink the actual French stuff. There are a lot of fantastic Australian sparkling wines out there (believe me, I have sampled my fair share), but they are not technically champagne.

So when I opened up my present, I did a little happy dance about it being actual French champagne. And while I was very tempted to crack it open then and there (it was at the end of my two-year-old's birthday party...enough said!) I came up with a better use for it. I tied it with a piece of string to a stick that dangles over my computer*, a la carrot-on-a-stick style, to remind myself I am allowed to drink it to celebrate hitting the halfway point of my first novel's first draft. Originally it was going to be saved until I finished the WHOLE first draft, but let's get real. I want to drink that champagne sometime before my next birthday.

So, now you can picture me at the computer every night like a little porky pig on a treadmill, trying to reach my bottle of champagne. Some may call it torture, I call incentive (and torture). But look at it this way. If things get really screwed up and there's not going to be a halfway point in my WIP, I can drink it to drown my sorrows. So either way, I win.

(* champagne is not actually dangling on a stick, but chilling nicely in my fridge).

In response to sruble 's blog post about Art Games, I thought I'd give it a go...

The game is to draw something with your eyes closed or blind-folded and see how it looks.

Here's a monkey character I draw all the time (his name is Moe, by the way):

ORIGINAL:




And here's my two attempts at drawing him with my eyes closed:

ATTEMPT 1: (close but no cigar)


And because I actually thought I might get better at it (which is clearly not the case), I bring you...


ATTEMPT 2: (uh-oh)


Moe says, "Oi, you! Get back 'ear." **

So there you have it. Actually, that was quite fun.


** any attempts at bad humour are purely the result of a very long day with a two- and four-year-old. They are not intended to intentionally cause harm.

I am on the 457th draft of my YA WIP and I'm only a few chapters in.

Well, that might be a *slight* exaggeration. But I have changed the beginning many, many times. I hope this is a first book thing, and that by the time I start on the next one, I will have much better idea of what I'm doing and how I need to get there.

I've figured out I'm a Planner as opposed to a Pantser and need to work with a (very) detailed outline. This epiphany resulted in a few different rewrites - starting the story in a different place, removing nonsensical things, deleting characters who added nothing to the story.

And one of the major things I've changed thus far, which resulted in the biggest rewrite of all, is changing from third person to first. Whoa Nelly! What a difference!

Then there was the little problem of my MC. Or rather, her quest. I was starting to ask myself: "Who really cares? So, she solves this mystery. Whose life does it change? Do we even care?" Oh dear.

And then a lightbulb switched on, trumpets started blaring, sirens, bells, whistles etc. I finally figured it out - what was right with it and what was wrong with it, and how I could change all the wrongy bits to lovely shiny righty bits.

I'm excited! Draft #458 - here I come!

Don't they say the 458th time's a charm?

So many of John and Hank Green's vlog's crack me up. Here is but one sample of nerdly brilliance...

Okay, here's what I asked for for Mother's Day: four hours without the kids, a trip to Borders and a pocket full of cash to buy some books. And guess what? I got it! Yessssss!

First I had to get over the guilt of wanting to be away (very far away) from my precious kidlets on Mother's Day. I mean, everyone else is doing fun family stuff with their kids. But me? Nup. I just wanted to be rid of everyone for a few hours. And it was sooooo good.

Anywho, have a looksie at what I bought:








After I had been in the Borders YA section for a couple of hours, I felt the guilt creeping in again, so I bought the kids a couple of books too:


LEONARDO THE TERRIBLE MONSTER by Mo Willems


HENRY AND AMY by Stephen Michael King

We adore Mo Willems and Stephen Michael King in our house. I just checked out Stephen Michael King's website for the first time and it's way cool. Check it out! I love his style...it's gorgeous! His book Mutt Dog is a big favourite 'round here.

Ahhhhhh, I've got that contented afterglow of someone that's spent a lot of cash. My only question is...when can I do it again?  :o)

Okay, at the risk of setting myself up for a big, fat lawsuit, I thought I'd post some pictures from my little boy's 4th birthday party.

Backstory: A little while ago, I asked BigH (my son) what kind of cake he'd like for his birthday. For the last two years he's requested trains, and, sensing a pattern, I started mentally planning how I was going to make this year's different to the last two. To my surprise, BigH requested a butterfly cake. He even found a gorgeous pink and purple one in a kid's cake book.

Now just to be clear, I didn't have a problem with it. My hubby, on the other hand, thought perhaps it wasn't *masculine* enough. But then I had a brainwave (which is quite an achievement considering how little sleep I get). One of BigH's favourite books is The Very Hungry Caterpillar, and lo and behold, there is a fabulous butterfly at the end of the book!

Before I had actually thought it through properly (have you *seen* that butterfly - what was I thinking?), I planned a whole party around the caterpillar theme.

Preparation: Lots and lots and lots of hand-cut caterpillars...

And lots and lots of food decorations (I laminated these and hung them from the downlights. The kids had a ball picking out all the foods from the book):

Here's where some of the caterpillars were used...lolly bags!



And hats:



Now for some food. There was no expense spared on food colouring!
Hungry Caterpillar Gingerbread Cookies:



Hungry Caterpillar Cupcakes (and yes, I cheated with the grub lollies on top, but the kids didn't mind):



And here it is, the Butterfly Cake. I've put a picture above it from the last page of the book, just so you can see what I was aiming for!

Disclaimer: I am *one of those mums* who spends precious sleeping time icing cakes at 2.00am!



We also had a wonderful moment at the party where I sat all the two-, three- and four-years-olds down on a big rug and read them the book in question (complete with munching actions and group participation). The first thought that came to mind was, "Hey, I can totally see myself doing this at library readings with my *own* books!" The only problem: I've gotta write them first, and then there's the small hurdle of getting them published. *sigh*

Okay, here we go. I'm on LiveJournal, and I'm a little nervous.

It's not that I'm new to blogging. I have two other blogs - one for family and one for my small business. But what makes this one so special is that it's for *writing*.

Oops, there I said it. The cat's out of the bag.

Yes, I'm writing. And not just shopping lists and Facebook updates. I'm writing children's books (God, it feels good to say that!).

So this blog will be about my journey as a wannabe writer, with lots of talk about books along the way. This is my comfy little corner where I get to curl up with good books and the inner workings of my brain. And there'll probably be some venting, but I'll try to keep the whinging about my kids to a minimum.

I'm currently working on the first draft of a YA novel. I guess you could classify it as a paranormal mystery. Yeah, let's call it that.

I've also completed the first draft of a picture book which I will return to once the first draft of my YA book is complete. It will keep me happily distracted from agonising over the YA while it *sits*.

Now, I'm off to find some friends...