The A to Z Book Diary: "F" is for Finally Freakin' Finished

So. Holy crap. I'm done!!!! MUA-HA-HA-HA!!!!!

Ahem. 

What I mean to say is... WOO!!!!!!! FIRST DRAFT IN THE BAG, BABY!!!!!!!!!

Whoa, okay. Easy now. Let's... let's just take a step back here. I can handle this post maturely. I know I can.

Calm. Cool. Collected. A dignified literary mind.

Dignified... dignified... dignifi--

IT'S DONE!!!!!!!! IT'S ACTUALLY DONE!!!!!!!!!!! THIS IS SO AWESOME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 Image courtesy of StuartMile-FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Alright. Nope. Just not going to happen. I know when to admit defeat. Mindless, crazed excitement at having a completed first draft of my first book is all that's in there right now. I got nothing else.

I'll just have to--

YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Man. This is only getting worse... I need to go lie down somewhere. I'll be back again when this wears off a bit.

...Oh no... I feel a celebratory dance coming on... I am helpless against it!... I gotta hit "post" on this before it takes hold... AGH!!!!

~\\//~

Final Word Count of Pre-Editing 1st Draft: 78,949

The A to Z Book Diary: "E" is for Envisioning the End

Wow... I have to say that a part of me wasn't entirely sure if I'd even make it to this point, after all that time of just imagining, stewing, brainstorming and hoping, but... it's actually here: the beginning of the end of my first book.

You can't see this, but I'm doing a pre-celebratory jig in my desk chair.

...It's probably for the best you can't see this.

Anyway, this past year (or nearly a year, I think) has been a crazy whirlwind of figuring out the details in advance as well as working it out as I went, going through spurts of incredible productivity and dry spells of months of doing almost nothing. But I've finally come to it - writing the climax and conclusion I've been planning since the start!

Image courtesy of adamr/FreeDigitalPhotos.net

And it's turning out to be a very interesting combination of coming out exactly as I originally thought it would, at the same time as parts of it are a complete surprise to me.

I was convinced once upon a time that I had it all decided upon down to the letter, no matter how much other things in the story sometimes felt like I'd stuck it in my blender and hit "puree" a few times. As it turns out though, I really only had the basics of "how", "when", "where" and "why". And while those basics certainly made it through, overall the in-depth details for all those elements were pretty well up in the air. Now that I've gotten around to writing this final chapter-and-a-bit, I'm basically figuring it out as I go and realizing that the end entails far more additional working-out than I gave it credit for!

I suppose I can't be too surprised, at the end of the day - after all, with how much some of the key plot points and most of the smaller in-between elements have evolved from their original form, it only makes sense that the ending couldn't conceivably stay the exact same as it used to be, either. Really, I should have realized that planning it out was one thing, while writing out its entirety would bring up a whole new slew of details altogether.

Well, either way, seeing it all start to finally culminate in these last moments is a billion times more satisfying than I could've possibly imagined. So darn close now - if only I didn't need to do pesky things like work... finish the last few weeks of school... move out of my current apartment... eat and sleep...

Sigh. So many interruptions. But the end is nigh regardless, and the satisfaction is sweet!

...Heh, just have to keep in mind that at the end of this, I'll have roughly 140 single-spaced pages of editing to tackle. 

Oooooh boy. "The end"? This is really kind of only the beginning isn't it?

~\\//~

Word count as of today: 71,672

Writing Tip #6: Just Plain "Characters" Can't Do the Job Right - Give Your Reader More to Work With

You want to know who the most two-dimensional, unconvincing, static, uncompelling, forgettable, inauthentic, jaw-droppingly boring, least relatable characters are?

Here's the answer: ...they're the ones who are Characters.

Let me explain.

When a reader sits down with a story, there is already a suspension of disbelief that needs to happen for them to accept the fictional backdrop you create for it. From the start, you're asking them to believe in whatever truths you establish in your plot and the dynamics of your plot's world, however out-of-the-ordinary they may be. And they want to believe it because it'll give them an experience to enjoy. That's why they and we read any fiction at all. But you need to help them along. And the best way to do that is to populate that plot and that world with the most realistic characters you can manage.

So what's the problem with writing characters as just Characters, just people who exist in your fiction? Simple: when they're just "Characters", the only things that are really set up about them are things the author feels are immediately relevant to the plot and the other supporting characters. This means that they get a grab bag of quickly identifiable traits that the reader can remember them for and that the plot can pull from (for example, a Young Adult novel hero who is simply established as tall, handsome, brave, pining after whatever generic love interest is nearby and coherent enough to reciprocate something, and capable of surviving ridiculously dangerous things... the end). It's not to say that Characters won't get the job done - they serve their purpose of serving the reader their story, using that Trait Grab Bag to nudge the plot along from one point of conflict to the next, and on to the eventual resolution that their traits dictate they can accomplish.

But that's all they'll do... serve a purpose as a cog within a bigger picture. They won't engage the reader like they could be engaged, won't suck the reader into their lives and get that pull of empathy or hate or hope for their journey or whatever you want them to get. They won't make the reader truly care about what happens to them and their world, at least not as much as they could. Characters that are just Characters leave the reader on the outside of a story, looking in. They put up walls. They make suspension of disbelief harder, and work against your passion for the story you're telling.

So what do you write instead? Well, you scrap those Characters, and you write PEOPLE.

Take any character you're trying to write, and don't think of them in terms of how they'll serve your story. Give them a name, and go all Dr. Frankenstein on them, and give them life. Make the inanimate, the fictional real by giving them not just the Trait Grab Bag, but all the parts that make a person an actual person, and make those parts a functioning whole.

Start here: What's the context for the world that your plot and characters exist in? Is it in the past? Is it futuristic? Post-apocalyptic? 

Next step from there: Whatever it is, what kind of people can exist within it? What are the different classes of people? Are they separated by income? Nobility of birth? The city they live in? What differentiates groups of people from each other?

And next after that: What class of person is your character supposed to be? Once you've got that figured out, you can set up the Grab Bag of traits that go with that particular class as a foundation of characteristics (for example, if they're of a poorer class, then they know what it is to be hungry, to struggle - so they're tougher in order to survive, and maybe a bit bitter against those of higher class or against the system that keeps them poor). And after you've got that Grab Bag out of the way, make that character a person with traits unique to only them - traits shaped by their family lives within their class of people, the friends they have or haven't had, the mistakes they've made in the past, the hopes they have for the future. Take example from your own personality if you'd like: whatever you can think of that makes you, well, you, use all those different types of elements to fill in the blanks and make your character a living, breathing person.

After that, you use whatever you can of what you've worked out within the story itself, and whatever you don't use still serves as an influence for how these characters act within the story, interact with each other, and influence the overall story itself. If every character you create is written as a Person, not a Character, then what you have for your plot is a living population that will make your reader give a crap as to whether or not things turn out for them, and where they end up by the time it's over. Nothing generic or forgettable. Something unique, fresh, engaging. Everything the Doctor ordered for "Hell yes!" fiction.

Image courtesy of MisterGC/FreeDigitalPhotos.net

So do your story and reader a favour, and go be Dr. Frankenstein - give your creations life!

~\\//~

Word count as of today: 66,231

The A to Z Book Diary: "D" is for Dodging the Dimwit

Plot exposition is no simple matter. I've really come to appreciate this.

On the surface, it doesn't seem too complex: I have a story line, I have characters that live in that story line, and that story line has key points that the characters will travel through along their merry way to the climax and denouement. All I as the writer need to do is to make sure the readers know what they need to know as they need to know it in order for them to travel along in a book as I want them to be able to do. That means exposing the plot in pieces that do the job bit by bit.

Fair enough. Seems like a straightforward requirement, right?

Not so. At least, not always. Because there are so many ways to do it poorly. 

Cliches. Information dumps. Death-by-description. Insanely unrealistic conversation structures. The list goes on. And each point on it has the potential to distract, discourage, or outright bore the reader. Probably bad things to do, when I want them to like the first book enough to read the next one. 

One that I'm noticing is particularly tricky to avoid though is the Dimwit pitfall: the authorial habit of having one or several characters scattered throughout the story that a writer might make purposefully slow, or improbably and dangerously out of the loop on things so that another character can have the excuse to enlighten them, and thereby enlighten the reader.

Image courtesy of pakorn/FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Of course, it's not to say a character can't not know something (I know - shame on me for using a double-negative there... but I'm not ashamed enough to fix it). When you look at it, there just seems to be a significant difference between a character having to naturally learn something they don't already know, and a character being the dreaded Dimwit. The naturally-learning character knows as much as is logical for them to know at the time the story starts, and when they're put into new situations with new things their character would have no reason to know about beforehand, then sure, using their ensuing education as plot exposition is fine. But a Dimwit, on the other hand, seems to be that character that reasonably should know something already, but for some reason unrealistically needs reminding or enlightening - like if you have a character who's a spy, who reasonably should know about a widely infamous bad-guy, but the author needs exposition, so the spy's suddenly the Dimwit who needs to be told all about this infamous baddie by someone else in the story.

At least, that's how I understand it. And in thinking I understand it, I'm noticing a few of my side characters edging towards this. I think I've managed to avoid making my principal character an idiot, which is good... but yikes, it's just way too easy to just plop someone in there and claim they're out of the loop so you can have an excuse to put in moments of, "Hey, Reader! You should know this - so here ya go."

Hm. Now I feel like I need to troll through all my previous chapters on a Dimwit hunt, just in case.

Or should I save that joy for the official Edits?...

...No, I'll go nuts imagining them possibly sitting there. Just waiting. Chewing up scenes with debilitating dunce-ness.

Gah.

Dimwit hunting I go, then.

~\\//~

 Word count as of today: 64,325

Writing Tip #5: Keep Those Gears Shifting and Stop That Progress from Stalling Out

Ever try to learn how to drive stick, in all its manual-shifting glory? (I hope so - if you haven't, the metaphor that backbones this post might well be gibberish to you.) If you have, probably one of the things that stands out most in your memory of the early days is just how many friggin' times you went to shift gears and stalled the sucker (unless you're one of those that picked it up almost instantly - in which case, lucky you!... hmf). I got my start on an automatic, and I know the stall-outs on manual cars haunt me. The sheer number of traffic lights and stop signs I've gotten myself stuck at is funny in hindsight. At the time of the actual stalling? Not so much. Lots of colourful and enthusiastic cursing ensued.

There's a point to bringing this up. I swear. A decent one, too. And I'll come back to it in a minute.

First, I'm going to go ahead and state a few painfully obvious facts: writing a novel takes time, and it is work (fun work for the most part, granted, but work nonetheless).

What doesn't get as much consideration sometimes is just how tough it can end up being to power through and carry your story from page one right to "The End", without screeching to a halt somewhere along the line and dumping it into your "on hiatus" pile for a while (or permanently). I know that when I went to start this first novel that I'm working on now, I went in with this rosy idea that because I had what I thought was a worthwhile plot driven by characters I was excited to write, all I needed in order to do this thing was a mighty roar and a "Can-do!" grin, and I was set.

Heh. Not so much. You know what I'm talking about.

Because here too, with the exceptions of those that have things come easily to them, when you really get into trying to do it, you come to truly realize that, holy crap, writing a novel really is work. Tough work, that you alone are responsible for putting yourself through and that's almost impossible to predict how long it'll take to get through. Something that demands plenty of time and energy and afternoons/evenings/wee hours of the mornings that could be spent doing almost anything else if you weren't frying your brain with research or beating your head against the wall over your latest bought of writer's block, and...

...and you may inevitably think (during those times where you're progressing so little you'd swear you're moving backwards) something along the lines of this: "I may love to write, but The Beatles had it wrong when they said 'All you need is love.' What I need is something to keep me at this *bleeping* thing before, in a moment of weakness, I drop my laptop/pen-and-paper in the nearest fire pit with a lit match and a healthy supply of kerosene. Kaboom."

Now, this is where we come back to car stall-outs. Stall-outs suck. Big Time. You're driving along fine, then after you've slowed down, you hit that gas pedal and get a horrible clunk. And go nowhere. And curse the universe - loudly - while still going nowhere. But there's that one magical thing that when you remember it's there and you remember how to use it, your life spent stick-shifting involves significantly less swearing and more going: that spectacular little third pedal that makes all gear shifting in stick-shift cars possible, its highness The Clutch.

 Image courtesy of Feelart/FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Writing a novel, or anything of a significant length, is no different than driving stick. You need a Clutch: at least one particular thing that's there to keep you moving, and to get you moving again whenever progress slows down.

For me, my Clutch is a little magnetic whiteboard on my fridge where I've written "Novel Word Count" at the top, with "Goal: 75,000 words" underneath it, and my current word count going just underneath that. That board is my magic tool, the thing where I can see how far I have to go, but especially how far I've come and how much closer I get every time I get some writing done for the day. Whenever I need it, I look at that thing and it gets me proud and freshly motivated. Because as much as I love to write, sometimes motivation is a tough thing to find when it's such a long haul.

Of course, yours doesn't have to be a running word count. If that just feels like it puts undue pressure on the whole thing, get creative! If, for example, your characters are embarking on some kind of physical journey across a distance, draw up a little map of their route and mark off each spot along the way as the characters reach them in your story. Or, as another example, if your characters are in a survival novel where they're up against, say, a zombie hoard, and you know which people will be zombie kibble before you reach the end of the story, put together a Zombie Kibble chart, with some sort of zombie cookie jar you can stick each character into as the story progresses and one by one they get munched.

Anything. Anything you can come up with that you can use to mark your progression and prove to yourself that you're making headway, draw it up, write it down, print it off, whatever. Just have it there, so when you get to stall-out levels of "Kaboom" proportions, you have your Clutch there for you to use to its fullest.

Less swearing. More going. No kerosene.

Worth a shot. Give it a try!

~\\//~

Word count as of today: 61,978

The Penny Reviews #1: "The Ice Dragon" by George R. R. Martin

Who asked for my opinion? No one! And that's exactly why I'm giving it.

Welcome to my newest thread, "The Penny Reviews", my contribution to an already overcrowded field, since I love books and I love yammering about what I think of them. I really don't need a better reason than that, do I?

I thought not.

For my reviews, my grading scale is on a scale of 1 to 4 pennies or the highest rank of 1 nickel (5 pennies put together!... get it? ... Yep, this is me trying to be clever. On caffeine.) 

So, if you want to skip my blathering through a review and just get to the verdict, you can scroll to the end any of them and see anything from...

      

(A.K.A: "don't suffer this book - therapy will be required")

  ... to...

 

(A.K.A: "exudes awesomeness - prepare to name your next goldfish after the main character")

...or, the ULTIMATE prize of...

(A.K.A: "CANDY FOR YOUR BRAIN - resistance is futile")

Now that that's out of the way, on with the show!

Photo courtesy of georgerrmartin.com/gallery/art/icedragon01

A girl. A dragon for a best friend. Evil-doers with evil-doer acts. Epic dragon battles. Beautiful pencil-sketch illustrations. What's not to love?

That's right: for those of you that didn't know, before the raging storm of awesomeness that is "Game of Thrones"/"A Song of Ice and Fire" really kicked into high gear and eventually got its own TV show, the marvelous George R. R. Martin wrote the kid's book titled "The Ice Dragon". 

Who's the Hero: Adara, a young girl "born during the worst freeze that anyone could remember". This has apparently made her not only a tough little thing (immune to most giggles, tantrums, or so much as saying 'ouch' when hurt), but also a fan of all things related to being chilly, including the creature everyone knows as the ice dragon.

What's the Story: At the outset, we're introduced to Adara, born special and cold to the world, and her close bond with the ice dragon that frequents the airs above her village every winter. We come to learn that Adara's uncle Hal is a dragonrider in their king's army, and their king is at war with another king whose forces - which includes dragons of his own - are advancing down from the north. In-between fighting losing battles, Hal tries to convince Adara's father John to move his family south before the enemy reaches their land, but John always refuses, and eventually the first of the enemy and its dragons reaches them. From there, we follow Adara as she stands together with her ice dragon against those that would destroy them.

How's the Aftertaste: This book was quick to get through given the size, but left me absolutely satisfied (if a smidgen sad). Aside from the fantastic story that brought me back to how I fell in love with fiction and fantasy as a kid, the best parts about this work are that it doesn't dumb down its language (thereby keeping it well away from the occasional kid's book syndrome of treating kids like they're idiots) and it doesn't dumb down its subject matter (where there is a war happening, and when Adara and the reader see bits of the gritty details involved in it, it's not inappropriately gory but it doesn't shy away from it, treating kids with refreshing maturity). It brings to mind the fairy tales of Hans Christian Andersen for its quality and feel, actually.

Basically, the overall effect of reading this was the literary equivalent of napping in a sunbeam and having a great dream: left content, and wishing I had nowhere else to be, because being in this story was ten kinds of fantastic.

So The Verdict Is...

~Aye, there be Brain Candy here~

And look at that, a nickel on our first time out! What can I say? This gem earned it, and then some.

Well, cheers to the maiden voyage of "The Penny Reviews". And if there are any particular books you'd like me to review, feel free to let me know in the comments.Thanks for stopping by!

~\\//~

Photo of Canadian penny courtesy of thumbs3.ebaystatic.com/m/mz7NcaqDSHvFAmM9zm_LihA/140

Photo of Canadian nickel courtesy of thumbs3.ebaystatic.com/d/l225/m/mZvEpRu1wKTdON7fDb3HZDg

Writing Tip #4: Want to Fill Those *Bleeping* Plot Holes? Just Gotta Know Your Own Rules.

Some things you can only really come to know once you're neck deep in them...

...like what happens to your driver's license if it takes a trip through the washer and dryer in your jean pocket...

...like what becomes of your stomach when you polish off that container of leftovers at the back of your fridge that you weren't too sure about...

...but especially, and horribly, just how many plot holes one story is in fact capable of producing. And how many is that? A freakin' whole heck of a lot. Plus fifty more.

In fact, it is scientifically proven (...alright, it's not proven anywhere, but I swear by this...) that plot holes feed off of climbing word counts and are spread like the common cold of the typeface world - one loose end sneezes on a perfectly healthy plot twist, and before you know it, everything's a congested mess of literary phlegm that hacks its way to a stand-still. And at the end of the day, this poor phlegmy manuscript is so miserably ill, that it almost seems like the kind thing would be to put it out of its misery, cut it loose and put a stop to the wheezing.

Photo courtesy of Ideago/FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Sounds pretty bleak, indeed. But like with any cold, there IS a way to beat these suckers. And here's how, in three basic steps:

1) Figure out what world your story is unfolding in.

                     (**This goes hand-in-hand with figuring out what story you're telling - a 

                  matter of geography, point in time, and degree of balance between realism 

                  versus fantastical.)

2) Write down the rules that govern your story's world. 

                    (**The number and types of rules varies by story based on your story's 

                  complexity and/or how out of the ordinary its world is, but write as many 

                  as you can think of, and keep adding to it as you go, as needed; everything 

                  from your character's personality quirks and hangups, to any restrictions 

                  placed on the character by society and their station within it, to what levels

                  of technology/magic/poverty/etc. your character is used to, to what kinds 

                  of problems people in this world might run into if they were in the wrong part

                  of a town/countryside late at night. Whatever parameters you can think of 

                  that will dictate what can happen within this world and within your 

                  characters, put them in there.)

3) Use those rules as your story-writing GPS - listen to them, ALWAYS, and update them as needed.

                       (**Ultimately, this is your world. You decide what is and is not possible. 

                       But the most important part to filling those plot holes is to make sure your 

                       world's/character's rules make sense with each other with little to no 

                       contradictions - adjusting them as necessary if you notice any - so that if 

                       and when you come across moments in your plot that suddenly don't 

                       seem to fit with previous or planned events, or you realize you've written 

                       yourself into a corner where you're not sure how your character could 

                       handle or escape a conflict, or you've run into any of many roadblocks, 

                       you can go back to your established rules and use them to navigate. The

                      more detailed you make them, the more you can plug in whatever plot hole

                      you've run into and ask yourself, "What isn't working? What rule[s] is it 

                      breaking that makes it not work, and what do I need to change so that it 

                      works again?")

And that's really it: know your world, know its rules, and write according to them.

This works.

I swear.

Nine out of ten dentists recommend this, and the tenth dentist is coming around as we speak.

Give this a shot against your plot holes, and if it doesn't clear things up... 

...well, remember that I'm no expert. I just claim to know stuff. Blame my university profs for convincing me I had so many brain cells to rub together.

~\\//~

Word count as of today: 55,962

The A to Z Book Diary: "C" is for Conflict Carving

Recently, I reached Chapter 8 and page 95 of my burgeoning novel, and I realized a few things with a smidgen of concern: the first is that my chapters are really kind of unreasonably long, the second is that I've turned the word "and" into my story's nervous tic (note to self to sort that out later), and the third is that while Chapter 8 signals the final gradual rise to the overall climax of the conflict, my previous chapters suddenly seem as though they might have been dragging their feet from scuffle to scuffle to sporadic bouts of dialogue, with not enough tension-building tying them all together towards the final Big Bang.

To say the least, this last one especially could be a problem. Can't very well write a great climax if the foundation leading up to it is shoddy - no one would read past the shoddy-bit to get to that exciting part I've been looking forward to since the start! ...A big problem indeed.

On a basic level, this thing I'm working on now is an action/adventure/survival drama. With a really long walk being the foundation for a good chunk of the culminating events. While mulling over how to go about relating this long-distance trek my characters have to take, I've found myself more and more worried about how I was going to make sure this trip's been interesting and purposeful throughout, rather than something along the lines of "Aaaand we're walking.... walking... walking... and HOLY CRUD, SOMETHING HAPPENS!!... And we're back to walking again... are we there yet?". 

Image courtesy of lobster20/FreeDigitalPhotos.net

If that's the way I do it, it's going to end up reading like a really lengthily-described episode of Survivorman. Just with a bigger cast of people lacing up their survivor footwear and putting their battling-the-elements caps on.

So how to combat this potential tension-killing flaw? Well, the best I can figure so far is making my narrator (first person, present-tense) as engaging as possible, so that if nothing else, each episode of action gets the context of not just a gradually unfolding threat, but of the narrator's experience of it to relate everything together, and to relate it to the climax at the end. Try to make this character the story's getting filtered through as perceptive as possible without being unrealistically intuitive, and have them caught up in scuffles as the journey progresses, but not so much that there isn't breathing room between skirmishes, and actual reasons for the skirmishes so those don't feel like random unnecessary page-wasters.

But even then, how much action is too much action? How much first-person narrative is too much narrative? Where is the roughly ideal balance between action and narrative while building towards the final hurrah and conflict resolution?

Maybe the answers to these questions will get clearer once I've finished the overall story, and read through the whole thing start to finish, rather than bit by bit, as each chunk gets written and roughly edited before moving on to the next. One of those things where a look at the overall picture will settle how the smaller details need to play out...

Ahhh, the ever-looming official Editing - you're going to be a hell of a time aren't you!

~\\//~

Word count as of today: 55,307

IT LIVES!!... Part 2 (or The Mysterious Case of the Vanishing Writer of A-Street)

...Just who is this strange creature, this Swamp Thing that has emerged from the primordial goop of an infernally long blogging hiatus? Could it be...? 

It is -- Look at that: it's the dork who promised "more regular postings" as of the middle of last summer... and then proceeded to vanish in the wake of the nonsense of other obligations/obstacles/assorted-whatnot-of-ridiculousness.

Well, hi there!

What can I say? If you're reading this, then I hope you can forgive this ridiculous person for apparently jumping ship for almost 8 months. 

...Of course, if you've never read any of my stuff before now, you probably truly don't care how long this random writer/blogger person has apparently been away. In which case, I'll just say to you, "Welcome to my humble abode! Stick around a while, and put your feet up - I've spent months stewing in an overload of brain muck, and am back the more determined for it, with plenty of new material and a regular posting schedule to come. Pinky swear."

At any rate, I am happy to report several bright points of news, aside from gearing up to get back to both my "Writing Tips" and "A to Z Book Diary" threads, among other upcoming projects.

First: one month to go on my university degree - HUZZAH!!! I mean... ahem. I'm looking forward to being finished. Just a little.

Second: after I finish my degree, I'm moving back to my hometown and using all I've learned from school and my unpaid work as head of a literary journal in my current city to start up a literary journal with my big sister - so stay tuned for updates as we get things underway and open shop for submissions!

And third: I've recently passed the 55,000 word mark for my novel! One plus side, it seems, for having spent 8 months losing my mind a bit - immense stress and periodic insomnia made me more productive than I've ever been as a cheap way to cheer myself up in my free time :)

So, all my news aside, I want to pass along a mountain of gratitude for the folks that have sent along bits of encouragement along the way these past months, and to the people that have shown interest in this blog in the past, and interest in seeing it continue in the future. I'll be back to lurking around a few of the writers groups around here as well, so I look forward to reconnecting, and I'll leave you with a blurb I came across recently that left me grinning:

"I'm a writer. If I'm staring at you, I'm not being rude. I'm trying to decide if you need to go in a book. If you're a snot, I may be trying to decide how to kill you."

-(someecards: user card)-