The Ransome Trilogy Sailing Away :'(
I tweeted a little while ago that “Print versions of The Ransome Trilogy are being remaindered. Be sure to get your copies before they’re gone!”
What this means is that Harvest House has decided that the print versions of the books aren’t moving well enough for them to continue to pay to warehouse all the unsold copies of them, and they will be discontinuing printing them. They’re also going to get rid of all of the back copies they have, inviting retailers to take on whatever additional stock of them they’d like before getting rid of whatever remains unsold.
If you’ve ever wanted print copies, or if you’ve ever wanted to give them as a gift to someone, now’s the time to do it.
I don’t know how many retailers will have the books in stock nor for how much longer, so if you think you might want them, now would be a good time to get them.
The good news is that they will continue to keep the ebooks available. So they’re not gone forever, just in print.
There are links to a bunch of retailers where you can order the print copies of the book (hopefully) on the series page: https://kayedacus.com/books/books-the-ransome-trilogy/
What Are You Reading? (December 2013)
Open Book by Dave Dugdale
You thought I was going to forget that it’s the first Monday of the month didn’t you? Well, I remembered with three hours to spare! đ
Tell us what you’ve finished, what you’re reading, and what’s on your To Be Read stack/list. (And if you’ve reviewed the books you’ve read somewhere, please include links!)
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- What book(s) did you finish reading (or listening to) since last month’s update?
- What are you currently reading and/or listening to?
- What’s the next book on your To Be Read stack/list?
Writing MOOCs
MOOC = Massive Open Online Course
One of the biggest trends (and controversies) in higher education right now is the proliferation and use of MOOCs, inside and outside of the classroom. And while this is a controversy that gets more heated all the time, it’s also something that can be quite beneficial to the general populace—because top professors at top universities are involved in creating MOOCs which are courses designed for you to take from home, online at no cost in anything other than a time commitment.
Just this weekend, I signed up for two courses in the field of higher ed, and while I was doing so, I noticed that several platforms offer creative writing courses and even some editing courses. Then, there are those that are more business related, too. So I thought I’d share some of the ones I found.
I have not vetted the content or quality of any of these classes. I’m sharing these because they look interesting and I thought they might be helpful.
Open University
Start Writing Fiction: Have you always wanted to write, but never quite had the courage to start?
Writing What You Know: Do you want to improve your descriptive writing?
Coursera
Crafting an Effective Writer: Tools of the Trade: Learn to become an effective builder of sentences using the basic tools of grammar, punctuation, and writing.
Michigan State University
Thinking Like a Writer: This course will help you learn to revise more effectively, but youâll revise more than your writing. You will: revise how you think, revise how you understand yourself as a writer, and revise how you write.
MIT
MIT has a bunch of writing-related courses listed on their OpenCourseware site.
Canvas Network
Stunt Writing for Personal Growth: he Stunt Writing For Personal Growth class includes prompts, lectures, readings and discussions for writers of any age, at any level. Inspired by Eleanor Rooseveltâs famous quote, âDo one thing every day that scares you,â Stunt Writing For Personal Growth is a process that uses writing as a tool for you to learn about yourself, and gain skills in communicating your own unique story.
And, let’s not forget:
Writing Series Index on KayeDacus.com!
Colossal Cleanout – Weekend #3
Well . . . not much got done on Colossal Cleanout Weekend #2 (last weekend) what with my local writers group meeting and Thor and all. I have Saturday plans again this weekend, but I’m scheduling the rest of my time on Saturday and Sunday carefully—because I’ve got a lot of work to do if I want the main rooms of my house to be sparkling and clutter-free before Thanksgiving.
Imagine my astonishment when I discovered that today, November 15, is . . .
Clean Your Refrigerator Day
And, boy, does mine need it! I’m pretty sure a couple of alien creatures have crawled up in there and died.
Okay, so it’s not quite that bad, but there are a couple of sticky spots where things have dripped (especially on the condiments shelf in the door), and I know I have a couple of bags of salad and coleslaw mix that are a few weeks past their eat-by dates (still sealed, though—I know, I’m wasteful).
Since I lead such an exciting life, I’ve put “Clean Out Fridge” on my Colossal Cleanout To Do list for tonight. Yes, my Friday night plan is to clean out the fridge. Not just throw out stuff that’s old/gone bad, but actually empty both compartments and clean it.
With that in mind, here are a few links I found that have tips on how to do a thorough job of cleaning a fridge:
15 Tips for a Squeaky Clean Fridge (Mental Floss)
An 8-Step Guide to Cleaning Out Your Refrigerator (care2.com)
Speed-Clean Your Refrigerator (Real Simple)
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Will you participate in Clean Your Refrigerator Day this weekend? When’s the last time you gave your fridge a thorough cleaning? What’s the most bizarre thing you’ve ever found in your fridge?
The difference between writing and WRITING
For the past week or so, unlike the several months before, I’ve been writing every day. Every single day, I’ve produced words in sentences and paragraphs and typed them into a Word document.
And it’s been mentally draining and exhausting.
Because I haven’t been writing fiction or anything fun like that. I’ve been writing and revising and rewriting bylaws and guidelines for a writing organization that’s changing its structure. This group has never had bylaws before, just a list of “guidelines” for membership parameters and expectations of behavior.
I think I may be close to the end with the bylaws document. It’s almost eight pages long, and the committee I’m working with keeps asking questions that lead to additional sections/parts being added, trying to think through every eventuality. The deadline for the project is today, but the idea of extending the deadline has already been broached.
I’ll confess that I got a little short with the other committee members late last night (via email), when lots of ideas were being thrown my way, but no offer of help with the new wording was offered. Of course, it only took me a few minutes this morning to write the new section and make the requested revisions elsewhere in the document, but still. It’s been a long process and I’m ready to be finished with it.
This is not the kind of “writing every day” I want to do again any time soon. While, yes, it was fun in the beginning to be able to use terms like ex-officio and in perpetuity and hereinafter and tons of shalls and thuses and therefores, the tedium of technical writing, especially when it’s for documents as important as the two I’ve been writing are, is mind melting.
I think that may be why just before midnight Sunday night, I had to sit up in bed (after being in it for over an hour), turn the lamp on, and grab the notebook I keep in my nightstand and jot down some ideas before I forgot them. Ideas not for the technical documents I’ve been working on, but ideas for three potential companion novellas to celebrate the fifth anniversaries of the releases of the three Ransome books in the next couple of years. (More on that in another post, maybe.)
Why did I get out of bed to write these ideas down instead of just hoping I’d remember them in the morning? Because having these ideas after days and days of applying the writing part of my brain to technical stuff, I finally felt like this:
instead of like the kid at the top of the post. Because it was a glimmer that I’d again have a chance to be WRITING instead of just writing.
Unfortunately, for me it’s been far too long since I’ve experienced the “cheesy-grin” feeling when writing, whether it’s technical or “creative.” For too long, between deadlines and then the pressure to publish because I needed the income to live on, writing was a chore. A job. Work.
While I know so many authors who make their living from writing fiction and still love most aspects of it, when it came to the point where every avenue of making a living had been taken from me other than writing, I didn’t just dread it, I came to hate it. I didn’t want to be doing it at all.
While I’m not quite to that point with the current technical writing project, I’m really looking forward to being finished with it. And I’m really hoping to be able to use that part of my brain/skill set for cheesy-grin WRITING here again soon.
Are there types of writing/WRITING that completely burn you out? What kind of writing/WRITING gives you that cheesy-grin feeling while you’re doing it?
Fun Friday: Netflix, Binge Watching, Thor, and the Colossal Cleanout
In the wake of yesterday’s announcement that Blockbuster will be closing the rest of their brick-and-mortar movie rental storefronts, I thought I’d confess that I represent one of the main reasons why movie-rental stores like this are now a thing of our past, a quaint memory of a time gone by . . .
I’ve been a Netflix subscriber since 2005.
At the height of my DVD subscription (3 at a time), I had a steady stream of red envelopes coming and going in the mail, typically at the rate of one going out and one arriving every day. It took a while for instant streaming to catch on for me as a user—because it meant having to sit at the desk in the office to watch it on the only device hooked up to the (wired) Internet. But then, in 2009, when I bought my new laptop with built-in wireless capability I went ahead and took advantage of my cable internet company’s offer of a free wireless router for my house. Now I could stream movies on a portable device—could watch sitting in my comfy chair in the living room or even in bed with the laptop set on the nightstand. Of course, it really needed to be plugged in for power, as the laptop’s battery would only last 2 or 3 hours, but that was okay. It’s not like I was going to be watching somewhere for any length of time where I wouldn’t have access to a power plug.
I enjoyed watching old movies I’d never heard of before. Then there were (are) the TV shows—those I’d never watched, and those which had been off the air for a very, very long time.
I became a Netflix Binge Watcher.
With the ability to watch a full season of a TV show in less than a week, seven years of an entire series in less than a month, there was no stopping me—especially when I was on deadline to get a manuscript finished and turned in. đ With some shows, I was able to catch up and then start watching them as they air on TV. Others, I waited until the entire series was finished before starting to watch. Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Battlestar Galactica, Supernatural, Call the Midwife, The Walking Dead. If you were to take a look at my viewing history over the past few years, you’d see that there are very few actual movies I watch on Netflix now—it’s mostly about TV shows. Though I will watch the occasional movie that I’ve really been dying to see (and didn’t go see in the theater)—but I’m doing it as a way to decide whether or not I want to buy the movie on BluRay. You see, with movies, I want all the extras—the behind the scenes featurettes, the commentaries, the blooper reels.
All of that to (not briefly) lead into my plans for this weekend, which will include some heavy-duty watching in the methods that make up two of the three the main ways in which I consume entertainment these days (the third is DVR):
Thor: The Dark World
Although he’s not still an obsession, while I was writing An Honest Heart, I’ll admit that I obsessed over Chris Hemsworth—after all, he’s the template for Dr. Neal Stradbroke in that book. But even without the obsession, there’s so much to look forward to in this movie, including Zachary Levi taking over for Prince Charming in the role of Fandral.
Wait, did someone mention Zac Levi?
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This fall, I’m taking one day of each weekend to do what I’ve tiled the Colossal Cleanout. I started with my bedroom last weekend (mainly cleaning out the closet/wardrobe, bagging up stuff to get rid of and re-organizing what I’m keeping). This weekend the Colossal Cleanout moves into the office, the spare bedroom in my two-bedroom house, a room which has become the catch-all for all of my junk that doesn’t have anywhere else to go (because my actual closets are so tiny).
Last weekend, a re-watch of Season 1 of The Walking Dead and a first-time watch of half of season 1 of Revolution got me through Part 1 of Colossal Cleanout. Quite serendipitously (because of the banner at the top of the Netflix app on my iPad), I discovered last night that Chuck is now streaming on Netflix. I’ve seen the first couple of seasons—I got them on disc from Netflix back when I had a disc subscription a few years ago. I watched Episodes 1 and 2 last night, and was reminded of just how binge-able this quirky show is. I look forward to a couple of great weekends of CC and Chuck in the near future.
Will you go see Thor while it’s out in theaters? No spoilers, please if you’ve already seen it!
Do you Netflix? What are your favorite things to watch on Netflix? What’s the best “hidden gem” you’ve found?
NaNoWriMo—What If You Get Stuck/Blocked?
According to the NaNo word-count matrix, yesterday, you should have hit right around 10,000 words on your Story-in-Progress (SIP). That’s a good chunk of writing—20% of your manuscript if you’re aiming for a finished length of 50k words.
But what if you didn’t hit 10k yesterday? What if you did gangbusters the first day or two and you’re sitting at about 3,300 words? What if you’ve lost interest in your story or characters? What if your motivation just disappeared?
Here are a few prompts that will get you writing again (even if the word count may not end up in your final manuscript) but also keep you focused on your manuscript.
- Write a “travel magazine” style article about your main setting. Or an Archetectural Digest piece on your main character’s home. Don’t forget the paragraph and paragraph of minute description of everything you “see”—from the big landmarks to the knickknacks on the bookshelf. Then, once you finish writing this ask yourself what you’ve learned about your story, setting, and characters. How can you incorporate that into your story?
- Write your main character having an argument with someone only she can see . . . in public. How will she act? Will she care that others are looking at her like she’s crazy? Does she think she’s crazy? Who is the invisible person she’s arguing with? What do you learn about her during this process?
- Have one of your main characters meet a real-life celebrity. Peyton Manning, Emma Watson, Karl Urban (oh, Karl…)—choose someone you’d love to meet in real life and have your character meet him/her. What would your main character say if he or she were to meet Justin Bieber or Miley Cyrus? What can you learn about your character through his/her reaction to meeting a celebrity? Also, what does that say about the culture of the setting in which your character meets this person? (Meeting a celebrity has a whole different feel in Los Angeles or New York than it does in Nashville than it does in Bunkie, Louisiana.) And if you’re writing a historical, choose an important historical figure from that era (for example if Kate or Caddy had met Queen Victoria at the Great Exhibition).
- Take your character to the grocery store. Make a shopping list and then show the character putting each item on the list into the basket. Does your character stick to the list or does he go up and down every aisle and make impulse purchases? Whom might he run into at the store? What if it’s his worst enemy? How would he handle it?
- Have your character walking through a crowded public place (mall, airport, train station, etc.) with a life-size cardboard cutout of a celebrity/movie character. Who’s the character/celebrity? Why does your character have it? Why is he/she carrying it through a busy public place? What conversations does it strike up with people?
Wil and Anne Wheaton meet Nathan Fillion at Comic Con đ | Source
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What are some other “outside the story box” ideas you can think of for scenes you can put your characters in that might help you get started writing? Have you ever done something like this before?
It’s a Star Wars Myers-Briggs Type Chart!
I’m Owen Lars. Which one are you?
(Click the image to see it full-size so you can read it.)
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What Are You Reading? (November 2013)
Open Book by Dave Dugdale
It’s the first Monday of the month, which means it’s time for your book report. Tell us what you’ve finished, what you’re reading, and what’s on your To Be Read stack/list. (And if you’ve reviewed the books you’ve read somewhere, please include links!)
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- What book(s) did you finish reading (or listening to) since last month’s update?
- What are you currently reading and/or listening to?
- What’s the next book on your To Be Read stack/list?
Fun Friday: Teddy Bear the Porcupine’s Halloween “Feast”
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Who knew porcupines made such cute sounds? I want one! But . . . they’re probably not as cuddly as Teddy looks.
KayeDacus.com 