Reflections of 2016: The Little Things

It's the last day of 2016, and there's quite a bit I didn't care for about this year, if I'm being honest. More challenges, too many good people dying, just a lot of terribleness and a general sense of dissatisfaction.

And it's easy to dwell on that, to find one's self thinking on all the things you wish had gone differently. But I want to say good-bye to 2016 and hello to 2017 with a sense of positivity and hope.

Resolutions are coming, goals I've started on this year that I want to see come to fruition in 2017, but for now, I am looking to bring some brightness and love into my little world.

So I am borrowing an idea that a twitter mutual borrowed from someone else: a list of things I love. Because some times, maybe most of the time, it is the little things that help us get through the tough days. Therefore:

A List of Little Things I Love

• the night sky/galaxies
• rain--the sound of it, the smell of it, the promise of it on the horizon as the moutains are consumed by dark clouds
• cool sheets and a warm blanket
• the smell of my pillows
• the feel of satin ribbons
• the smell of tomato sauce at every stage of its creation
• the texture of freshly baked bread
• pumpkin bread
• extra cheesy mac n' cheese
• Pepsi
• the smell of lavender
• soaring instrumental music (especially violin and piano)
• singing out loud without feeling self-conscious
• cats
• seeing something grow that I had a hand in tending
• new, uncreased book spines
• books!
• reading a new book in a series I love
• new episodes of a show I love
• Steven Universe and its music
• Yuri on Ice and its music
• The Hamilton soundtrack
• dragons, unicorns, and griffins
• Star Wars (The Force Awakens and Rogue in particular, General Leia Organa overall)
• learning an actor whose work I enjoy is an unproblematic fave
• remembering the name of an HITG ("Hey, it's that guy/girl"--when you see an actor all the time, but can never remember their name even though they're in everything)
• wrapping something perfectly
• folding origami perfectly
• finishing a piece of art (painting, jewelry, anything) and having it look the way I imagined it
• finishing writing a story
• learning a new skill
• see someone excited about and using something I made for them
• watching a movie with friends in an empty theater, so no one can complain if I talk during the movie
• Disney and fantasy art
• sketches 
• receiving an unexpected gift or a pleasant surprise
• feeling accomplished and productive
• finding the perfect gift
• hearing about good things happening to/for friends
• geeky references in unlikely places
• people catching on to and appreciating my geeky references
• feeling listened to 
• finding new art I love
• finding fandom fabric
• wearing something I love -and- feeling beautiful in it
• happy ending, or at least hopeful ones
• my armor: art nouveau Maleficent t-shirt, comfortable jeans, Maleficent socks, and my galaxy sneakers or ass-kicking boots

Saying Goodbye to the Year

I usually try to come up with resolutions when the new year rolls around, but the more I think about it for 2014, the more it seems like a futile endeavor. My resolutions always end up the same: write more, read more, edit this or that, send out queries, focus on my health and try to lose some weight, build better habits and try to get closer to some of my life goals.

All very general in recent years, because the years would pass by without nothing achieved (or not enough) when I had more specific resolutions.

This year, I am not going to worry about resolutions, promises to myself to do X or Y.

This year end, I have spent New Year's Eve day spending time with my aunt, watching "Frozen" with my mother, crafting a gift, listening to music, talking with friends online, and shortly, a bit of writing on a story I began earlier in the year.

Tomorrow, I will spend more time with family, rest and relax, grade, and edit.

I want 2014 to reflect these two days, full of obligations and enjoyment, and balancing between the two. A year where I have time to rest, but also to have fun, and to get projects done that are just for me, as well as complete projects with and for others.

Happy New Year, and happy writing.

"Don't You Forget About Me"

No, no, no, no.

Heh, sorry. Far be it for me to avoid the call of the wild 80s tune, sprinting into my thoughts and then gone again.

Originally, I was just going to say "Happy New Year", seeing as it was 2011 the last time I posted. This time I don't even really have the excuse of being too busy. Yes, there were a great many things to do before the new year, and before I knew it was back to work to finish one quarter, then starting the next, and an almost-week-long cold in between, but I had plenty of time to rest, unlike most breaks.

All I can say is that I felt I didn't have much to contribute to the internet-y world of writing and publishing.

My life the past month:
1. "Clockwork Seams" hit another snag, again, some more. It sits there in my mind, waiting, but I don't know for what.

2. I have begun editing "Hounds" again. I am learning that I am far too likely to focus on the details and miss the larger (rewrite that scene, and Character X can no longer exist!) sweeping edits. I am forcing myself to focus on the broader changes. Then I will try to talk to someone who's read the whole thing and run a few ideas by them.

3. I also realized, though this has been said to me once before, and is not a new observation of my own, that I love to complicate stories. I love to hint at and tease out past bits of history that have a bearing on the current situations, I love adding another character to throw a wrench in. My protagonist is being pelted with wrenches. Wrenches hurt.

4. As I edit "Hounds" (I keep three chapters on me when I go to work, so I can read large chunks and scribble over them when I have free minutes), I am realizing things to fix with other stories, like the short story which led to someone telling me the plot was too complicated for a short story.

5. Sleep. I have been trying to sleep more, because...

6. If I don't sleep, the last, fitful dregs of this cold will never go away. I can't not work, so the sniffly-ness lingers, as does the plugged ears, and a weak little cough.

7. And as of last night, I am watching "The Pirates of Dark Water," a cartoon I loved when I was younger, and the complete series of which I received for Christmas. And I realized, amid fairly rampant whitewashing in many shows for many years, "Dark Water" boasts a central cast of only COC. I also realized that it was science fiction, or at least science fantasy, because the premise of finding the 13 treasures would restore a city to a rather modern style. Maybe it'd by dystopic?

Here, have a blurry picture of the three main characters, Ioz, Ren, and Tula (apparently from a time when Cartoon Network ran episodes in syndication).

Happy Holidays!

I don't know how many people will be online today, but I wanted to send out a warm "Happy Holidays" to everyone. Whether you are with family on Christmas, about five days into Hanukkah, gearing up for Kwanzaa, or just enjoying some time off, I hope the time is well spent and filled with laughter.

You are all wonderful people, who I am happy and proud to know. May the new year come with more happiness than ever, and great things around every corner.

Happy Holidays and Happy New Year, everyone.

And especially to the writers out there...

Happy writing, may your stories be complete and your characters unique.

Happy New Year--2011 edition

Happy New Year, Everyone!


After midnight, after finshing a comic (X-Men graphic novel featuring Mystique, Rogue and Nightcrawler), after a shower and bed, after waking up multiple times because of phone calls and finally staying up, and after getting some coffee, it is New Year's Day. I am reading blogs.

One was written by Owl, and it got me thinking about who I am and how I define myself, how I define "happy," whether I am happy and if not, how to get there. I've only just begun to think about it, so I don't want to offer you readers a muddled, rambly mess. I know that's my mood right now.

Instead, I'll share what I originally planned to, not my resolutions (I haven't decided on those yet), but my plans for today.

I decided to start a new tradition for myself, that on the first day of the new year, I will take some time to do a little bit of everything I love or want to improve on in this year. For instance:

1. Blog (clearly need to improve that)
2. Write some new pages on Clockwork Seams (I want to finish the first draft)
3. Rewrite/revise Hounds (I have some ideas for rewriting the beginning so it doesn't jump around and to fix some other ideas, now I need to do it)
4. Clean (I have a finite space, but ever-increasing amounts of clothes, books, and paper, not good)
5. Day job stuff (I need better time-management, so a little work today is a good start)
6. Some crafting (make a necklace or sew something, I have the materials and my sewing machine is still out, why not use it?)
7. Take a walk around the neighborhood (structured exercise is exceptionally hard to me to maintain, but healthy habits are good)
8. Read a book (I haven't been in the mood for a while, but the urge is building and once I start, I probably won't be able to stop)
9. Draw (the ideas are on the top of my brain)
10. Eat some french toast (I got a hankering for it this morning, found an easy recipe and tried it out--it was okay, too much cinnamon, and I was worried about the eggs being underdone, but I cooked something I'd never made before, yay new experiences!)

So as of right now, 1 and 10 are complete, 2, 3, and 5 will probably occur later in the day, and 4 is looking like my next step. I don't plan to spend a huge amount of time on all of them, but enough to feel accomplished, I think.

Feeling productive at the end of the day is always good, in my opinion, and as I said to a friend, I think this is a good way to start the new year on a high point.

Whish leads to me ask, what are your plans for today, readers and friends?
~Sabrina

If Only I Had the Time...

I try not to utter these words. I tend to think, at least for me, they're a bit of a cop out, so I catch myself whenever I start thinking them.

Instead, I will mention all the ideas I have had lately for editing one of my stories. I better beginning, a way to make the beginning first chapters more succinct and less rambling.

Hanukkuah is over, Christmas and Kwanzaa are coming, and then there's the new year. To wrap up 2010 I am trying to finishing my grading today, then I am organizing my recipes (for next week when I'll be baking), reorganizing my room, as much as I can in this limited space, and trying to get a head start on next quarter. I'll have a week after January 5, but the more I can get done now, the better I think.

With all of that, I hope to rewrite those early chapters, maybe reach a point where I'm happy enough with the story to send it out again.

That is my hope and wish for 2011, to send out queries for a story I am absolutely proud of. May your ideas be fruitful and your writing come with the ease of inspiration.

Happy New Year

Something about the turning of the year propels people to resolve themselves. To lose weight, to finish a story, to find a (better) job. I find it hard to go back, scramble through papers and find the ending year's resolutions to see what was accomplished, but I still like the idea of starting off with a goal.

I have some of the usual goals, to exercise more, try to be more fit, and since I graduated in May (spent the summer and part of the fall editing and querying), I haven't found a job yet, so that's a big goal as well. I let my crafty Christmas pull me away from the job-hunting. For this blog, however, I focus on the writing goals.

Between tomorrow and this day next year, I will:


Revise 'Hounds' at least once more.

Query agents on that urban fantasy.

Edit Harry's Skin (my M.A. thesis, and frankly, the reason I applied for the graduate program in the first place).

Start querying for that around May/June.

Finish first draft of my steampunk ghost story. (Probably get some editing in as well, but we'll see how the other editing goes first.)


It was three, almost four years ago that I realized I could finish a novel-length story. After accomplishing a full first draft, though, comes the heavy editing. I've reached a point where I can see what doesn't work, and I can fix some of it, but some solutions still elude me. I resolve to examine my editing practices more this year, so that I don't look at the editing process as endless, hellish, or treat it so hesitantly that I neglect to textually weedwhack it as necessary (I know there are times that I let myself get bogged down in the small edits rather than deleting or rewriting scenes, because I didn't want to admit something so big was wrong.)

One revelation about my writing, which I've made this year, is that my first drafts are rather rambly. So you can see, most (all) of my blog posts are essentially first drafts, but for that, I hope you forgive me and accept the extemporaneousity of it. I'll try to recognize more in these writing habits so as to improve the first drafts and make the editing easier.

Any new writing goals for you readers out there?

I'll leave off this last post of 2009 with a simple wish, for all of you, your friends and family, to be healthy, be happy, and to write much and well.

Happy New Year! Happy writing, everyone!

Yearly Resolutions, It’s Starting to be a Tradition for Me By Now

2006 I finished my first novel, a fantasy set in a medieval styled world. I’d started it in high school with a friend. I completed it as my undergraduate honors thesis.

After graduating with my BA, I got real impatient real fast and began another novel, an urban fantasy centering around humans and the fae. By December I finished the first of that. The months following I edited it and brought, five pages a week for the most part, to my writer’s group. Some time over the summer of 2007 I brought them the last of it. I still feel like it needs more editing, but I did get through one big round.

Now I’ve finished my third semester of the Master’s program. MA in English with a concentration in creative writing. My thesis is another novel, urban fantasy, with werewolves and gods/goddesses. I’m about halfway through it, and I want to finish the first draft before January 14, 2009, the first day I go back to class for my last semester. By Mid-May (technically by March or April), I will have a full draft, revised a couple of times.

Between January 2007 and November 2008 I also worked at a part-time job that just began demanding too much time for me to focus on school and writing. I’m not working right now, but I may get a part-time job on campus. We’ll see.

Which leads me to resolutions. I don’t (read: I usually don’t) achieve all my resolutions, but I like having something there, in print, something to move towards. I may not have accomplished what I set out to this year, but I’ve made progressed. That’s good.

So for 2009:

January through May—focus on school and finishing the werewolf UF. Graduate.

May through August—I will wait on getting a job, at least until after the summer (if I can help it) an focus on polishing the two urban fantasy novels. Start querying them with agents. Maybe I’ll start with the faerie one, since I already have ideas for a second and third book.

August/September—if I haven’t yet, start looking for a full-time job. Write Book 2 of the Fae UF if I haven’t started that yet.

October through December—writing Books 2 and 3, querying, hopefully by this time I will have an agent and we’ll be working on getting something out to publishers. (Is it too much to hope by this time next year, I may have an agent and a publisher?)

The resolutions are very detailed, but I think that’s just more evidence that this is the time to get off my keister and start querying. There’s some editing that needs to happen first, but I can’t get bogged down in that and avoid the next step.

So on that note, I will try to take those next steps.

And to you writers out there, good luck in 2009. May you have inspiration and luck in your writing and publication.

Happy writing.

See you on the other side,
Sabrina

(A Bit Belated) Happy New Year

So I haven't been on Blogger for a while, and it feels like it's been quite a while since I was on my computer at all. But it is a new year, so I suppose resolutions are in order. Not that the time of year makes a difference, but I think it's a good idea to look over the year and set goals, particularly when one has lots of stuff going on. Now's as good a time as any.

So I looked over my goals from last year, and I accomplished some of what I set out to do, but not everything.

So for 2008:

I finished one round of edits, and half of another, so firstly, finish the rest of that editing, and start querying agents.

I've already done a little research into which agents might be a good fit, now I need to narrow it down and organize myself, make sure I know which ones prefer email queries versus hard copy.

Survive my second and third semesters of graduate school (this spring I have two classes, one after the other, on Tuesdays and one on Fridays).

Finish the first draft of at least one of the two big stories I started last year--the urban fantasy or the pirate-ish maybe-YA fiction.

Plan out the plot/story arc for book two of the story I'm currently editing.

Here's to the new year, people.
Happy Writing,
Sabrina

And Writtenwyrdd, thanks for the New Year's wishes in the comments below.

Not so long ago, in a place not so far away...

...There lived a girl who clearly had (obsessive) issues with the opening lines of fairytales. ~shrugs~ But what can you do?

So this is the first item on my list of resolutions that I can cross off. See? Going for the more realistic approach to New Year's resolutions this time around. For a few months now, I've been lurking various agents', editors' and other writers' blogspots, be they funny, informative, or both. (I am an expert lurker, but not in any kind of creepy way.) Although I have another, personal blog, creating my own blog here seemed like a good idea.

(I was thinking I'd wait until midnight, but I do have some plans tonight, so early it is.)

Mostly, I'll be focusing on writing-related topics--on the boring side of things, my own progress in writing as I finish stories, edit them, and screw up my courage to send out query letters. I've found a lot of useful information from other sites and blogs. So on the perhaps less-than-boring end of the spectrum, I'll try to include posts about query letters, synopses, editing, etc. All the stuff I picked up from other writers, people in the industry and my writing group, and hopefully helping out other writers with a little piece of information they hadn't known before. I won't swear to accuracy, but I hope I can do something to help someone else. (I've never watched the movie, but the phrase, "pay it forward" comes to mind.) And if I'm lucky, my own particular brand of quirky sarcasm will come through (it's hit and miss when it comes in text).

As you can see, I'm overly fond of the parentheses. No worries, I avoid it in my fiction writing.

Which creates a lovely handy segue to my last intended topic for my first post. That being a run-down of Sabrina the Writer (versus Sabrina the Teenage Witch, which I got a lot of in intermediate and high school).

I've gradauted college, with a BA in English and another in Psychology. In those four years, I finished a novel I began in high school with a friend. That I guess will be Book A until I feel like naming it. A few weeks after graduation, I started Book B, which is completely unrelated to Book A. Book B's first draft is done now, and I'm editing it like a maniac while working on the first few chapters of Book C. Again, unrelated to Book A or B. Well, they're all fantasies, but you know what I mean. I've put off doing the revision of Book A that I know it needs, probably because I dread looking at it and seeing how juvenile it still sounds, as even in the span of a year, I know my writing has matured quite a bit since I wrote it.

I have inklings of second and third books for all three of the ones that have been completed, and I want to develop those ideas (especially for the latter two), but my biggest goal right now is to revise Book B and then start querying agents. So you'll get to watch my progress through editing one novel, writing new pages on another and hopefully getting published one day.