Smut & Scones

It's Sunday, I'm deep in the throws of a lovely head cold and therefore in my jammies with some chamomile tea and honey, listening to Christmas music and poking around on the internet. It would be perfect if the weather was also cold and grey, but even though there's a bit of fog coming in off the ocean, it's mostly sunny outside. So that's a bummer. Bloody glorious sunshine. As I've been poking around on Pinterest this morning I've developed a hankering to make a big batch of roasted vegetables -- broccoli, cauliflower, brussell sprouts, sweet potatoes, squash, whatever I can find. I'm feeling unhealthy anyway, so the coziness of warm, roasted autumn veggies sounds soothing. And after the dietary excesses of the last couple of days weeks  months, I want to restart my habits with something tasty and good for me. I also have some awesome boneless chicken thighs that I'm itching to bake up with some olive oil and garlic. Tasty! Being sick, however,...

NaNo update: Day 12 Target Word Count: 20,004 Actual word Count: 5486 Ugh. I actually have some good scenes to write, too, that could seriously pad my count. But the time, man, the time! There isn't enough of it. Plus, you know, I have to update Twitter and the blog about how it's going. Ugh. Time for tea. Oh shoot, I also have to feed the children. Ugh.

NaNo Update -- Day 11 Target Word Count Goal: 18,337 Current Word Count: 4692 Status of Writer: All hands on deck Status of Novel: dandy, despite lack of words Though I've made time almost every day to check in with my novel at least once, those have been, by force, short check ins, and I've been adding probably 500 words a day. Not nothing, but putting me behind schedule as we saunter into the second weekend of NaNoWriMo. I am shamelessly letting both of my children and my husband veg out on three separate screens in the other room and taking advantage of their distraction by hiding in the bedroom with my laptop to try to add some more limbs to this beast. Can I catch up to word count by weekend's end? Can I crack 10K at least? Can I also engage in training for my upcoming 5k and be a semi-attentive mother and wife? Place your bets...

I was having a brainstorming session with myself yesterday, trying to stop and take a deep breath and refocus on what my goals are for like, my life -- my side business, my writing, etc. Sort of without intending to, I created something that I think is going to really solve a lot of the problems I've been having with feeling guilty about how I manage my time every day, and doing/not doing what I "should" be doing at any given point during my evenings, mornings, and weekends. I get so few pockets of free time during the day, around my kids, home, and family, and my day job, my side biz, and my writing plans. Almost always, when I sit down to start working on one thing, I can concentrate because I'm still thinking about all the other things I should or could be doing instead -- I need to work on this outline, but I also have dishes and laundry that I probably ought to get started on, etc. I was trying to single out the times of day that I could, in theory, carve ou...

Oh my god, okay, I'm supposed to be going to bed right now but I just have to write a quickie post. I've been really getting into cozy mysteries lately, sort of by accident, in the sense that I guess I'd always loved a good mystery but I didn't really realize how much I loved this particular genre until I got on a Murder She Wrote binge and now I'm reading all kinds of Agatha Christie and other cozy mysteries. Which is, of course, giving me all kinds of ideas for writing one of my own. A genre that is so wildly outside of what I have ever written before that I feel like I just might have to try it. I've got a solid set-up in mind for a series, and I've managed to find a way to fit in my other loves as well -- history and sauciness. But I must say, I'm having a hard time finding other contemporary cozies that I like, and right off the bat I can pin point why -- too much exposition from the first paragraph. It seems to be a formulaic part of this g...