Some Honest Thoughts.

In response to yesterday's Ten Things Challenge, a few of my fabulous web-pals commented on the story potential in what I shall know refer to as the Formula #9 Project. No, I had never thought about writing a story involving a losery, friendless, violin-playing booknerd who moves across the country and turns her life around. Here's why. Real life seems ordinary and unstoryable to me, (Sesquipedalian, is there a footnote for that one?). I like reading and writing about magic and powers. So initially my reaction to everyone's comments was a big whopping, "El. Oh. El. Not likely peeps." But. I suppose I should keep a level head about everything. I mean, what happens if my current love-in-progress doesn't work out? A girl has to keep her options open. I'm not getting any younger, after all, and as great as things are going with loverstory right now, what about the future? Will we be able to go the distance? Will I still be in love through revisions, queries, the good times and bad? Who's to say? I'm not saying I'll cheat, I won't! I'm just saying your comments have made me think for a second. And my thoughts are, maybe it doesn't always have to be about magic. Maybe.

Reasons to Celebrate! And Ten Things You Didn't Know About Me

I managed to squeak in five pages in my manuscript this week, yay! Also there's winning The Maze Runner from The Literary Girls, double yay! And finally, an award from Charity over at Thoughts...By Charity Joy Bell. Thank you Charity!

This award looks both fun and daunting, and I'm always up for a challenge. For anyone who wants this award, I tag you and you can have it! That's right, anyone and everyone-- but you have to play the game. Post ten true things either here or on your blog... things that your blog-readers might not already know. 

Here are the bloggers who accepted the challenge:

Writer's Butt Does Not Apply (by Mary)

Where Ladybugs Roar (by Wendy Sparrow)

And here are mine:

1.   If I could have any superpower, it would be the ability to freeze time.

2.   I've been to the medieval times dinner show twice and spent years obsessed with that era, as well as Regency England, the Renaissance, Victorian England... pretty much any time period that involved long gowns, courtliness, feasts, or corsets.

3.   I am the worst plant-grower ever. There are no plants in my home or on our patio, I am guaranteed to kill them. The same goes for noiseless animals (like fish. Sorry Princess Aurora).

4.   In college I worked as a summer camp counselor for three years. (This was an indoor/playground-type place. No camping involved).

5.   In that summer camp, I couldn't drive my group on field trips because I failed the depth-perception eye test. All the circles looked the same to me! Another counselor had to drive us around.

6.   Probably partly because of number 5, I am the most uncoordinated ball catcher or thrower ever, and I've always been terrible at sports involving balls. That's almost every sport there is!

7.   I had free satellite radio, but now it's gone and I miss it like CRAZY! Boo to commercials and talky DJs.

8.   I decided to cut back on my coffee, and it isn't as hard as I thought it would be. My goal is to only drink it socially. Or if I'm in a bookstore.

9.   At the end of ninth grade, my family moved from Miami Beach to L.A. and I decided, then and there, that I would find my way into the "In" crowd. I'd grown out my hair by this point, but in Miami the brand of dorkdom had been too strong to erase. In L.A. I spent my first three days of school observing, trying to figure out who the nicer-yet-still "cool" kids were, then I befriended them (this was surprisingly easy), and by Senior year I was in cheerleading and student government (the equivalent of social success in my mind), and I had friends. Wow! (And if you knew me in Miami, you would be getting up off the floor from a dead faint in about a minute).

10.   While living through the whole social transformation thing, and because of my debilitating fear of being thrown back into the world of outcasts from where I'd come, I stopped reading completely. I still wrote stories during class while pretending to take notes, but none of my new friends EVER read (this was before YA was big). I gave up a lot of myself to keep up my new persona. Sometimes though, I'd chit-chat with two bookworm-type girls and I'd feel my real, inner-self yearning to break free. By the time I started college I realized I could be myself and still make friends. A life lesson learned :)

There ya go, ten things you all didn't know about me. I've officially earned my Honest Scrap Award! If you'd like it, it's yours with my compliments, but you gotta pay your dues and post ten true things about yourself that your blog-readers don't already know, bwahahahaaa!

Junior High

After a whole week, yet again the only thing bringing out fierce feelings of hostility in me is the mound of Terrible Ironing that sits on the bench over there. In an effort to bring out a nice rant, I flipped through my old junior high yearbook... my family is from Costa Rica, in case I've never mentioned it, and the mentality is a bit different for those tween years. Flipping through those blank, signature-less pages was like a trip down Memory Lane. Awkward, embarrassing, Memory Lane. I always wondered how those kids (you know the ones) maintained their confidence and composure through those difficult pre-teen years. I also wondered why they loved pointing out my complete lack of such an ability. If those kids could see me now, right? 

Why hello, Jane Smith. It's Diana Paz! You don't remember me? At all? Well you've still got a rant coming and do you know what? Playing the violin is cool! It helps with math and some other things too! And you know what else? It wasn't my fault my grandma cut my hair! Or that my other grandma found all my clothes at the swap meet and she happened to love floral print and added ruffles to everything! Do you think I liked wearing poofy sleeved, lace-collared blouses in junior high? And do you know that growing out a short-on-bottom, long-on-top, Aunt Bea haircut is a slow, mushroom-headed process that is moment-to-moment agony? Especially while lugging a violin case everywhere? Well, now you know.

Ah, good times. But it's weird, I always had a hard time coming up with an "Embarrassing Moment" to share in those college orientation icebreaker games or Freshmen English writing assignments. How do you pinpoint one moment in half a decade of embarrassment? "My most embarrassing moment was walking onto the school bus every single day for three straight years." I would have had an easier time writing my least embarrassing moment.

Maybe you were all part of the In Crowd and don't have any embarrassing memories, but if not, is anyone else brave enough to post a junior high horror story?

Ten Survival Tips for the Unpublished

First off, for those of you who followed last week's camp saga and who may be curious, I had a pretty good time camping. It was surprisingly not as hard as I thought it would be, and the girls loved it. What can I say? Their enthusiasm rubbed off on me :) I'm not saying I'm a "camper" officially, (I will forever LOVE the mom who brought us Starbucks early Saturday morning), but I can do the Camporee thing once a year and even look forward to it. I will definitely bring a tube of chapstick next time, though. My lips feel like they're made of beef jerky. They're past the burny stage when they hurt, but I'm not loving the rawhide look. I feel bad for my husband. I'm insisting on my usual amount of kisses and he is pretty yucked out by the feel of these babies.

Secondly, I won a contest!! Mary at The Literary Girls let me know that I'm getting a copy of The Maze Runner and I am really excited to read this one. As soon as I do I will have a Book Talk and let you know what I think. Thank you Mary!

Lastly, since Monday is my Publishing Industry day and I have camping on the brain, here is a list of tips for surviving in the wild world of working toward publication (and I need to start following a lot of these myself):

1.     Be prepared. For a long wait. Really, going from unpublished to published author is not gonna be quick.

2.     Pack plenty of food, as in nourishment for your mind. Many of the agents and editor interviews I've read mention reading as the best way to improve your writing, to know what's being done, and to understand the market. 

3.     Bring tools, and I don't mean just a great laptop (although that helps!), I mean the tools we use in our writing like showing instead of telling, great dialogue, action verbs and writing that readers, and agents, won't want to put down. Check out a list of great writer tools HERE.

4.     Find shelter. Where's yours? A comfy recliner? A cozy nook surrounded by shelves of beloved books? Maybe you have a room all to yourself, or maybe you stay up after the kids go to sleep and write in bed, but a writer's corner without distraction is a good way to get going on your book.

5.     Use the buddy system. Maybe it's a critique group or a writing forum, but having support and people to talk to that understand writing help us stay focused on our goals.

6.     Stay on the trails. Do you find yourself writing more about becoming a writer, than writing your actual book? You've wandered off the path! Backtrack and remember that the bulk of your computer "writing" time should be with your characters. Click HERE for a quick post by Upstart Literary Crow on prioritizing.

7.     Be aware of your surroundings. Look around, the internet is full of tips for finding the right agents to query and how to write those query letters. There's advice galore, and some of it is coming right from the source.

8.     Don't forget first-aide. It seems like every writer faces rejection, and it hurts. Whatever helps you get over it, whether it's a bar of chocolate or talking about it with a friend, figure out what helps you get back in the swing of things and don't let rejection get you down.

9.     Wear the right clothing. Online and in your query letters, you wear your words, so make sure you have on things that portray you in your best light. For a post about this, click HERE for Janet Reid's take on Internet Invisibility Cloaks.

10.     Have fun! Hopefully, we all started writing in the first place because it's one of the things we enjoy most in the world. It's easy to forget that when we're stuck in a scene that doesn't flow, or the rejections start to roll in. Have fun, because it's impossible to know if the book we are writing will really be the one that sells or not, so we may as well enjoy the process and be open to learning from it.

Reasons to Celebrate!

Tons of happy things to post about today! First of all, thank you to the awesome gapyeargirl at The Book Bundle for this Super Comments Award! I'm tickled, and if you haven't checked out The Book Bundle lately, they have an all new, super fun look. 

I pass this along to the cool people who comment here on the Coaster, and to anyone else who wants this award (or who I forgot to add!!) just toss in a comment today and it's yours :) I release you from any link-posting responsibilities, just accept with my thanks for being a "super commenter!"

Some of The Super Commenters On My Blog:

Emily Cross (my very first commenter) from The Writer's Chronicle

Wendy from Where Ladybugs Roar

Natalie from The Sound of the Rain

Anne R. Allen

Angie from Notes From the Writing Chair

Charity "C" from Thoughts by Charity Joy Bell

Mary from Literary Girls Writing Group

Bethany Wiggins from Shooting Stars

Danni from Romantic Harbor

Scobberlotcher from Scobberlotch

Jessica (Booklover) from A Booklover's Diary

Imogen at Novel Ideas

In other news, I got another twenty pages written in my wip, and considering I'm ear-deep in scout paperwork for the now infamous campout, I think that's something to celebrate. Another thing that makes me happy, today is the first day of October and all three of my kids are October babies (don't ask me how that happened... I Do.Not.Know.) 

Lastly, if you're into contests/giveaways you'll be happy to hear that The Book Bundle has one for a book called Vampyre, Literary Girls have one (that ends today!) for a book called The Maze Runner, and Tales of Whimsy has one for a book I really want called You Had Me At Halo. I'm sure there are loads more, but those are some I ran across this week :) 

What about you? Maybe good vibes beget good things, so share anything exciting that happened or even something unexciting that just made you smile. Let's hear it :)