this made my day

I got a good review for Life on the Move from Fallen Angel Reviews!

Perfect timing to cap off 2008.

Happy new year, everyone!

GoodReads

I joined Goodreads ages ago and then just gradually drifted away from using the site. Yesterday, somehow, I came across a group on there called "What's the Name of that Book???"

I have a not-so-secret love for forgotten book finder threads and boards. I love the odd, half-remembered descriptions. And I love solving other peoples' mysteries! There were two on Goodreads that I was sure of and able to answer.

Anyway. I'm going to go acquaint myself with all the new goodies the site has to offer. Here's my profile, and I applied to their authors' program (whee!) so I should be able to add an excerpt soon!

I contributed to this month's Samhellion, the Samhain newsletter. You can read my piece on the topic of "what I did over the summer" here:

http://www.thesamhellion.com/2008/september/

It's about the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, which I've made an annual summer tradition.

for the love of lists

I am a list maker.

I can't help it. It's just who I am. To-do lists, lists of books I've read and movies I've seen, lists of places I want to go... When I decorated my house, I painted a wall in my writing area with chalkboard paint. What do you think I write there? Lists.

So I like to play around on 43 Things and the List of Bests.

I have two big life goals that are centered around lists. One is to see all of Shakespeare's plays performed onstage. I'm about one-third done with that. The other is to visit all 50 states. I've been closing in on that one for years. Only 10 left!

And then there's movies. I love the classics and I'm addicted to Netflix. My first movie goal was one I set for myself when I was about 8 years old -- to see every movie ever referenced by TV private eye Remington Steele. I made a list when the show came out on DVD of the movies I hadn't seen yet and watched the ones that were available on DVD. It's really fun accomplishing childhood goals, however silly they might be. After that I watched all the Academy Award Best Pictures, and then the AFI 100 Movies. Now when I don't know what to watch I work on the other AFI lists and the Time magazine list. Which Netflix helpfully has on an "award winners" page.

I don't know what it is about lists. Maybe I like things organized, or maybe I feel better if I know what to do next or have a goal I'm working toward.

this is pretty awesome

It's a "Wordle" (visual representation of text) of my novel!

Excel nerd

Because I am a freak, I can tell you that I'm averaging a speed of 38 words per minute on my new WIP.

I am not a friend of numbers, but for some reason I love keeping track of things in Excel spreadsheets. I got into the habit during NaNoWriMo, because writing 50,000 words in 30 days is all about numbers -- the minimum amount to write each day, and for me, how much to catch up/get ahead, because I've never been the type to write every single day. (Though I really should!)

My spreadsheet tracks time in minutes, total words, words in that particular writing session, the date, and how many words I've done on that day if I've written in more than one block of time. New for this WIP I've added a column for percent done, since it's not NaNo and I don't have a handy progress bar to keep track. And I added the WPM column just for fun.

The last thing I worked on, I kept up the same format when I was editing the first draft to the second. In that case, the word count got smaller as I trimmed the fat.

review!

I got a review! A really good review! From Good Bad and Unread!

I went from feeling completely down to having my day absolutely made within the span of about an hour. Whee!