Writing and knitting

Higher Ground is now officially under way. I'll be juggling this along with studying for my medical coding specialty credential in cardiology. (For those of you who didn't know, I'm a certified professional medical coder and biller. It pays the bills.) It's part of my two year plan to get out of my current situation in order for me to get more time to write. I've done this before, I can do it again. Although I would pick the hardest specialty credential out there. Oy.

When I'm not writing, researching or studying, I knit. I'm not very good. Not like my friend HCat who can knit ANYTHING. God, she's amazing. I do love knitting lace projects though and this piece will be a very pretty scarf. I got the yarn in Alexandria, VA last fall at a store called Fiber Space.

Eye Candy Friday, posted on Saturday

Okay, I'm trying to make Fridays eye candy day for me. But I ended up staying way way later than I planned on at a friend's little wine and snark party on her deck last night. Which I needed, the snarking anyway. (I settled for diet coke instead of wine) Anyway, it was almost midnight before I got home.

I also had to take the late shift at work. The last hour our phones are still on at my regular job (Yes, sadly, I have a regular job I hate, but I digress...) is the longest hour. We all rotate this, so I don't have to do it again until July. But there is only 4 of us in the office, which is cavernous when it's that empty. So I worked on the sequel to VN2- which I've tentatively titled Higher Ground. Thank god I always keep a flash drive in my purse. I've got two new characters and a couple of complicated plot lines I'm intertwining. Thankfully, it made the last hour go by much faster.

I've had to focus on one of the many writing projects I've got going on. I was too scattered and really not gettting anywhere. Right now Higher Ground seems to be the one yelling the loudest at me for attention, so it's the one I'll run with for the time being.
Anyway, my choice of eye candy for this week- Sergeant Zeke Anderson (as played by Terence Knox).

Scripts

Way back, around the time my son was born, I not only used to write novels and short stories but television scripts as well. My son turns 26 next month soooo, you get an idea of just how long ago that was. It was a different world then and well, television script writing isn't a wide open market like it used to be. Most series these days have a writing staff that pens their episodes- freelancing isn't nearly as easy.


Don't get me wrong- it wasn't easy 25 years ago either. I did manage to sell one script and from that, got some decent part time work over the next few years until the television series landscape changed.

Because of this, I love to collect scripts. I have boxes of them from favorite shows as well as from series I worked on. Pilot scripts and the even rarer series "bibles" were a favorite of mine. I love going through these and seeing what scenes were cut or what was rearranged. In pilot scripts, if you're lucky enough to get one of the earlier drafts, you get to see the character progression from the original concept to what we see on televsion. And you often get a sense of those actors who put their own personality into that character, making him/her that much more real and deminsional.

Oh, the series I got lucky enough to sell to once upon a time? The Equalizer. In all honesty, what I sold was heavily over written and really what ended up on television was the basic overall storyline I had come up with. And a few pieces of dialog.
Bumper Sticker Wisdom: Drive like you stole something.

My choice for eye candy tonight:
Stephen Caffrey as Lieutenant Myron Goldman- this is my Ian Davidson.

Reality television, reality in characters

To me, there are two types of reality television- the kind that has a prize at the end (Survivor, Amazing Race) and what I consider to be reality TV- that being The Deadliest Catch for instance.

I admit it- I love The Deadliest Catch. It catches these guys in the rawest of moments and well, if you ever wanted to see some characters, tune in sometime when one of the captains has a total meltdown. Or it's high seas and a guy gets swept overboard. This stuff isn't staged, it's not contrived, it's real people in what has to be one of the most insane jobs out there- crab fishing in the middle of winter off the coast of Alaska. Seriously.

I like real characters, and I like to write characters that are real and not apologize for them. I like my guys to be guys- to really walk the walk and talk the talk. And since I write about men in the military, trust me, they don't get much more real than that. Not everybody likes that, or agrees with it and striking a balance between keeping it real and too real can be a challenge sometimes.

I've learned that I write what I like and I like gritty characters that aren't necessarily popular or score high on the warm and fuzzy meter. But they are three dimensional and realistic and someone I can see and hear and feel because it's a more honest character, if that makes any sense at all. And an honest character, a believable character, well I'm all over that.

Side note:
In today's news- NC passes its law stating that a marriage is between a man and a woman. *sigh* I keep hoping that someday everyone will come to understand that the definition of love doesn't begin and end with gender.

Today's bumper sticker: The moment that little voice in your head says "Yep- you're going to hell."

When you got nothing to say...

Okay, so I'm not very good at keeping up with this- the author side of my life. And I know this and I think, geesh, what is so hard about this?

Part of it is, the silence on the other end. I call it the crickets. I have a lot of those going for me. And the truth is, it's hard to write anything, want to write anything when you think no one is listening.

But the other part is, I feel like I've got nothing to say. That there isn't alot here to get excited about- you know? And I mulled this over today when I did my usual two miles, the fact that I'm an author but a lurker and quiet. Which isn't doing me a whole helluva lot of good, now is it?

I can have things to say, when I want to. I'm passionate about character, it's what drives me when I write. And as I thought about that, I thought about some other things so I sat down this evening and made up an outline for myself. Because I'm all about outlines, mind you. And came up with several things that I can work with and talk about and simply get out there.

Because the truth of the matter is, if you've got nothing to say, who is going to listen?

So, one more time, I'm gonna give this a try and see if I can at least get something out there, three to four times a week. No less than two times though, I'm try to make that at least.
So um, hello, once again. I'll start out with some of my favorite eye candy and we'll see what happens from here.
Seriously, they just don't get much cuter than this pair .