:: Katie's Musings ::

:: Sunday, June 26, 2005 ::

There once was a ramblin' librarian
Who had a bunch a books she was carryin'
In a literal despair
She threw 'em in the air
And metaphorically became a barbarian
:: Katie 5:19 PM [+] ::
...

Brief hiatus

Katie's Keepers is going to go on a brief hiatus as I will be spending my time doing a site redesign. As I have many other commitments on my time right now, I can't give an estimate as to how long this may be. Thanks to everyone who has entered the contest over the past year. Hopefully, I'll be able to bring it back at some point. Until then, be sure to check out authors such as my friend Jess Michaels as she'll be running contests in conjunction with the release of her novellas over the next year. I'll still be updating here, just not the site as much.
:: Katie 11:19 PM [+] ::
...

Okay, finally back to writing. Yeah! I won't say that the writing is exactly flowing after an unintended month off, but it's not like it's dead either. I am forever grateful for that. I have to mention again what a godsend I find WriteWay's Word Count Tracking feature as the breakdown makes the goal I had set back in January still feel doable. I also had a breakthrough tonight. I finally articulated to myself the book's internal/romantic conflict. I had been thinking about it for the last week and had, for the most part, pinned it down, but it finally coalesced for me tonight. Almost as good as finding out that the drivers for the working printer my dad had sitting around were pre-installed on my new computer and after a year, I have a working printer! I've just had an all-around successful night :)
:: Katie 11:31 PM [+] ::
...

I thought some people might be interested in this as they seem to have a great lineup of speakers. There is also a fee-based writing contest associated with the conference if anyone is interested. To get to the menu of topics, click on the "Site Directory" link.

Shepherd College's Fiction Writers' Conference
:: Katie 11:56 PM [+] ::
...

2004 James T. Lupton Award Call for Entries

For anyone who is interested, this is a $25,000 award. If you aren't attending their conference at the BookExpo America, there's a $25 entry fee.

Books for Life Foundation
:: Katie 6:50 PM [+] ::
...

Bits and pieces:

1. I'm really liking the WriteWay program. I have the Pro version, which has full capabilities. There are a lot of neat features that you can use depending on the way you approach writing a novel. I'm kind of a pantser in that I have a general idea as to what's going to happen in the book, I do know how it ends, but I don't really have it planned down to the tiniest detail. I decided to use the character profiles that are available as a prod to my memory, but I haven't really refered to them since I started writing. This isn't really a program for deep structuring of the story like Drammatica, but I think it would definitely be useful for people who are more thorough in their story planning than I am. WriteWay also has a built in word processing feature which took some getting used to, but I'm liking it. I'm currently sans printer thanks to mine blowing up right around this time of year last year. I'm hoping to have funds for my dream one in a few months, but until then, I'm appreciating the fact that you can export your work as an .rtf file so that I can save it to a disk or whatever and print from somewhere else. The program does have a learning curve, and there are a few things that I hope will be added as the program grows, but I like that with so much planning tools available, I really focus on my story.

2. I'm already ahead for my quota for the month. Yeah! Now to keep the momentum going. Luckily, I'm very pavlovian when it comes to stimuli. Stick in a certain movie, and I'll probably fall asleep at your feet. Stick in a certain CD and I fall right into writing mode. It got bad though when I found out this morning that my batteries were dead and I had to scavenge all of our remote controls for a pair that worked. I stocked up on my way home from work.

3. For any super-techies out there, it looks like I now have a feed for this blog. Check it out if you're inclined and let me know what you think.
:: Katie 12:01 AM [+] ::
...

Got humor?

I thought I'd point this out because it's a free writing competition, humor is always needed, and my brother will be attending this year's Erma Bombeck Writers' Workshop. There are two divisions with two winners apiece, local and national. So check it out if you write humor!

Washington-Centerville Public Library - Adults
:: Katie 11:01 PM [+] ::
...