Archive for November, 2020



The Elephant WhispererThe Elephant Whisperer by Lawrence Anthony
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

It’s funny what happens when you start researching a book you are writing. I have an elephant in my story, and he tells another character that his favorite book is… Well, that meant I needed to find a book for him to refer to. I looked up elephant books on Amazon, and this one came up. I chose the Audible version because I had a credit waiting for my next listen. I am not sure it is my character elephant’s favorite book. But I did enjoy it as my night read.

Simon Vance did a great job narrating this autobiography. His voice is believable as the author’s own, I suppose. I don’t know what the author sounded like, as my guess is the author passed before finishing the book. That was a little jarring.

The author shared his experiment by having a place for a herd to come and live. He shared his getting to know the elephants’ personalities personally. All in all, I did enjoy the story. I just need an elephant book more personal to the elephant and not the human. I did have my guy like Dumbo. But I need more.

If you love elephants, you will love this book.

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NaNo Word Count


I had a fun Friday zooming with friends but didn’t get many words before. I did nearly finish a pair of slipper socks. I’ll share those tomorrow when they are definitely finished.

So the goal for today was to be 33,340. Once again I didn’t surpass by much but I managed 33,464 words. At least I left the scene with a lot to write. My imagination was going crazy! So I’m looking forward to writing tomorrow. I do need to get ahead so I can play with Scrivener some more.

Meanwhile, I need to write a book review. See ya in a few minutes!

Thursday NaNo Update


Okay, it is so late. I will make this quick. The Word count is 31,743. Not a lot over the goal of 31,673 but still a little above. Yay, me!


Writing Can Be Hard Work!

Pixabay.com

There one line! Today was difficult in that I no longer have any main characters to develop. So it was all story. And then the electricity went off. Thank goodness it didn’t stay off. It’s going to cold tonight. 29 degrees Fahrenheit. Not the coldest but without heaters would be uncomfortable. Apparently, there was a blown transformer. I’m grateful the people get on things like that right away. Isn’t it funny how the family gathers and gets a little antsy as we are all out of our element without our electronics to work on?

Okay word count: 30,065 words. Barely made it over the goal for today of 30,006.

I’m still trying to get my Scrivener version up and running so I am not just reliant on yWriter or WriteItNow. My eyes have a harder time with Scrivener. I have had to use a text-to-speech program to read the instructions to me. And it has taken me a couple days to get through the QuickStart. Imagine how long it would have taken to get through the whole thing? But it does have features that look like it would help me be more organized. And I think I can change the backgrounds and fonts to make it easier on my eyes. By the way, there are videos on the Scrivener website that bring it down to what I wanted: How do I get started. Boom! There is was. Tutorials.

One-Liner Wednesday is a fun prompt brought to us by Linda G. Hill.

 

Quick NaNo Word Count Update


It was a busy day but I did manage to get to 29,043 to date. So far so good. Today’s goal was 28,339 words. Yay! I still want to write a bit more before bedtime.

Happy Tuesday!

Quick Word Count Update


Despite everything, I have managed 27,549. What I had to rewrite I wasn’t nearly as happy with. But today’s writing was fun. So I am happy. And quick math of the goal equals 26,672. So I am still a little ahead.

Meanwhile, I found my Scrivener’s license, so I will copy and paste the whole story to both WriteItNow and Scrivener so that there will be a lot of copies of the story. Tonight was writers group and one of the writers there, who has been published, said that she printed out her work as she went. I don’t know if I can afford to print out the draft. But I don’t want to lose bits as computers haven’t been the most reliable for me of late. How do you all do that?

Frustration is Back


I had typed about two thousand words today. I hit save every fifteen minutes. Then my dog wanted to go outside. I hit save and just as I did the computer popped off. I lost all the words from last night and today’s words. I am trying to catch up now so I’ll not say much here. It is so disappointing when computer crashes lose everything. I went through every file in dropbox and Onedrive to find anything to save me. But now it is a mishmash of things I have touched so I can’t find the right one. I’ll try to rename the one I am working on right now as it is the closest to what I had done.

Sorry for complaining. I’ll get back on track because the story is pushing me to tell it. I just need to get as much done tonight and tomorrow to get back to where I left off.


Stream of Consciousness Saturday

This has been a crazy day. I got so frustrated several times that I shouted. It seemed I was caught in a fighting ring of madness. It was so cold in the living room that I moved some of my stuff to the bedroom. I have downloaded yWriter7 onto my Fire, and so I could continue writing on my project there.

I couldn’t get my Bluetooth keyboard to work. The mouse worked, but I needed to type faster than the Fire’s built-in keyboard, even with all the word suggestions, could let me. I tried to go into Word because I knew that I could use the microphone and dictate my story. That worked for a paragraph or two. It misunderstood half of the words. So I copied and pasted what I did get done into the scene open on yWriter. Then I noticed that there was a mic on that keyboard, too.

The problem was that as I added more to the scene if I needed to edit something, the new edits didn’t show up where they were supposed to. Ring around the frustrated rosy! So I saved and went and got my laptop from the living room to start again.

Dropbox did save it properly. I was pretty happy with that. But then I started writing and had a great five minutes of the story growing. The battery had died and the laptop shut down. Nope, that last part didn’t get saved. And the bits I tried to make up were not at all the same.  URGH!

As I had moved my laptop into the bedroom, I accidentally dropped the mouse. Now when I had a picture I wanted to include for the story, I couldn’t right-click. I yelled, swear words. I’m sorry if you heard them.

I tried to get the Bluetooth mouse to work with the computer, nope. More yelling.

My husband is a saint. I swear! He came in and asked what was wrong. He helped me by getting the mouse fixed and getting the story back where it needed to save parts. By the time he was done, I was back to being the me I know and love. So that ring of patience from him started a new feeling for me.

Here’s the word count: 25,826. How about that more than halfway there! And a day early!

I developed that mother of one of my main characters, Liz’s mom. AZZ is her nickname. She has been told she is a goddess. She looks like this:

Learn more about her here

2019-2020 SoCS Badge by Shelley! https://www.quaintrevival.com/

Per Linda G. Hill: Your Friday prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday is “ring.” Use it as a noun, a verb, an adverb, or an adjective…use it any way you’d like. Have fun!

I hope I got it! Posted this before midnight but had to edit after. SMH Hope you had a better Saturday than I did.

 

keyboard smash

Quick NaNo Word Count


Developed Monty, one of Violet’s favorite brothers in the town. That brought me to 23,679. This story is nearly writing itself. I love it!

Remember how I use random numbers to select the characteristics? Then I put those in Google to see my characters look alike. I think when NaNo is over, I will draw all of my characters as I don’t want to violate copyrights.

Here’s Monty’s look-alike:

Rupert Grint

My word count is 23,679

So tired!


The Whizz Pop Chocolate ShopThe Whizz Pop Chocolate Shop by Kate Saunders
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Kate Saunders has written a delightful children’s’ book that is fun for all ages. I would have loved to have this around while raising my kids. It would have been a favorite for me as a child. For those two reasons, it reaches four stars in rating. But the narrator, Jayne Entwistle, brings the listeners into the Whizz Pop world, and therefore I have to give this story five stars.

If the real world is getting you and your family down, this is such an uplifting story. The characters are marvelously brought to life with Ms. Entwistle’s acting. I imagine families gathering around the audio machine you all may use (I used my Kindle Fire). Adults can find as much fun here as children. I even see great family discussions coming from the book.

I am sad to leave this behind. I will see if, like this one, my online library has book two. Libby is how I heard it. So even if you haven’t the money to buy the book or audio version, your library may have it, or you can request that they order it.

Happy Listening!

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