Writing and Riding

Well sort of ;) Today and yesterday I've been hacking away at my synopsis. I've been going through at least a couple chapters a day trying to describe each page in one sentence. When I start each day, I go back and put the day before's sentence chapter descriptions into paragraphs. Once I've done that, I move on to one sentence per one page the next couple chapters(that way I have something to do the next day *insert sarcastic laughter*. I'm up to chapter 9 for 1 sentence per page descriptions and I've done paragraphs up to chapter 7. Tedious and I'm not even half way done yet!

Anyways, last night I had a great couple hours working with my horses. I worked with all three able bodied ones :) First I round penned Big Boy and then saddled him up and lunged him a little more. After taking off the saddle I took him to the trailer where he loaded fairly easily(we're trying to stay in practice).

Next I moved on to Rain. I round penned her a little with some grooming in between. Then I proceeded to flap the saddle blanket all around her and on each side of her. She had a few panicked laps around the round pen before she realized the blanket might not eat her and it was a little easier(although much scarier) to just stand still. After that I took the saddle and tossed it on her several times from each side. She was tense and was going to walk off a couple times, but I contained her and she did okay. Finally I saddled her up and round penned her a little more.

I finished up with Nina. I round penned her and saddled her, then round penned her some more. She is the most uptight horse. Of course, I haven't worked with her(other than to haul her in the trailer some) for over 2 years, so I don't blame her one bit. Even if she's not my favorite riding horse and is a difficult ride, she needs to be working. There is no reason to have her and not be using her, playing with her, etc.

The only horse that doesn't have to work is my old man, Foster Boss, whom is completely retired. In fact I am facing the possibility that he may not make it through the winter. He's in okay weight but that's about the only thing he's got going for him. He's got a problem with his feet abscessing, he's over the knees and he's arthritic as can be. He had a long working life and with his poor conformation it's showing now, even though he's only 22.

Well so as to not end on a depressing note, here's a picture of the herd :) This was taken in the summer of last year. From left to right:

Nina, Big Boy, Rain, and Foster

*Claps hands*

Adelinde Cornelissen and her horse were eliminated from the World Equestrian Games! Why? While she was performing a Dressage test a ground judge spotted bloody saliva coming from the horse's mouth. Blood coming from a horse's mouth is against the rules. She was stopped immediately and dismissed from the ring. Her and her horse can't perform in the rest of the games this year. It was said that the reason the horse was bleeding was because it had bit its tongue. Supposedly the bleeding had stopped by the time the horse made it back to its stall and after the vet had examined it.

Hmmm. I suppose that I can imagine a horse is capable of biting its tongue. I think this is likely of may be an unbroke horse, a very green horse, a horse in a panic, or a horse that falls on its face(don't laugh, it's possible!) But would I expect that a world class dressage horse would bite its tongue for no good reason? Nope, I don't buy that.

Take a look at how Adelinde sometimes rides(as I'm not stalking her, I have no idea how often she does this) her horses. It's called rollkkur and in my opinion *it is my blog* I find it a cruel way to ride for more than a few moments at a time. It looks unnatural, uncomfortable and cruel if the horse is forced to contort itself like that for extended amounts of time, whether the horse is walking or cantering.

I'm impressed with the judges for doing the right thing. Even if the horse accidentally bit its tongue and not because of harm from the rider, they followed the rules. So often in the horse show world, cruelty is ignored for the sake of performance, winning and money.

Here's a couple of pictures of head positions I prefer. Now I'm not saying these photos are perfect, I just prefer the fact that the horses' noses aren't touching their chests.

I didn't wanna

I have been in a I don't want to mood today, but I sort of overcame it :) I really wanted to just sit and enjoy the book I'm reading. But I have been thinking to myself lately, what is my dream job? What do I really want to do? Well I have several dream jobs and one of them is to be a writer, but not just a writer. I want to be published, repetitively :) So I decided if that I wanted to do that then I needed to fight the mood.
Right now I'm not at a point where I'm writing/aka making a word count go up. I'm at a point with my current WIP and my next WIP that requires work, but not just writing the story. I'm coming up with scene ideas for my next wip and I need to get together a synopsis and a query letter for my current WIP. I'm also sending out D3 of my WIP to get feed back from beta readers and letting those responses and D3 sit and stew for a while.
What did I do today to deal with both of the above paragraphs? Well I separated out chapters 11-21 of D3 for emailing to my beta readers, I summed up my bare bones of ch. 1 & 2 into a couple beginning paragraphs for the synopsis, I basically dry outlined chapters 3 & 4, and I picked out names for all but one of my known characters in my next WIP. See, I was productive :) Not that anyone else in my life will think much of it, but it all took about one to one and half hours of time! See, I told you so! lol, ok, I'm wishing you productivity and the ability to fight the mood of I don't want to!

Daunting

Today I took some time for me :) Me and baby headed to the library where I picked up the next Sookie book to read. And by next, I mean my next(Dead and Gone.) I also took the time to read to baby in the very cute kids' section of the library. Of course all he wanted to do was explore this new place, so I let him. Lucky me, there was no one else in the kids' section. He had a blast until it was time to leave. We only read 2 books and honestly he really didn't appreciate them. *shrugs*
Do you know what else happened at the library? Well let me start by saying I park in a parking lot behind the library, enter through the back way which is a basement level and then I ride up an elevator to the library. While I was there, a young boy, maybe 14?, was walking around and watching me and baby. When I got ready to leave, guess who was behind me in line for the elevator? Yup! I was a little nervous until I turned upon hearing him talking to another young boy who had an arm full of books. Silly, huh? And yet...I admit A. I'm paranoid and B. Even in the rural area I live in, you never know.
Ok, what else did I do? Well I filled up feed barrel with bleach and water, something I"ve been meaning to do for the past 4-5 days, then I put medicine in one of my horse's eyes, and I started a load of laundry. Which I need to go put in the dryer. Anyways, after that I had lunch, played on the internet and then...dun, dun, dun*cues dramatic music*...I read a book! Now not all of the book, but I at least enjoyed some of it :) I also managed to stop before trying to finish the book(reading should be savored, you know?) and...
hopped online to research the Daunting task of writing a synopsis. Hence the post title. Let me just say, writing a synopsis really is daunting(but necessary if an agent you want to query requires one) and time consuming. Right now I'm not worried about all the little details(formatting the page, number of pages, etc.) I'm just concentrating on getting the darn thing started. I'm going to go with the method of dry outlining your chapters and then spicing up the dry outline for a great synopsis. By the by, when I say dry outlining, I'm starting with summing up each page or so of the book in one sentence. Can you say tedious???!!! Ok, I've been productive for both myself and my book, and now baby is up, so I"m off to get him!

Characters

Honestly, I may have wrote about this before, but now I can write about it as someone who has actually wrote a book(albeit unpublished, but hey, I"m one step ahead of those who say "I'm going to write a book someday...") I’m going to talk about how I’ve gotten to know my characters on my first WIP. I’m sure this will differ from others and I’m sure it will probably vary a bit for future books I will write, but for now…
I had a general idea of the characters I wanted and I started with their names. Depending on about how old they were supposed to be, I searched up popular names from their birth year or there abouts. Then I read through the list and picked the name I felt suited each character best. After that I did a short description on each character. I included who they were, what they looked like, things they would do in the book and other characteristics. With my lead girl I had a “daydream” about how she felt towards the beginning/middle of the book. And then…
I wrote the first draft aka D1. As I wrote D1 I got more of a feel for the characters, who they were and what motivated them. Frustratingly enough I found that my lead girl wasn’t quite as, assertive and outgoing, as I thought in the beginning. So as I wrote I started to change her to how she really was.
When I went back to do D2 I changed all of the “wrong” things about her that were at the beginning. Any responses or thoughts that didn’t ring true to the “real” girl, I fixed. I also ended up switching the motivations a little bit of two of my lead 2ndary characters. Also before I continued on to D2 I wrote/rewrote/detailed out those character descriptions from before D1 existed. They are a great reference for detailing the book and for getting me back into my characters heads.
As for where I’m at right now…aka having just finished D3…I’m keeping in the front of my mind who my lead girl is, and how she’s feeling about everything whether it’s what I’m editing right now and I speculate about later chapters too. I can only hope that in my next book I am more comfortable about getting to know my characters having at least some experience to rely on, even if I have to be flexible.
And if I'm being honest, I'm getting to know a new set of characters too. A lot of things aren't concrete because I"m trying to be indirect about the "start" of my next WIP. So far, I've got a list of who's going to be in the book(subject to additions, of course ;) , a name picked out for my main chick, ideas of names for some of the other characters, some motivations for and what happens to some of the characters. In an effort to continue concentrating on getting my current WIP published, I'm holding off on any "serious" work. And by serious I mean that it is my main priority and I want to up the word count every day.

Deadline Dames

So I was writing a comment in response to a question asked by Erica Hayes, the Dame for the Day over at Deadline Dames, and I decided to make my post my comment. Creative, huh? First off, here's the question(s) that was(were) asked:

Over to you: if you’re a writer: where’s your writing haven? And what are you escaping from?

And if you’re a reader, help me out here: how do you like best to interact with your favorite authors? Blog posts like this? Twitter? Facebook? What kind of stuff do you like hearing about from authors? Writing updates? Favorite reads? Cat pics?

And here is my answer:

I love following other authors on blogs, it gives me a glimpse into their lives revealing…they live regular lives too! They’re not like movie stars, you can relate to them and I find that very comforting.
Right now I live in a very tiny apartment, so I write on my laptop at the dining room table(where we never eat; seriously it’s covered in mail, the laptop, my purse, the 2nd and part of the 3rd draft of my current WIP… you get the picture!) When I was writing my WIP I kept the tv off and played a couple of cd’s, but now that I’m editing I usually have the tv on for background noise. If…I mean when I get published I fully intend to buy an inexpensive(sounds better than cheap, doesn’t it?) laptop that only has Microsoft Word on it. While I do use the internet for research, it often ends up distracting me…like now LOL, anyways, thanks for the post!

Also, have fun finding all my typos in my original comment at DD, cause I didn't spell check. It's first draft stuff in all its glory!

Feel like relating to other readers or authors? Head on over to www.deadlinedames.com and read the comments in response to Erica's post.

Pretty

I’m not sure I’ll read this story but I love the cover. It’s by Maurissa Guibord and will be out January 11, 2011. Here's the blurb:
Tessa doesn't believe in magic. Or Fate. But there's something weird about the dusty unicorn tapestry she discovers in a box of old books. She finds the creature woven within it compelling and frightening. After the tapestry comes into her possession, Tessa experiences dreams of the past and scenes from a brutal hunt that she herself participated in. When she accidentally pulls a thread from the tapestry, Tessa releases a terrible centuries old secret. She also meets William de Chaucy, an irresistible 16th-century nobleman. His fate is as inextricably tied to the tapestry as Tessa's own. Together, they must correct the wrongs of the past. But then the Fates step in, making a tangled mess of Tessa's life. Now everyone she loves will be destroyed unless Tessa does their bidding and defeats a cruel and crafty ancient enemy.

P.S. I'm done with D3! Yay! Now for a short hiatus from the actual WIP to refresh mine brain!