Category: news

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inspiration NaNoWriMo news Novel 4

Another novel in the works.

This past week, I began my venture into another novel–Novel 4 to be exact. NaNoWriMo doesn’t come around quite as often as I’d like, it seems, since I end up itching to start another novel shortly after NaNoWriMo in the past couple of years.

What I have been trying to do with each novel I have written so far is to experiment with different genres; my first novel, Writing the Past, can be described as Mainstream Fiction (for the timebeing anyway); my second novel….well, I was trying to write it as a mystery/suspense, but I need to go back and seriously tweak the plot after rewriting the first novel; my third novel…adventure/travel. This fourth novel leans more towards a memoir; so far, it’s been challenging writing in this genre since I am trying to get the general true facts down.

Well, it’s refreshing to have something new to work with, although I know I should be focusing more on rewriting my first novel since I intend to publish it by summertime. Watch my progress on Novel 4’s wordcount in the sidebar, and wish me luck. =)

Categories
#amwriting editing Internet news Novel 1

Blog mishaps & Laying out the cards

I apologize for the brief outage of the blog yesterday; I decided to upload my website and put it live on the web since I had been working on it diligently all weekend. However, all weekend I have also been racking my mind with how to make my blog show up on the homepage of my website. I had attempted to install WordPress on the server, but the program kept crashing and I could not figure out how to customize the layout. Due to the seemingly never-ending frustration with WordPress, I decided I would uninstall it and keep with this current blog.

Then, I thought I had figured out how to transfer/re-publish all my blog posts from this one to the FTP server…only to find that the blog posts simply weren’t showing up on the index page as I had hoped. I know there was some line of code I must have been missing, but I could not figure it out on my own. The Blogger Help Group was no help, ironically; nobody had an answer to my question. So, long story short, the blog has migrated back to Blogger for the timebeing. If any kind soul out there knows how to solve this problem, please, drop me a line here.

Aside from that, I did have a pretty good day of editing/revising yesterday. I laid out the PowerPoint slides I had printed out of Novel 1 and I was very impressed to see my first novel’s work all laid out on the floor (see picture above). Last night, I went through the cards and cut out a few nonessential scenes; the next step now is to shuffle some scenes, rearrange some parts of the plot. I also typed a brief plot synopsis to send to a few of my close friends for critique/insight; have received one response so far, and looking forward to the other responses.

I shared the first draft of one of my short short stories with one of the online writing communities I’ve been a part of for some time; got some tips and revised the story. The story, entitled “Tight Jeans” is now available under “Other Works” via downloading (.pdf) or you can view it on Scribd. Please feel free to read and review the short. Let me know what you think.

More works will be available soon. =)

Categories
driving news

Hands-free Cellphone Law in Effect Today.

Just was notified of the new driving law in effect in California: drivers are now only allowed to use hands-free devices when talking on the cell phone, while drivers under the age of 18 are not allowed to even have hands-free devices while driving. If a driver violates the law, they are fined up to $50 for each offense after the first one.

Weirdly enough, though, the driving law does NOT prohibit text-messaging, eating, applying makeup, and other things that drivers usually do in the car. I would think that these other activities may be more dangerous than talking on the phone, right?

I guess they’re going to make a new law later on for those activities, if they even think about making a new law.

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My San Francisco Chronicles news weather

Fires in the region;

I didn’t even realize this until today, when I noticed how the skies had turned a little hazy over the past day. There have been fires sweeping across the northern part of the state, a few big ones being around Napa Valley and some in the Santa Clara area. It doesn’t help that during this time of the year, it does not rain here; it stays very dry. There’s sunshine all the time, but yes, a lot of dryness in the air causes for the fires to occur.

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news politics

Unflattering photo of Obama.

(source: NY Times)

An extra entry for today…just wanted to say: this is a horribly unflattering picture of Barack Obama. Looks like he is growing out of the microphones/podium. I wonder if the NY Times photographer meant for this picture to look like this.