amblingandshambling

[amblingandshambling]

I've been cooking since I was pretty young. Partially due to circumstances (my dad was in a body cast after back, hip, and knee surgery when I was 7, my mom had to go back to work full time, and I was able to operate a microwave to reheat food for my dad, me, and my brother, as well as follow directions for microwave meals), and partially because both of my parents considered it an essential life skill for both my brother and me. Heck, my brother is actually BETTER at some foods than I am.

I'm curious. Reblog this if you know how to cook

I don’t even care if it’s macaroni, ramen or those little bowls you stick in the microwave. Please, I need reassurance that most of the population on tumblr WOULDN’T STARVE TO DEATH if their parents couldn’t fix them food or they couldn’t go out to eat. 

[amblingandshambling]

My brother and I do something like this when he, my dad, my boys, and I are grocery shopping. He whistles a certain pattern, and I whistle a long single note back. We also did it with our late mother, who used a single note of a different pitch than mine. It was, and is, certainly much easier than trying to shout across a large grocery store.

just witnessed a girl spot her friend in the grocery store and instead of calling her over she started making turkey noises. and her friend, who apparently recognized her call, responded with higher pitched turkey noises before she even saw her and they used turkey echolocation to find each other. friendship between girls is a beautiful thing <3

[amblingandshambling]

And now my partner and I have been together for over 7 years and have two boys together. I'm glad I took that chance.

I had an incredibly awesome day yesterday! I got to see someone that I literally hadn’t been in twenty years, my best friend from middle school. At that time, you never saw one of us without the other. Within about 45 minutes, we were talking like we had pretty much never been apart. He and I talked for over three hours, and we’re meeting up again next Sunday.

The prompts in my inbox today were really cool, and helping a chronic insomniac to turn her brain off. And I am almost halfway through chapter three of Blackbird. Chapter nine of What Was, Is, and Will Be is slowly coming along, and I have a loose idea for another chapter for Being Sick At Night Is the Worst.

[amblingandshambling]

Chapter Ten of One Hundred Years To Live: Book One is taking over my life. It is probably the longest chapter I have ever written, mostly because there is no natural place to split it because of the pacing and the feeling I am aiming for. It's already almost 7K words, and it just keeps going.

It was supposed to be fairly short and sweet, but a scene started demanding to be written, then another, and it was downhill from there.

Now it has more whump and angst.

[amblingandshambling]

For the last goddamn time...

"Kill your darlings" means "if something is holding you back, get rid of it, even if it sounds pretty."

That's it! That's all it means! It means if you're stuck and stalled out on your story and you could fix the whole block by removing something but you're avoiding removing that thing because it's good, you remove that thing. That's the darling.

It does NOT mean

That you have to get rid of your self-indulgent writing

That you should delete something just because you like it (?wtf?)

That you need to kill off characters (??? what)

That you have to pare your story down to the absolute bare bones

That you have to delete anything whatsoever if you don't want to

The POINT is that you STOP FEELING GUILTY for throwing out good writing that isn't SERVING THE STORY.

The POINT is that you don't get so HUNG UP on the details that you lose sight of the BIG PICTURE.

Good grief....

[amblingandshambling]

Fanfic Work-In-Progress Guessing Game

Send me a word, any word, and if it’s in my WIP I’ll answer your ask with the sentence or line it appears in.

[amblingandshambling]

As the eerie light faded from his eyes, she guided him to the floor, then sat down beside him, situating him so that his head was in her lap. He's not eating properly again. He's far too thin and too light, she noted. She couldn't worry about that now, though a part of her mind held onto that lecture for a more appropriate time. Unsolicited visions always gave him horrible migraines, to the point where almost all sounds were unbearable. She quickly Called a basin into existence, knowing that it would soon be needed.

He came back to awareness slowly, the excruciating pain in his head and the stirring of nausea in his stomach helping to bring him back to consciousness. His head and shoulders were lying on something soft and warm, though the rest of him was on the floor. Ah. She had caught him and guided him to the floor. Her hand was idly carding through his hair, waiting for him to wake up. Her hands were one of the few things that did not add to his pain when this happened. They were always comfortingly cool and incredibly gentle.

The unrelenting nausea. It was quickly growing more and more intense. He knew that she had picked up on it when she guided his hand to the rim of the basin. The only sound in the room was his own heaves and sobs as he brought up what little he had eaten over the course of the day.

Finally, it was over, and he could catch his breath. She lowered him back down, wiping his mouth with a cloth. He sensed, rather than saw, her make a gesture to Banish the contents of the basin away. Felt her press a gentle kiss to his forehead before the haziness and fuzziness of the still-present migraine swept him away.

She didn't know how long she had sat there. It could have been less than an hour; it could have been several hours for all she knew. His mother had arrived a short time before, standing as a silent sentry by the door, keeping the louder elements of a large and bustling household at bay.

He stirred beneath her hands. He was close to waking again. He would probably still be in a lot of pain when he woke up; these headaches usually lasted nearly a full day, after all.

She nearly jumped as he woke up and immediately turned to be violently sick into the basin that she had kept next to her. Her heart clenched in an exquisite sort of pain as he shuddered and gasped as the heaves started dying down. She loved him so much that it hurt to see him in this much pain. As she once again Banished the contents of the basin, she nodded at his mother. In a few minutes, once he had rested a little, they would try to get him into his bed. With rest and care, he would be back to his usual self within a day or so.

Ten Years Ago Today

A decade of prompts from Short Fiction Weekly Challenge.

Week of June 13, 2014

The Sounds of Silence: Tell a story without dialogue.  Perhaps the characters are cannot speak or choose not to.  Maybe the characters are incapable of speech.  Maybe communications are cut off.  Thoughts don’t count unless they’re audible in some way, and while journal entries or written correspondence fit the letter, they miss the spirit.  Challenge yourself! 

[amblingandshambling]

There's something so personal to me about a soft "You really aren't well, huh?"

especially if they've been trying to hide it until they no longer can

[amblingandshambling]

I would do this if I could. I love to learn, and I have an insatiable curiosity. I deliberately seek out new things to learn about, because I can't stand being bored.

This is the dream, tho?

[amblingandshambling]

I am seriously procrastinating on finishing Chapter 2 of "One Hundred Years To Live: Book One". Why? Because the last sections of Chapter Two bleed into Chapters 3 and 4, which means that I will probably write the bulk of it in one or two marathon sessions, because all of the sections of each of the chapters, with the exception of one section at the end of Chapter 3 will fall into each other, even as I change POVs. I will also be foreshadowing things that will be important later on in the story. I foreshadowed a couple of small things in Chapter 1. I even mention a character in Chapter 2, although not by name, that was introduced in Chapter 1.

Real life has been real. I'm going through my sixth pregnancy loss of a very much wanted baby. I'm fortunate to have a good support system, but it's still hard physically and emotionally.

My elder son finished Pre-K last month. He already misses school, but he doesn't go back until early August. My younger son will turn 3 in August. So he'll start school the next school year, since he'll turn 4 right before the cutoff date.

My partner's job is back to trying to kill him. Or make him get thinner and balder, either or. He had to go in on his day off, now he has to stay over. And I have put off the grocery shopping as long as I can to make things easier on him, since we're sharing a car right now. I can't put it off any longer, as I also take my father, who can no longer physically or legally drive, grocery shopping. And no, he can't order groceries, because he can barely operate a flip phone. My brother has done what he can in the meantime, but I absolutely HAVE to go grocery shopping tomorrow.

This started off as an apology for procrastinating and griping about my brain, but it became a vent session. Oh, well. I guess I needed to scream into the void for a bit.

[amblingandshambling]

Try about 82 chapters that you broke up into two books of 41 chapters. You know exactly what you want to write, but as soon as you start, your brain glitches.

Me: *Plots out 24 chapters of storyline using bullet points* Me: Ok, time to start fleshing it out into actual paragraphs! Brain: Time to what now-

[amblingandshambling]

Accurate.

Is this anything

[amblingandshambling]

Finally finished the first chapter of "One Hundred Years To Live". Now to let it marinate before editing and posting.

This has been a journey. I have about 80% of the story outlined (and I write very detailed outlines when I use them), and it's going to be over 80 chapters when it is done.