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Blog the Seven and A Halfth? |
| This is just the second blog I've had at writing.com. It seems that every time someone gives me a bit of time here, or else, I end up with a few months there, I take advantage of it. What is it with me and blogs, anyway? I'm Beth_Ensley over in my blog at Lulu.com, in case anyone's curious. |
I have a story out now in the anthology The Parasitorium: Parasitic Sands, a $2.50 downloadable ebook from Lulu.com. I also have another one, a flash called Crow's Feet available in the free ezine FREE FALL in Febriary. Yay! --------- Regards, Elizabeth Anne Ensley http://nanonatter.blogspot.com |
| The Day Before by Elizabeth Anne Ensley [paraphrase of "Twas the Night Before Christmas" (or A Visit from St. Nicholas) by Clement Clarke Moore] 'Twas the day before Christmas, when all through the flat every creature was stirring, especially the cat. The stockings were were tossed in yon wash-basket there, In hopes that the laundry soon would be bare. The Terror was off, doing something online, while visions of Dir en Grey shone in her eye. And Terror by her 'puter, and I seated by mine, were wracking our brains for a long winter's rhyme. When on the floor above ours there rose such a clatter, I sprang from my chair to see what was the matter. Away to the front door I hobbled with my cane, tore it open wide, and looked out in the rain. The lamp-shine on the breast of the sodden concrete The luster of wet road beneath all the feet, when, what to my myopic eyes should appear, but a diminutive sleigh and eight tiny reindeer. With a wizened old driver, so lively and quick, I had no doubt that it must be St. Nick. Faster than a bullet train, the creatures, they came, and he called out every one of them by name: "Yo! Dasher! Hey, Dancer! Now, Prancer and Vixen! Yeah, Comet! On, Cupid! Go, Donner and Blitzen! To the top of the flat! To the top shopping Mall! Now run away! Hie away! Dash away all!" As dandelion seeds that before strong winds fly, when they meet with a barrier, soar into the sky The sleigh to the roof-top, the reindeer they flew, with a whole bunch of toys, and St. Nicholas, too. And then, in a twinkle, I heard on the next floor the banging and slamming of their porch door. When I drew in my head and then turned right around, St. Nicholas came leaping down with a bound. He was dressed all in fur, much like a Kzin, Then took a skeleton key and let himself in. A bundle of gifts he held, strapped to his back, made him look like a vendor. He opened his pack. His eyes were in shadows. His dimples, like holes! His cheeks red as bloodied, his nose like a mole! His droll little mouth was drawn up like a bow, and the arrow, his beard, was as white as the snow. A candy cane he held, fastened, with his teeth, And a garland encircled his head like a wreath. He had a broad face and buttons on his gut, that danced when he laughed, like a jolly old nut. He was plump with good cheer, a quite happy old elf, I his in the kitchen, afraid for myself. But with a wink, and a nod, and a twist of his head, Soon let me know I had nothing to dread. He said nothing at all, going right to his work, Couldn't find any stockings. He turned with a jerk. Went out the screen door, behind him it closed and giving a nod, to the flat above he rose. I heard his sleigh move, he gave off a whistle, And away they flew, like a runaway missile. I heard him exclaim, when they flew away, "Happy Christmas to you, and to all a good day!" Post Permanent Link --------- Regards, Elizabeth Anne Ensley http://nanonatter.blogspot.com |
| Thank God! For a moment, I thought that was my Yahoo blog. *cringe* With the avatar dressed in a -cringe--Santa's Helper suit. No, I like my Yahoo avatar the way it is, thank you very much. Bear Daughter by Judith Berman arrived today. I can start reading it. I promised to post a review on my blogs, so I fully intend to post a review on my blogs. I haven't done a book report since I went to college--no, wait, that was a movie report, sorry. Still, I had Professor Rupnick's okay to do a two page review of The Elephant Man (he had wanted newer movies, but it was hard for me to get around without a car, rather than just plain hard, like now), using the terminology we picked up in his class fr the semester (Sociology). I did the report, on the micro-type typewriter in the library. I think I had 4-6 pages worth of text, on two pages. I think he was ready to shoot me for it.  Still, it was a lot of fun for me to write. I did enjoy the movie, too.Ah, anyway, that was back in 1979. This shows you how long it has been, since I last did anything like a review of any kind. I had planned to start re-reading The Hobbit, but that can wait, for now. .And Judith, thank you! --------- Regards, Elizabeth Anne Ensley http://nanonatter.blogspot.com |
| Shadow Play (The Parasitorium II: Parasitic Sands, 2007) Crow's Feat (Free Fall, February, 2007) Of course, I had to share. --------- Regards, Elizabeth Anne Ensley http://nanonatter.blogspot.com |
| Liz hesitated at the door, scouting out the premises before entering. Twin Squid? Was it a mere name, or was the Lodge actually managed by twin, marine cephalopods? The mind boggled. Well, at least hers did. Still, she mused, looking around, it couldn't be any worse than the one run by pink spiders, on the other side of town. Funny. There was no one to be seen. "Hello?" she called out, hesitant about entering a vacant tavern. A tentacle waved from behind the counter. "Hoy! A customer! Myrtle!" The squid hauled itself up on something, perhaps a step-ladder. It was hard to tell, from this vantage point. "Excuse the chaos, please. We only opened today." Liz shook her head. "That's all right. I'm new here, too. Got anything to help unstick writer's block?" The squid paused for a moment. Whether in thought, or because it wanted to, Liz could not say. Then, it must have reached some decision in its internal deliberation. "I don't rightly know if it would be good for writer's block, but we have some coffee liquor that makes a mean cocktail. Liz grinned. "Good enough." She went straight up to the bar. "It's worth a shot--or, preferably a whole glass. Fix me up." A squid came out of the back room. "What you want, Mortimer?" she asked. Then, she saw Liz. Hoy! Our first customer!" Mortimer chuckled. "We need a bottle of coffee liquor from the storeroom. Our customer needs a little something to try to kill her writer's block." "Or at least, to numb it up a bit," Liz added. Myrtle chuckled. "Whatever works, hon." She undulated, for lack of a better word, back into the backside of the Lodge. |
| http://www.writing.com/main/view_item/item_id/1180709 That's jstu a basic 200 words per day thing, to see what comes out from it. I should be working on my NaNo, but... lol. I'm working on four different projects this month, then. I think: I might be losing track. For the Irish-sounding names and all--I swear, that's unintentional. It started with the unicorn farm, or something, and--AAUGH!~ Anyway, the names are from behindthename.com, except the surnames came from http://www.abooks.com/alien/ (alien names generator). --------- Regards, Elizabeth Anne Ensley http://nanonatter.blogspot.com |
| Yesterday, I finally broke the 10k mark. If I want to catch up, then I have quite a lot more writing to do. Still, I know that thre are people lagging behind me in NaNoing; and any writing you can walk away from, during NaNo, is good writing. So I'm a winner, no matter which way I look at it, because I also have over 10k for the pre-NaNo. I plan to continue writing that, too. The thing that sucks is not being abel to back up my files, or go for an official word count. Still, I'm writing, and that is a triumph. --------- Regards, Elizabeth Anne Ensley http://nanonatter.blogspot.com |
| I'm only at 1.253 words on my NaNo. That's fine, it's still early, I have time to catch up. Plus, I did double my total from the previous day. The important things to remember are these. NaNoWriMo is a personal challenge. 50k is the ideal way to wind down the month, but any writing that you do, during the month, makes you a winner, the point, the whole point of novel writing, is to write. The whole purpose of National Novel Writing Month is in the production of many, many words. Yes, a lot of what you initially turn out will be crap. So what? After a point, it's inevitable that the "crap" will find its voice, and you will start turning out halfway decent crap instead of completely useless crap. The more that you write, the more that you can write. It takes both time and practice to do anything, and writing is no different. Allow yourself to play, and to experiment with writing. National Novel Writing Month is like a month-long recess. People each play differently. You can allow yourself to play with different, cross, even fanfic genres. It's okay. The whole point of the month is an exercise in turning off the internal editor long enough to write something. I mean, editing is what March and National Novel Editing Month http://www.nanoedmo.org is for. We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit. - Aristotle --------- Regards, Elizabeth Anne Ensley http://NaNoNatter.blogspot.com |
| You do realise that, the nearer we get to All Hallowed E'en, the scariest thing isn't the witches, goblins, ghosties, vampires, or other things that go bump in the night. Yup. You have it. The day after that, All Saint's Day, also marks the beginning of National Novel Writing Month. I mean, what could be more frightening than te prospect of writing 50k in 30 days? Now, I won at NaNo in 2004 when I decided to write five scenes per day. That pretty much carried me through, despite computer problems and the loss of all but the one, singe, solitary backup disk that I almost didn't check, because I almost despaired of finding a usable copy of my NaNo. 2005, I barely eked past 12k. Not that i ran out of plot; the story just grew backwards beyond my control. Hm. Seinfeld did the backwards episode. Maybe I should write a backwards novel. Think about it imagine the thrill of starting a story at the end, and then working your way backwards towards the beginning. Killer, huh> -- Regards, Elizabeth Anne Ensley http://liz-ensley.livejournal.com/profile http://snapes-angel.livejournal.com/profile http://nanonatter.blogspot.com http://elizabethanneensleywip.blogspot.com/ http://linksaplenty.blogspot.com -------------------- When I face the desolate impossibility of writing 500 pages, a sick sense of failure falls on me, and I know I can never do it. Then gradually, I write one page and then another. One day's works is all I can permit myself to contemplate. - John Steinbeck |
| To Loosen Up Those Typing Fingers: http://www.sense-lang.org/typing/ Touch Typing. Warm-up exercise for National Novel Writing Month. After today, I am posting my NaNoWriMo countdown to NaNoWriMoNatter, and nowhere else. Part of this is to leave me more time for writing by not taking time to cross-post it; and it can also segue into a countdown for National Novel Finishing Month in December. I do not know the website address as of yet (it might already have been posted on the NaNoWriMo site), but don't forget that, next June, will mark the first National Novel Scriptwriting Month. Aside from other writing I'll be doing, I plan to participate in it, because I want to write a script, using a story that I wrote some years back for a framework. A friend of mine and I were talking about getting together a group of friends and putting together a production for the local cable channel of that short story (horror). I think those talks fell aside, actually; but it might be fun to write, and then shop, the script around, and see if there are any takers. The storyboarding can wait for when it's finished. --------- Regards, Elizabeth Anne Ensley http://linksaplenty.blogspot.com |
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