Author Archives: Cat

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If I Knew This Last Year

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The book totally would have been done by now!! Right…

How To Write A Book

This is Millie Von Kruesenstein, Y.P.R.'s typist.

  1. Do absolutely nothing until you can see the whites of your deadline’s eyes.
  2. If you’ve got cowriters, try to disagree as much as possible. If you’re of the same opinion regarding a section of text, bicker about dinner choices.
  3. Criticize what little progress you’ve achieved and doubt what little talent you possess.
  4. Do not write any new words when there are still old words that have only been rewritten twelve times. No sentence is complete until it’s lost all traces of your original thought.
  5. Complain about the pressure of a looming deadline to everyone you know. This will ameliorate the jealousy and bitterness felt by friends without book deals. It will also put an end to social invitations that may hamper your writing progress, as your former friends will now hate you.
  6. Stop sleeping. Complain about how tired you are too.
  7. Never have a mental breakdown before 11 p.m.
  8. Do not postpone other projects so that you can focus on the current one. It’s better to spread yourself so thin that you produce an evenly distributed amount of complete crap.
  9. If you’ve gotten this far without a single technical foul-up, now’s a good time to download something viral.
  10. Make a schedule for yourself, but do not even remotely follow it. Instead, continually do some mental math that divides your remaining pages by the rapidly dwindling number of hours.
  11. The best writing is that which is compiled from dozens of different documents, including things you’ve e-mailed or text-messaged to yourself. Try to create separate documents on as many different computers as are available. Some things will be irrevocably lost, and hours will be spent cursing. Learn a lesson about orderliness, but do not act upon such knowledge.
  12. Some terribly constructed sentences always make good low-hanging fruit for your cowriters to edit, thus protecting your awful idea from their meddling.
  13. Were you napping? Stop that. It’s 11 o’clock already. Start freaking out, hard.
  14. If you’ve worked hard three days in a row, take a hard-earned day off. And it looks like snow tomorrow, so you might as well take the whole weekend. But a day off from writing is not a day off from complaining!
  15. If you haven’t drastically gained or lost weight, you’re just not writing well.
  16. Assume your sources are reputable. When some accidental research reveals the source that serves as foundation for your work to be as reliable as grandma’s memory, briefly consider the amount of work it will take to correct things at this late hour, then fuck it and move on.
  17. Pick up any book on your bookshelf, skim a few pages, and admit that it’s a terrible book… but better than anything you’ll ever write. Cry.
  18. If one of your cowriters is something of an optimist, steal his hat.
  19. If you’re not panicking, call your agent and request they he or she panics. You’ll have no problem panicking afterward.
  20. Call your mom.
  21. Your time is more valuable than your money. Spend as much cash as you’ve got in your pockets.

via yankeepotroast.org

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September 07 Tally

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This month marks one year of me updating you on my trials and tribulations, health nut style. It’s exciting, I know. I put links in at the bottom, and if you like, you can CLICK HERE for all the posts I’ve written in the category I call “Health”.

Final stats on the Calendar of Fitness:

  1. I ran and worked out about 8 times the whole month. Pretty bad.
  2. I started writing down everything I eat. You’d be amazed how easy it is to stay away from a french fry when you have to document it.
  3. I felt like I was in a rut. I read Snippy’s comments (here) about Body For Life. Although I didn’t sign up, I’m already in the gym trying more weights and new routines to keep myself motivated and change things up a bit. She’s been having success and I figured it was worth a shot.

So, after one year, I needed to change things up, and I am. As you can see by the history, I don’t count drinking any more since the calories are negligible now. I’m really hitting the weights to see if I can really dramatically tone and slim my figure. I’ll keep the running up, but limit myself to 4 or 5 miles a day 5 times a week as a just for fun thing. We’ll see what happens next month!

weights
www.johnlewis.com

All the stories:

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Over And Over (And Over)

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This post is the second in the series, featured on Blog Explosion.

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Today’s Topic: “If your life were like Bill Murray’s in Groundhog Day, which day would you want to re-live forever, and why?”

So, I’m not that old. In fact, I think my best times are ahead of me. Hopefully, I haven’t had my best day yet. PLUS, in the movie, Murray is actually living the worst day ever, and he just messes with it until he gets it right. Hypothetically speaking, if that were to actually happen to me, and I get stuck with my worst day, yes, I know exactly what would happen. But that’s not the question. So you don’t get to hear about that.

What I will tell you about is the ridiculous things that I would spend one day each doing, if I were stuck in any average day of my life, a day that repeated itself, in which I wasn’t responsible for any action that I took.

  • Eat candy all day until I puked.
  • Major shopping spree, max out my credit cards.
  • Dye my hair pink.
  • Spend the day in a motorized scooter.
  • Make prank calls.
  • Abandon empty packages in the airport.
  • Drop water balloons off the roof.
  • 24 hour drinking party. For one.
  • Watch the sunset.
  • Fly a plane. With or without a license.
  • Pencil roll down a hill.
  • All you can eat pasta.
  • Speed. Everywhere.
  • Shout in the library.
  • Give someone all my money.
  • Fly to Vegas, spend all my money.
  • Pay to be an extra on Law and Order (would have to film that day).
  • Major bonfire.
  • Audition for something and perform terribly.
  • Laugh uncontrollably at anything anyone says.
  • Answer people only in song lyrics.
  • Do whatever it takes to get thrown in jail.
  • Beg for change. In an evening gown.

I’m sure that there are more adventuresome things that I could try, but the fact is I get to do whatever I want in real life, so this is more like a list of things I’d never do unless I was really, really bored.

what would you do
www.yvpp.co.uk

Like MY post? It’s part of a contest I need votes to win…

Update: You voted, I won! Thanks, all!!

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Suck It, Trebek

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Click here for information. Or don’t. See if I care.

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Five Categories I Would Sweep In Jeopardy:

  1. 90s One Hit Wonders
  2. Calorie content of Junk Food
  3. Law and Order guest stars
  4. Fat View hosts
  5. Seattle recyclables

Here’s how to really win.

What would yours be?

Unknown's avatar

Do More Dishes Didn’t Make The List

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Last April I published a little meme called Gotta Get Goals. Well, the guy who created it rounded up all the posts he could find on it. And read them. And complied the lists of top common goals, and some of the more unique ones. If you’d like to see a bunch of people that you don’t know talking about what they need to do for themselves, here’s the link.

confused
www.ornl.gov

I’m just still trying to figure out how he gets 80 people for a list of five things.
Friday Fives is depressed.

Unknown's avatar

Zombies On A Plane

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Where on earth do you think that they ever, ever could have come up with this idea? Or vice versa, according to various sources…it’s a hot debate.

From a great zombie resource, House of Horrors dot com,

the link leads you to the info, and here’s the IMDB site for
Flight of the Living Dead: Outbreak on a Plane.

Sweeeet.

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Unknown's avatar

Fool Me Twice…

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This seems like a bad idea. Last year, I discovered NaNoWriMo. Then I signed up.
Then I spent a month writing, in between all other events. Here’s that month in case you weren’t with me for it.

Am I crazy enough to do this again? My plan was to be finished with the first one before starting the second. Not gonna happen. Trying to publish a book is hard. Even for an extraordinary writer like myself…

I’m not even halfway through professional editing. But that’s the rough part, right? And if I’m going to be famous, I’ll need to write more than one book – if I want to be rich I need a thousand…

NaNo got me going. The deadline, the camaraderie, the force to write, the adventure. So yes, it’s a crazy, incredibly nerdy, unrealistic thing to do. And I just signed up.

I’m trying to decide whether I’m going to drag you through it with me.

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Western Washington Weekend

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Last weekend MK took me on a great big drive from Seattle up into the Olympics. It was beautiful. The weather wasn’t great but the rain held off during the day and we were able to do some really great hikes. We stopped first at Lake Crescent, where FDR stayed when he made it a National Park. We did a short hike to the Marymere Falls.

We saw the Hoh Rain Forest, one of the few true temperate rain forests in the world.

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We hiked the famous Hall of Mosses Trail and the Spruce Nature Trail. There were just incredible trees and plant life everywhere. We had stopped at Rialto Beach but it was very wet and foggy – there’s a couple pictures of it, the black sand/rock was neat. We saw some sort of seal there…

We spent the night in fabulous Forks, at the motel. That in itself was an adventure…but it was a ‘quaint’ little town. The next day we drove out to the coast and started to really see some more beach. The second day was much clearer. Each beach is named something silly- most memorable were “Beach 1” through “Beach 4”. We made a ton of stops at each little place and made little walks to the water. It was beautiful everywhere.

Our last little hikes on the way out were to see the largest Cedar and Spruce trees in the WORLD!!! (or something). On our way back, we stopped in Olympia to say we’ve seen the capitol. I understand why no one lives there… *yawn*.

Here are the (obnoxiously too many) pictures.

And here’s my super high end map of our journey:

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