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Cold Front
Woohoo!!! It’s 17°F (that’s -8.333°C) this morning in frosty Schuylkill County. So much the better.
Stayin’ In Weather
Today is a marvelous day to stay in and beat keys. I’m waaaaaay behind on my Christmas story and I’m planning to correct that while I stay here in my magnificently insulated little house in Mr. Penn’s woods.
I was examining the options for creating a coloring book for the last few days, but I’m bound and determined to get caught up on the writing schedule for A Misfit Christmas. I still haven’t found a suitable technique for converting photos to line drawings for inclusion in a coloring book, so that will have to wait a while.
More Christmas Music!
🎅 Top 82 Christmas Songs and Carols with Lyrics 2019 🎅
So y’all can sing along!
My wife is a bit of a purist where it comes to putting the sleigh before the turkey but, in fairness, Santa already arrived at the end of the King Frost Parade in Hamburg, so it’s all good.
Basically, when the clock strikes midnight on Halloween it’s Christmastime. I see nothing wrong with getting into the spirit of things as early as possible.
I sort of missed the holiday season last year. My plum pudding is still sitting on the shelf above the oven. I just never got into the groove. I’m attempting to more than make up for that this year.
I’m not exactly feeling jolly but I am in considerably less pain than I was this time last year. There has been a lot of progress, but I’m far from 100%. I still find that things I ought to be able to do without a hassle leave me heaving for breath or needing to lay down and take a nap. The breathing difficulty is unpleasant but I’m not going to complain about the opportunity to take naps. Gotta find that silver lining…
Page-Turners
As winter approaches – bringing cold weather and family drama – we crave page-turners, books made for long nights and tryptophan-induced sloth. ~Sarah MacLean
Actually, I’ve heard it both ways. Some people refer to page-turners in a good way, meaning that you get so engrossed in the book that you can’t put it down. Some people use the term disparagingly, meaning that you can rip right through the thing because it’s so mass-market and lowbrow.
I prefer to think of it in a positive way. I’ve enjoyed a lot of writing that literature snobs would consider dreck and I’ve suffered through a lot of writing that they’d consider essential reading. Reading should not involve suffering, except thematically. The topic of the story may involve suffering, but the actual reading of the work should (IMHO) be pleasurable.
I certainly hope that people will find my stories engrossing and entertaining. It’s a skill I’ve been working to develop. We’ll see how it pans out when I publish a finished work.
One of the big hang-ups I’ve had with A Misfit Christmas is trying to dial in on a basic plot for the thing. Fortunately, the internet is a wonderful place and I was able to find some resources to help me come up with some story starters:
- Create a Silly Christmas Story
- Write Your Christmas Story – Fill in the Blanks
- Create Your Own Hallmark Christmas Movie With This Joyful Story Generator
For other genres, I also found these resources:
- Writers Plot Idea Generator – create a random story line
- donjon; SciFi Random Generator
So, in future, I need not flounder with an inability to pick a plot. These story generators won’t necessarily give me a plot I can run with, but it will at least help percolate some ideas that will set me in the direction of a story I’d be capable of writing. Research is a marvelous thing…
That’s the update for today. See you Wednesday when we’ll be a bit closer to the threshold of merely freezing.