Kentucky Mountain Girl News by Henrietta Asher Handy

And it is true – you can’t cry pretty.

Eight years ago today I began blogging here on WordPress.  Before that, The News was on Livejournal for four or five years.  My how things have changed, and how they haven’t.  Life rolls on.  Words come and go.  I can’t say the past eight years have been wonderful for me, but, I know that without this blog I would never have gotten introduced to some wonderful people, and some not-so-wonderful.  So, overall, this has been an interesting journey so far.  I wonder what else is down the pike waiting to be written about.

When I began blogging, I thought I knew exactly what I wanted to accomplish and what its purpose was.  That purpose has changed several times.  The love of the thing, though, hasn’t dimmed one ounce.  This is due to all the readers and emails I’ve received.  You all have given me interesting things to think about and write about.  The blogging community is one of my favorite communities to visit.  Sadly, I don’t get to visit every day, but, each visit is filled with wonderful gems of information, funnies, sorrows, and people just living one day at a time and sharing their progress and setback, like a community should be.

Friday the Fourteenth will be a GOOD day!

• Was air-lifted from home to Lexington last week
• Found out I did NOT have a stroke
• The doctor in the hospital decided that since I didn’t have a stroke his work was done and let my pain get out of control
• Said doctor refused to come when I asked for him and said he “was NOT coming back into the hospital”
• All I asked for pain was ibuprofen – I was only given 200mg of ibuprofen
• The doctor only requested the tests and meds he could get by with that were listed with my insurance company.  Question:  Was he saving money, or did he just not care?
• Was discharged while still weak and unable to move my right side well
• Home – getting back in order
• Getting lost in fantasy writing today

A lot has been going on here in the hills.  Some stressed occurred recently I wasn’t expecting, along with some rain, so the ol’ arthritis is kicking up its heels at me.  It is, of course, attacking my right hand with swelling and painful fingers, but, I am still typing and still knitting.

I haven’t worked on FK in several days.  It feels like weeks.

I have written myself into a corner because an interesting plot thread appeared and I had to follow it to see if it was a good one or not.  Thankfully, the thread didn’t go too far.  This means backing up, reassessing and then moving forward.

Having to back up and re-work some sections is frustrating.  However, I let myself follow a thread I normally wouldn’t have and there were actually some good things that came out of it, even if it didn’t completely work for the over-all arcing story.  Information about characters I didn’t consider before became clear it needed to begin earlier in the story, and two very good scenes were glimpsed and are useful.  I’ve decided it doesn’t matter if they are just scenes hanging out in the file until I need them.  Usually, I go straight back to the point to where I think the scene should go, work it in, and then catch up with the rest of the manuscript.  I am not doing this with FK because I am uncertain of how well I am actually doing on a young adult novel.

At first, when I was deciding whether or not the scenes/plot thread worked or not, I created a file just for the purpose of letting it rest a couple of days and then returning with fresher eyes.  Even though it didn’t work as a whole, there was some good information out of it, and I am ready to move on to the rest of the adventure.

FK is the first story I’ve seriously tried to ‘craft’ in a while.  Luckily for me, the pendulum didn’t get out of control and swing so far into the ‘craft’ area – I am not spending my time worried so much about minuscule details and getting the timeline down to nanoseconds.  There is still a lot of creative freedom and an end-game I can glimpse.

Once again I must call on the merits and benefits of having a bullet journal just for this story.  Even seeing the notebook helps me get centered on the writing day, as well as ease some of the creative stress because I am not afraid I’ve called a character by two different names and descriptions because I know I haven’t because of the notes I’ve made in the journal.  What did I call that one area back in Chapter One?  I can just flip back to what it was called and continue on with the story.  Ideas about people?  There is a section for that, and specific questions I feel I need to answer in the over-all story arc.

The writing bullet-journal isn’t an end-all, be-all, magical thing to write your book for you.  It is there to be used as a tool, and it isn’t going to work if you don’t put down things in it or fill the writing bullet-journal up with graphs and cute pages.  The reason I bring this up is because I’ve received several questions about how I use the writing bullet-journal and then have received some pictures of the ones people have made and there are a lot of pages in there I don’t find necessary at this stage of the creative process such as dedication page ideas and samples, flowery decorated pages of encouraging quotes for a bad writing day, etc.

Here is how I use my writing bullet-journal:

• I decided straight away there would probably be more than one bullet-journal for this novel, so made sure to write inside it was volume one.
• Each novel in this particular series will have its own bullet-journal(s).
• Index page – I count out four pages at the most and two at the least.
• Chapter list and word-count for each chapter
• A box graph showing me which chapter of the story I am currently on.
• The main bullet-journal begins with the chapter number and name if there is one;
  • Under this heading go ALL names & descriptions of the characters;
  • Names of places with a note or two about them I want/hope the readers can remember;
  • Also under the chapter notation, and in a different color of pen, I list questions, make notes, and leave some space after for the answers discovered later on, or decided upon later.

The use of different colored pens helps a lot.  I also use high liters and colored pencils to denote something important, something I’m taking out, or something I’m changing.  I make sure to keep the chapter number and name on each page so I know when the chapters change.  Then, in the index, I list the page each chapter can be found on.

It isn’t difficult.  It makes sense.

Happy Wednesday.

Happy writing!

Here on Stinnett, The Husband and I do not have cable.  It is an expense we can live without, especially since you can watch TV and movies via Netflix, Sling, and Prime.  Sometimes it is like playing a fun game of good show/bad show because you never know how good the movie is until you are about 30 minutes in.

We have picked some really good ones of late.  The most recent one is Beyond Skyline.  It is the post-apocalyptic follow-up to Skyline – it is good, too – when the world was invaded and a different perspective, i.e. from the civilian perspective.  There is a lot of action, some pretty good acting, a good story, and … wait for it … heroism!  Another nice surprise was humor.

In the movie, a cop gets sucked up into an alien spaceship during an alien invasion.  I need to stop there because if I go any further I will give away the movie!  It has some pretty interesting complications, and, yes, the story has been done before, but this version is surprisingly good!

The movie took itself seriously enough to be fun and watchable, even collectible, but didn’t take itself so seriously as to be hokey or over – or under – the top.  It knew the place it should be in, and so did the director and editor, as well as actors, and they achieved it wonderfully.

I didn’t intentionally watch this movie either.  I was heading off to write and the movie’s story and action kept bringing me back until I gave up and watched the movie before going to work.  This doesn’t usually happen.

Beyond Skyline is a decent 3.75 stars in my book.  It is on Netflix this month.

Wagner’s Einsug der Gotte is playing as I sit down to take a minute and just some time to flow through the blehs.

Blehs are when you are in a blah mood and nothing encourages you to get out of it, so you’re also just meh.  Thus – bleh.

Today is very gloomy outside.  Somewhere is getting rain I am pretty sure with the way the sky looks.  The pressure has adjusted, but not in a positive way for me.  This is the first serious pain day I’ve had since being home.  I am truly blessed.  Now I will see just how well my planned regimen really works.  As long as I can stay on top of it everything will be fine.

FK – YA novel – is standing still.  It is only because the pain encouraging the blehs doesn’t encourage some creative activities like writing.  I am also reconsidering the scenario that last went down and I am not at all certain it…works.  It might work in a different place.  So, I am taking advice, the same advice, by the way, from The Husband and Cheyenne and just cutting and pasting the scenario I am so uncertain about into a different word document and just step back and see what comes next.

The bullet journal I am using for FK is now invaluable!  Since the last few scenes of the story keep coming back to haunt me, I’ve been writing down questions, high lighting them, and when I know the answer, going back and filling it in.  I can also put a notation of it in the bullet journal index as to where the information is if I think it warrants that much importance.  So far, only three of the questions I’ve asked have been plot changers.  A couple of them I did not want to make, but the story works better if some things don’t happen in specific chapters or areas of the story as I originally had them.

Each time I work seriously on a piece, it seems it teaches me something important about the craft of telling a good story.  There is always something new to discover about the art of it all.  And, this does not mean I am calling myself an “artist” because an artist brings about true beauty and teaches us something about the appreciation of life and living.  I am a story teller.  It is enough.