Valkyrie = Sariel

Yeah word math.

Reworked the title and am extremely pleased with what I finally came up with.

Sariel as not only an angel of death but also a rumored fallen angel just works so much better. Plus it doesn't put me in mind of Tom Cruise or the Avengers.

fun for everyone

Ethan has recently discovered the Diary of a Wimpy Kid series. At first glance I thought it was stupid but hey if it get him reading who am I to complain.

So I started reading it to him the other night and OMG both of us were laughing our asses off. Billy even quit playing a game to come listen to the book.

It isn't the best book ever written. A lot of it is done with silly comic book pictures the kid (who is actually a grown man of course) drew in his diary and it is a bit choppy (not bad) but that is what gives it its charm.

It is so simple I was kicking myself saying "why didn't I think of this" when I was done.

Hands down it is the best grade school book I have read ........ well probably ever.

The greatest compliment

I have been babysitting a pair of sisters for almost three years now. The oldest is turning nine this summer. This girl is crazy talented when it comes to drawing and painting. At six she had already far surpassed most adults I know in artistic ability.

She wasn't a big fan of reading though and I must confess that broke my poor writerly heart. She would illustrate long drawn out stories (20-30 pages) but never put a word of text in them. Last fall though she woke up at about 10 o'clock one night I was babysitting and found me scribbling away at a novel that I have long since scrapped (or delegated to MS word purgatory if you prefer) and started asking questions.

Within a week she was adding a few words to her books and her teachers were commenting on how much more she was writing (or so she told me). Yeah me! I somehow without trying inspired a kid to write.

A few days ago at work she gave me a copy of a book she was working on to read. It was about a magical Pokemon who granted wishes and was helping Picachu find his friends. She wanted me to read it and let her know what I thought because she had decided when she grew up she wanted to write books like me.

I opened it up preparing to smile and nod politely as I usually do when kids show me their work and pretend I thought the sun shone out of it. Actually I was blown away. The spelling caused my brain to scramble a few times but the story itself was well plotted and contained decent grammar. The illustrations were stellar of course but with this girl I would hardly expect anything less.

I told her exactly what I thought and showed her how to use quotation marks to make it a bit clearer and easier to read. I also told her there was no reason she had to wait until she grew up to write books, there was no reason she couldn't start now.

Whatever comes of my writing be it huge publishing contracts or a life of obscurity I know it has had at least one positive result. It taught this girl to love books enough that she wants to make her own. For me it doesn't get any better than that.

Am I done yet?

So for two month I ran all over town trying to price every last little item in our home that was destroyed by the fire. Last week I finished even though everything else in my life suffered. I even realized I had two stories from Lori in my inbox that I never even got to read. (very sorry about that personal apology coming via email when i finish this) As we are typing everything up and getting ready to turn it in I am informed they need MORE information. Basically they were going to have to pay out too much so now we need to figure out when we got everything, how much we paid, where we bought it and remember where we got all the new prices from so they can depreciate our claim.

Awesome, really that's just fucking awesome. It has been three months and I am basically starting over from scratch. So I have 2 weeks to finish the new list and hand it in so I can have some money by the end of June.

So guess what I have done almost nothing on in a month, writing. Well that's not true I wrote a lot but had to scrap it all because I had gone off on a crazy tangent that served no purpose other than to amuse me. A bunch of cheerleaders got their asses kicked in my tangent.

I wanted my draft done by the time we moved but it is not looking good unless I give up sleep and food.

The up side is I have been spending less time on AW. That place should be called how to give yourself a complex about your writing in one easy step. I love it but it really slows up the process the more I read because I am completely and totally unable to give myself permission to write badly except on my blog and places like that.