Sade Olutola
blake kathryn
todays bird
NASA
Not today Justin
No title available
pixel skylines
@theartofmadeline
The Stonewall Inn
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almost home
taylor price
Fai_Ryy
Product Placement
official daine visual archive
oozey mess
★
RMH
Game Changer & Make Some Noise
roma★
seen from Nigeria
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from Türkiye
seen from Bangladesh
seen from United States
seen from Australia
seen from United States
seen from Vietnam
seen from Vietnam
seen from United States
seen from Netherlands
seen from Indonesia
seen from Brazil
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seen from Germany
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@countrymousewrites-blog
Day 12: Intoxicated slugs say TGIF
This is the last post about slugs, I swear! Anyway, I tried leaving an old yogurt tub containing about 1/4 cup of beer by the tomatoes last night. This morning, when I went to water the garden, I checked the slug trap and discovered two presumably…
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Day 11: Of murder most foul and garden slugs
This morning, I got frustrated with one of my characters, and I thought seriously about killing her. Is that wrong, I wondered, or just lazy? I was also contemplating murder the other night, when I went into my garden, picked a huge ripe tomato, and found…
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Lazy Wednesday: Book review recap
I was hoping to save this post for Slothful Saturday, but I’m declaring a Lazy Wednesday instead. Anyway, I’ve rounded up all my Twitter book reviews in one place. Enjoy! (This morning’s tally: 423 hard-fought words)
ACACIA: Multi-layered world building.…
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Day 9: Too much basil...and second-guessing!
The only thing that seems to grow reliably in my garden these days is basil. And OMG is there a ton of it! I’ve been making pesto pizzas, pesto pasta, pesto chicken, and pesto sandwiches. Even my pesto-loving husband is starting to weary of it, and our…
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Day 8: Corporate overlords demand extra fealty
It’s been tough to get anything done this morning. Everything seems to be taking longer that it’s supposed to. My daughter wanted me to read Cat in the Haton an endless loop. One of my dogs has been vomiting up the grass he ate on yesterday’s long hike.…
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Day 7: Lessons from one week of writing
Thirty minutes of intense focus is better than several hours of divided attention.
Silence is to writing as water is to plants.
So glad I started with an outline.
Characters will act out if you don’t watch them very carefully.
It’s a lot easier to write…
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Day 6: Compost for the mind
Today I’m going to buy one of those huge compost tumblers at Lowe’s, so my family’s odd bits of green garbage can live again as fertilizer. My husband, who hangs onto decomposing leftovers with a death grip, should be pleased. I’m also going to buy some…
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Day 5, continued: Five reasons I'm glad winter is coming
I may not be a Stark of Winterfell, but I am sure glad winter will be coming to northern Arkansas in just a few short months. Why is that?
1. No more mowing.The recent rains that have been so kind to my late-season garden have also nourished fescue and…
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Day 5: Why oversleep and not undersleep?
I never oversleep. My one-year-old daughter sees to that. Every morning between 4:30 and 5:00 a.m., she chirps and warbles until I spring her from her crib and barricade the two of us in the kitchen while I make coffee. Today’s word count? A mere 675 due…
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Day 4: Editing out the weeds?
Got up crazy early today and weeded the garden. It’s amazing how so many of the weeds in this area have thorns and other little stabby protuberances to make their removal as painful as possible. I did finally get around to writing, and it occurred to me…
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Day 3: Hypnotically swirling vortex of procrastination (September 19)
I started thinking about my target word count for PREY--90,000 words evenly spread amongst 35 chapters--and got a little dizzy. 90,000 is a lot of words. It's a lot of ANYTHING. I wondered how many regulation-sized fields 90,000 soccer balls would cover and began some idle web searching. As I went to FIFA's site, in search of the diameter of a soccer ball in metric units, I knew that, once again, I had been sucked into the hypnotically swirling vortex of procrastination. I then shut off the Internet, returned to my manuscript, and finished 948 words.
Day 2: Active toddler says BITE ME to multitasking (September 18)
No babysitter this morning, so I wrote in short bursts while my toddler alternately played with a reading app on her iPad and squealed BITE ME (still one of her favorite word combos) while trying to lick my keyboard. After only 723 words, we called it a day and decamped for a nice walk around the yard and an orgy of Dr. Seuss before Mommy went to work (a.k.a. the day job).
Day 1: Rainy day delivers laser-like focus (September 16)
It’s one of those gray, rainy days that makes spending time indoors feel warm and cozy. (I find it so much harder to write when the sun tries to lure me outside.) I knocked out 1,500 words or so words this morning, fed my daughter, and treated myself to some hot chocolate. I’m tempted to say this project is going to be a breeze, but…it’s way too soon for hubris!
About my project (PREY)
PREY* is a psychological thriller that takes place on the Appalachian trail during one woman’s solo thru-hike. Here’s a quick blurb:
Dolly’s life is at a crossroads. Her ten-year relationship has flamed out along with her career, and her parents have just sold her childhood home. At age thirty-seven, she wants a new beginning, and she decides to search for it on the Appalachian trail. Alone.
As she hikes, she has a series of encounters that are magical, inspiring, and frustrating by turns. She also discovers that she’s not as alone as she thought. Someone is stalking her, and she will have to do the unthinkable to make it out alive and avoid becoming…PREY.
*tentative title
About this blog (linked to Wordpress)
My New Year’s resolution for 2013 was to write and publish a full-length novel. Since it’s already September, I think I’m going to give up on the publishing bit for now, and focus on the writing. Three months is plenty of time, right? Riiiiight?
I’ve created this blog to track my progress. Hopefully, keeping a record of my successes (and, er, failures) will help me stay on task and better understand which time management techniques work best for me.
About me-me-me
My pen name is C. M. Baer. (Shh! I have a day job, and my corporate overlords are quite sensitive about what their employees share online.) I recently moved from a large coastal city to rural Arkansas, where I’m still figuring out how to be a country mouse. Luckily, I have wonderful family and friends nearby as well as easy access to beautiful, hilly trails where I can hike with my daughter and three dogs—or just run by myself and think. I’ve also begun to enjoy gardening and the odd mix of nurturing (think delicate seedlings) and destruction (think weeds and pests) it demands.
When I’m not outdoors, I spend a lot of time reading and writing. As a reader, my tastes are eclectic (or, you know, somewhat arbitrary and random). Genres I like include: action/adventure, fantasy (especially dystopian and epic), horror, romantic suspense, and science fiction. As a writer, well, I’ve played around for years at my keyboard, but I have yet to finish a full-length novel. (Hangs head in shame.) My efforts to finish PREY—the tentative title for what I hope will be a 90,000-word psychological thriller set on the Appalachian trail—will be the major subject of this blog.