zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

yup. that about sums up our saturday now that the a-z challenge is ova.

once we're done doing that you can find us reading.

christy's going all sci-fi now with her newest novel idea all shooting excitement out her fingertips.  she just finished I Am Number Four and is now about to devour Across the Universe. 

btw:  sci fi is the new black.

 if you have any other sci fi novels (for a girl who never thought she'd read/write sci fi) PLEASE let me know so i can add them to my tbr list!  ("light" sci fi with a bit of romance, please)

oh, and a Z book:

i haven't read this, but according to the reviews it's all virtual reality games, zombies and drugs.  YA.  click for more info from amazon.com

(we made it! we made it!)

thanks for joining us bloggy friends! 

we're so excited to hang out with you at your blogs over the next few months! 

don't forget, we're changing our blog schedule for may and will post

mondays (erica) and thursdays (christy).  

Y? Because we love you.

Tomorrow is the end of the A-Z challenge. Today we are announcing our May schedule for us, erica and christy. We will not be posting daily for the month in an attempt to stay sane get our mojo back.

As we mentioned before, there was a bit of an unintentional blog fail by both of  us in April. We were bad virtual friends. We expected you to come here and we only occasionally reciprocated. We only found a few new blogs to follow (not because they weren't out there, just because we didn't hop around much!).

We already know May is going to be busy. It's the end of the school year, so we've got more than just the daily teaching stuff to do - there are also assessments and parent-teacher conferences and (for erica) a pesky federal review coming up.

Plus, we gave ourselves a May 30th deadline to vomit out finish the first drafts of our WIPs.

Which doesn't give us enough time to continue to post daily AND come over to your house and play. It really wouldn't be fair to do that two months in a row. Your houses are pretty and we miss them.

Next month, erica will post on Mondays and christy will post on Thursdays. We will each visit the blogs of others (i.e. you) twice a week.

Y? Because we love you and miss you and want to be better friends (as well as better readers, writers, moms, and teachers). Thanks for sticking with us and we'll see you soon well, tomorrow, since I've been informed that Y is not, in fact, the last letter of the alphabet.

I know, I know, I keep telling you I want more happy books and then go and post pictures of bleak, depressing books. This is another reason why we need more time to read not only to find happy books, but to find books that start with any of the last six letters of the alphabet.



happy birthday

Join

our good friend

Michael

for a piece of cake

over at his blog today! 

(And wish him a happy birthday while you're there!) 

You know the place. 

IN TIME.

X: eXtraneous. Don't be.

i'll never forget an interview i read on marieke's blog (last fall).  she interviewed leah cypress, author of mistwood. leah said when she writes her first draft, it's as though the story is taking place in white rooms.  NO DETAILS, NO DESCRIPTIONS.  then she goes back through and adds that stuff in.  I LOVE THAT. (so much that i know i've mentioned this before, but can't find my own post link.)

you know why don't you? 

i'm a recovering overwriter.  and what better way is there than NOT to have that pressure on me to write all the details.  no shakes.  no hyperventilating.  no temptation. because  i've removed the vile need to binge on flowing, descriptive, purple flowery wordy strings of sentences.

phew.

just. write. the. story.

just. create. the characters. 

i promise you.  I PROMISE YOU.  your voice will improve.  your tone will BE there.  your writing will be CONSISTENT. 

your focus will not be lost.

you MAY find later that you don't need to add much in at all.

better writing.  cleaner writing.  less dusting required. 

(won't your merry maids aka beta readers be pleased???)

extraneous: 

not pertaining to...impertinent...out of place...

not vital...unrelated...irrelevant

(why do you want to add in a bunch of irrelevant stuff? tell me. why? 

PLOT people.  CHARACTERS people.  that's what it's about. 

do you need to set the scene?  yes. 

sometimes can the setting BE so amazing it's like a vital character.  yes. 

BUT do it without irrelevant flowery page-filling garbage you call details. 

okay?)

hahaha.  an X book...did you think i couldn't do it?  did you? 

(before i get too cocky, i guess i kinda cheated.  they don't actually START with x.  what?  extraneous doesn't either?  how many days until Z?)

click to learn more about this book



Water is good

There are so many words I could use for our W post today. Writing would be an excellent topic. Discussing WIPs would be fun. Since we're both teachers, talking a bit about our Work could be interesting. We're from Wisconsin, so, umm, duh, EVERYONE wants to know more about Wisconsin. W fell on a very timely day, so poems or thoughts about Wednesday would be completely appropriate. Choices, choices.

I (erica), chose Water.

You can exercise in water. Exercise is good.

You can drink water. Healthy is good.

Showering is good. Also, I want this shower.

Heard of this book yet?

Seen the movie yet?

This has nothing to do with W. It's for christy. :)

One quick thing before we go - thanks so much for sticking with us through the A to Z Challenge. Part of the challenge was to go out and try to visit as many sites a day as we can. Yeah, blogfail, erica and christy. WE WILL, WE WILL, we promise, but man, April is almost over. We have a plan for May and we promise that if you're here for the A to Z and not commenting or following because you think we're ignoring you, we promise were aren't doing it on purpose. We love our blogging friends!!

So, it's Wednesday. Go Write!! (if you need inspiration, write about Wisconsin)

Ooh, and go Win (some books, including Randy Russell's, yay!): a 1,000th follower contest here!