The Naked This

I was rereading a bit of G4 today and came across a Naked This. I knew my high school English teacher would be ashamed of me. It was his ultimate pet peeve, and though I found it ridiculous at the time I have come to really appreciate this simple bit of advice.

Take these two versions of my sentence from G4

Naked This: This was evidenced by the fact that I had somehow managed to smudge a long dark line down my cheek like a morbid mime tear.

 

Clothed This: This ineptitude was evidenced by the fact that I had somehow managed to smudge a long dark line down my cheek like a morbid mime tear.

 

I find the second sentence so much more successful. The first begs the question "this what?" and even with a preceding context sentence, what "this" is can be a lot more ambiguous to the reader that the writer thinks it is. 

This advice is still my go to rule for clearing up ambiguity. 

Doodles

Because sometimes I'm productive at my job. And by productive I mean completely distracted.

Is sleep really the enemy?

On sloth: I have long wondered if sleep was my best friend or my worst enemy. If I believed in that sort of thing, I would be ferociously guilty of the sin of sloth. I love to lay in bed, drifting in and out sleep, for whole days at time. This is problematic. Every day off or free evening I should be glued to my desk with my notebook or laptop writing at the speed of light in an attempt to get words down, good or not. However, I often just crawl into bed and sleep whenever the opportunity arises. This makes writing hard, obviously.

On a different but related note: Due to some terrible scheduling problems between my two jobs I have been awake for more than 24 hours during which I have traversed New York, Pennsylvania, and Ohio. Right now I NEED sleep. It is taking all my faculties to type this, but I felt that it was an important realization to share. In my sleep-deprived delirium today, so many ideas came to me. So many perfect bits that needed working out. I wonder if some moderate level of perpetual sleep deprivation might actually increase my creative productivity.

I have reached the point where I can't actually think anymore so I'll just leave this here and see what happens.

Day Jobs

My day job is currently teaching reading enrichment to K-12 students. It means I spend all day talking about how much I love reading and trying to get kids to feel the same way. It also means that I spend all day reading books.

For me, reading leads to writing. Which is great. EXCEPT that teaching is the least conducive day job to sneaky writing. You have to be completely attentive to your students, especially the younger ones. And obviously, that is when I have all the ideas. 

I carry a notebook at all times but even just jotting down notes is really difficult when teaching. I feel like I have no down time and the ideas just bounce around demanding attention that I don't have for them! It's incredibly frustrating. 

Stupid day jobs....  

My WIP

is a YA novel currently titled Goodbye, Good-Goody Girl, or G4 for short. "Goodbye, Good-Goody Girl! I'm changing, and how!" is the title character's refrain line in the opening number of the show Thoroughly Modern Millie. My main character, Mirella, is playing that role of Millie in her last high school musical.

As I try now to explain what G4 is about, I struggle. When I first came up with this idea, the lovely Jenny (of TNGA fame) asked me to tell her in one sentence what my story was about. It is still the most accurate description of it I can give.

I said:

Mirella wanted to make her senior year count but now her life is spiraling out of control, and she has to decide if she's ready to really be Millie and say goodbye to the good girl.

I have about 4200 words written and a skeletal outline. I am super super excited about this project and the journey it is going to take me on.

Won't you come, too?

 (This is concept art for Chapter One)

Let me introduce myself!

I'm L.S. Mooney. I have lived a few places and visited a few more but i'm a Midwest girl at heart and an enthusiastic alumna of The Ohio State University.  As a recent college grad with more interests than time, my life is a little all over the place right now. I spend my time teaching reading, taking ballet, falling in love, and applying to jobs like it is my job.

I plan to use this space to chronicle my writing life and my WIP (which I will talk about later because its deserves its own post). I am not a member of The Great Noveling Adventure (tgna.tumblr.com / thegreatnovelingadventure.com) but I will using the tag to chronicle my own adventure. If you don't know what that is, go check it out! 

I'm on tumblr (lsmooney.tumblr.com) and twitter (@LSMooney).