In the comments, I said

I used to see little point to exercises. But after becoming a plotter rather than a pantser, I get much more out of them. Whenever I do exercises, I pick a story or book that’s in the planning stages, and do them with those characters/setting. It helps me generate ideas for that story, so it doesn’t feel like a waste of time.

I should be doing this now, actually, for the next novel I’m going to work on, so that when I really sit down to plan it out this fall I have a better idea of what the characters are like and what I want to have happen.

So far this year I’ve been doing a fair number of exercises: I’ve been taking a bunch of online workshops from various RWA chapters on characters and feelings and related topics. Right now I’m taking a class on revising for emotional impact, and the exercises have been to revise passages from our current project, keeping the current lesson’s topic in mind. Which is a useful kind of exercise, since I’d be revising those chapters anyway.

Do you guys find exercises useful?

For the next few months, I’ll continue my run/swim/bike/tennis schedule. I’ve been running and swimming three days a week each. The bike club has started up again, and I plan to do the Saturday morning rides most weeks. Tennis classes start up again in June, twice a week.

To get my stamina and my speed up, I’m doing longer weekend runs–an hour for now, in intervals of 10-min runs and 2-min walks, planning on going up to 1.5 hours later. I’ve also shortened the first run of the week to do speed intervals, which makes a rather hellish start to Tuesdays.

In the fall I’m going to do the same triathlon I did last year plus a 5k or two. Next spring I’ll do the 10k again and strive to be faster.

Which I also mentioned isn’t going to happen. It gets tempting, though–there are a lot of things I’d like to learn, partly for writing and partly just for fun. Taking a class would make me focus on learning (part of) a subject in a reasonable amount of time. But I’m not going to spend money or a lot of time on it, or I’d never get any writing done.

Enter the wonder of the Internet and the future that we live in. A couple weeks ago I ran across a mention of Coursera, and last week, EdX made big news. If you haven’t heard about these, here’s the deal:

They’re both websites that offer free online courses–with lectures, homework, exams, and interaction with professors and other students. But, probably no grades, maybe a certificate of completion, definitely no real credit.

EdX is a team effort of Harvard and MIT (warning: the site auto-plays a video). Coursera has courses from Stanford, Princeton, the University of Michigan, and the University of Pennsylvania.

Coursera has started offering some courses, and EdX will begin in the fall, though MIT is currently running a course in electrical circuits.

I resisted the circuits class, but have signed up for three classes through Coursera (in series, not parallel–ok, I’ll stop with the puns now). I’ll be starting Intro to Sociology in June, a literature class on fantasy and science fiction in July, and a history class in September.

Unlike reading by myself, I can’t pick the exact topic and I can’t necessarily go at my own snail’s pace, but I think being able to interact with other people doing the same readings/hearing the same lectures will be a big benefit. And as I busy person, I have to admit that it being free and online makes it more tempting because missing a week for whatever reason won’t really matter.

I’m also just curious to see what these kinds of classes are like. Are these huge, free courses the new future of education, or a fad? Will I learn anything or are they just a marketing tool?

So we have a lot of mint available. Some of it got used in a mint chutney from the Joy of Cooking, which I used on leg of lamb. A bit got turned into mint juleps Saturday for the Derby, which I won’t bother with again next year (not a bourbon fan to begin with).

This weekend I made mint ice cream, which seems to be the best use for the mint so far (though I’ll probably have tea far more often). All the recipes I found online required egg yolks, so I just adapted the standard vanilla recipe into…

Fresh Mint Ice Cream

2 large handfuls fresh mint leaves
2 cups milk
.5 cups sugar
2 cups heavy cream

Put the mint, milk, and sugar in a sauce pan. Heat it over medium until warm but not simmering. Let it steep for several minutes, stirring often, until the sugar’s dissolved and the milk tastes minty.

Pour into a bowl through a strainer. Press all the liquid out of the mint leaves and discard. Refrigerate the milk overnight.

The next day, add the cream and pour the mixture into the ice cream maker. Let the magic happen.

Back in March, I wrote up a post about the various sorts of notes in Scrivener and how I use them. When I started thinking about turning my Scrivener file into an outline other people could read, but that I could also use as I write the novel, I realized I have to make some changes to my usual workflow.

The problem was that when I compiled the file (turned the Scrivener file into a Word document), I’d get something that looked really messy. I really don’t need to share the stuff under “Notes” with people because it’s all notes that I’m using to write (or revise) the book. Stuff like “delete Susan?” or “make T angrier here”. And the synopsis fields were all blank, so someone reading this can’t follow the plot anyway. Plus I’m already running into my usual problem, that the Notes field has both my to-dos for the scene, and things like “the moon is 1/4 full” and “3 days later”.

Since I was using the synopsis at work, I’d gotten to like how easy it is to view in outline mode, and how the synopsis finder toolbar button makes it easy to…find things that are in synopses.

So (obviously) I’m adding summaries of each scene into the synopsis field. I’m also adding my to-dos there, prefaced with an exclamation mark. The exclamation mark means I can easily use the synopsis finder to find scenes that I need to do something to.

And I can keep using document notes for messy stuff I don’t want the people at the workshop to see. (In theory, everything with an exclamation mark in front should be taken care of before I send them the outline…)

Much nicer.

My spinach and lettuce are starting to look like baby spinach and lettuce, adorable. The spinach didn’t do well enough to need thinning, but the lettuce will, maybe this weekend.

I planted more beets and chard in the back where they hadn’t come up. The chard in the front garden seems to be doing better than the chard in the back. I’m not sure if that’s a function of more sunlight or of different temperatures when I planted it. Or maybe of squirrel digging patterns…

I filled in the last empty area of dirt with a different kind of radish a couple weeks ago and have seen no sign of the sprouts so far, but radishes seem to take a while.

The tomatoes seem happy, even the one I originally didn’t plant because I thought it was dying. I guess being in a pot with more dirt means more water to keep it happy.

Soon I should pick a couple stalks of rhubarb and see what I can make with such a small amount. I’m envisioning a tiny cobbler.

Instead, have this post from last April, in which I wonder about outlining endings. Having recently finished outlining another novel, in which I did manage to outline the ending…I’m now wondering what made this most recent book different. Worked backwards from the end, maybe? It still has holes, but not nearly as many as usual.

Maybe I’m just getting better at filling in the holes.

Of her other novels, I’ve only read The Death of the Necromancer, and I mean to remedy that soon. (So many books, so little time.)

I tore through Robyn Bachar’s second Cat book, Bewitched, Blooded, and Bewildered in an evening–it helped that I’d read a big chunk in our crit group already. So I’m not entirely objective. But it has a trip to hell, the all-Harrison psychic radio, and dragons fighting helicopters, what more do you want?

Then a few weeks ago, I read the column “How to Find, Rather Than Make, Writing Time“, in which a pullout quote says, in big print near the top, “Don’t feel pressured to give up things you enjoy—however mundane—to make time to write.”

Um.

Ok, she does clarify that she means you don’t *always* have to give up *everything* you enjoy, which is impossible for me to argue with, since a) it’d be hypocritical because I haven’t and won’t give up everything I enjoy, b) that would mean giving up writing since I enjoy it, and c) absolutes are always wrong.

What I really want to comment on is this suggestion: “Try to notice time in your day, even if it’s only 15 minutes, when you are not doing something you enjoy or something you have to do.” Reuse that as writing time.

Seems reasonable. Until I start thinking, what do I do that I don’t enjoy and don’t have to do? I’ve been thinking about this for a while, and have come up with:

1. Installing the rain barrel in spring and removing it in fall–We don’t need a rain barrel, and hooking it up is not a barrel of laughs. However, I like having it and reusing rainwater, and this isn’t a lot of time, so I suspect it’s not a good source of more writing time. On the other hand, I haven’t set it up yet this year, so maybe that’s why I’ve been so productive.

That’s it. I was going to add taking out the compost, but I like seeing how things are decaying and looking at the cool bugs. I’d say housecleaning, but I already only do the parts that fall under “have to do” (and my parents don’t visit without warning). I’d also say “looking at the things my husband points out on FailBlog, especially if I’ve already seen them” but that is not a whole lot of time, is often fun, and is not exactly predictable. Maybe next time he says I should come look at something, I should reply, “No, and now I have to write two sentences.”

I suppose she really means things like aimless web surfing or playing little games like Angry Birds, where it might be moderately fun and interesting, but I could be doing something even more fun instead. And that is sound advice. (And I’ve cut my blog reading waaaay back over the past months.)

What do you do that you don’t have to do but isn’t enjoyable? Should you be writing me a comment about it, or writing your next scene?

There’s also groups, for different sports, or anything… There are two writers’ groups that I know of, and a couple health at every size type groups (one nice thing about the site is it’s not focused on dieting/weight loss, although there are groups for that). I joined a bodyweight strength training group. I find strength training dull, but the group follows a book called You Are Your Own Gym, which lays out training plans. It’s a lot more interesting than dumbbell exercises or endless pushups.

Of course I started at the most basic level in the book. I’m in week 6 of 10, and ran into some workouts that require a pull-up bar. (Or a door. But I found that difficult to hold onto.) So last week I bought a bar, and yesterday I put it up, with a lot of help from J on the last three incredibly stubborn screws. Getting them to go in was a workout in itself.

Right now I can’t actually do a pull-up. I can’t even do a negative pull-up–standing on a chair and starting with bent arms and just lowering myself down. I can’t even do those flexed-arm hangs from the junior high school fitness test. My plan is to do a couple assisted pull-ups (feet on a chair and some of my weight on my legs), or at least hang from the bar and move the 1 inch that I can, a few times a day, every day, until I can do one pull-up. It might take a while.

Even hanging from the bar hurts my hands right now.

And that’s why I have blisters on my palms.