Sunday, July 6, 2014

On a roll, Arlo and Jake 'Lost Partner' just passed 24000 words!

I know some (a lot?) of you can knock out whole books in a couple of months. I envy you. I just can't do that.

If I ever become a full time writer (hello literary agents looking for an up and comer... here I am! ;0), then I can dedicate most of the day to spilling my imaginary guts.

For those of us who have day jobs and family commitments that can't be pushed aside, it's a chore just to push our stories forward a few pages every night. And that's what I do. I sit my butt on the couch and try to write a couple of pages every day.

This 4th of July weekend was busy. Gardening, honey do stuff, guitar lessons and a granddaughter that will NOT be ignored (I wouldn't anyway). These last three days seemed to flash by. Here I am, late at night, trying to update my writing blog and do the social media bit.

But. I got several chances to focus on book 3 and damn if I didn't crank out some cool stuff. It's over 24,000 words now!

Arlo and Tia are trying to stay alive on the swamp planet. Jake and Pixie are trying to stay alive on the Triumph, in the middle of an interstellar battle. And I get to orchestrate it all!

Writing is a blast!

Sure I'd like to do it full time. But until then, I'm celebrating days like this.

You need to celebrate too. Any time you write, you are celebrating being alive.

Be happy for today. WRITE!

Tuesday, July 1, 2014

Busy day AND I still wrote 2 pages! Whoo Hoo!

To sum it up:
- Woke up early and walked around the block
- Drove to work, sipping on a spinach, kale, banana, milk and blueberry 'shake'. Yumm.
- Busy, productive day at work. Digging around in the guts of Winforms trying to find out why some of my buttons refused to respond to being set to 'visible'. Sheesh! As is usually the case, it was stupid user ( that would be me ;-) error. What used to work in the original code works slightly differently in C#. Live and learn. ;-)
- Drove home. You don't want to know about the crappy traffic. Does Texas EVER finish a highway?
- Paid bills
- Dealt with the mail
- Had a great dinner of seafood enchiladas and black beans
- Updated my blog (this post)
- Updated tweets, adding 5 new followers, thanking each for their interest
- Wrote about 800 words on a battle scene in book three of 'Arlo and Jake' SciFi series
- Wrote some notes on a short story I'm writing ('Etchings' if you're interested...;-). I think I've got the outline pretty well fleshed out now!
- Made a few notes on a game that's been brewing in my fevered noggin... Working title is 'Marching Martian Zombies'. Cool!
- Got in 30 minutes of practice on my classical guitar!

So what? Well, I just wanted to show that if you really think about it, there is PLENTY of time at night for you to get in a couple of pages on that novel you've always wanted to write!

The trick? Pay attention, folks. THERE IS NO TRICK! You knew that, didn't you.

Sit down and write.

It's good for you. It's fun. It exercises your mind and calms your nerves.

Relax and let yourself add a few minutes of writing every night.

By this time next month,  you could have a chapter written!

Be cool.