So, I want to try and start a trend for myself. Post tens things that happened during the week as a recap. We'll start today! Woo hoo!
1. First things first, I want to wish everyone a happy Second Rapture. I was watching the already snarky comments show up on Twitter this morning and it always makes me giggle. First the one in May, and now this one. I survived the one in May, and plan to survive this one. Just means we get an after party tomorrow.
2. I apparently went a little crazy last night. If you follow my Twitter you may have seen it. Basically what happened was I was reading through other people's blogs that I follow. I noticed a trend. People use Blogger and rarely Wordpress. Am I doing it wrong? Well, of course I freak out at stupid things so asked Twitter for their response. My wonderful SIL The Auto Momma (go follow her fun blog!) suggested Blogger. But I dunno yet. So in the midst of my crazy I decided to set up a Blogger one that will mirror my Wordpress one. Now I have two blogs to maintain when I have issues with just one. See: Crazy.
3. So, for the writer's conference preparation I decided that, like a lot of others suggested, to get simple business cards made with my name, contact information and social media names. (This may be a reason I didn't just decide on one blog -- the business cards have the Wordpress blog). They arrived the other day and it gave me a little thrill to see my name on a card that I will hopefully be handing out to people that I network with at the blog. Other writers, possibly agents, editors, whomever. I want to start networking and that will be my biggest first step to getting my name out there.
4. As for the writing thing. I decided that I am basically going to toss what I had written before and start over. Well, kind of. I have been doing a lot of plotting and I am changing things up, I think Aislynn is happy with the changes because her voice seems to be flowing better when I sit down and write.
5. Plotting is hard. I have always been the classic "Pantser" and never really plotted anything. Just wrote what came to me. I decided that since I was basically stuck on Aislynn to try and plot it out. To divide the chapters so they were shorter (basically one or two scenes for the chapters instead of a bunch) so that it flowed better. Haven't done the complete plot outline but I have a good start and I pretty much know where it is going to end up.
6. Research. Again, hard. I'm not a good researcher, and if I want to keep accurate in my writing I know that I need to become a good researcher. It always bursts my bubble when I see writers talk about how excited they are to research. Then it lifts me back up when I see the ones that aren't. I know I'm not alone and knowing that makes it easier. I need to get on to it.
7. Life. I know this is a writing blog, but sometimes life butts itself into the conversation. I love my life. I love my husband, our kids, and I sometimes like my day job (even though it takes away from my writing time). The Hubs and I decided about a month ago that we are going to try and move out of our current place to a new one. I'm excited. It's bigger and not much more out of the pocket -- I'll like having the extra space and the extra bedroom so the girls can at least be a little more separate. Life is good, I'm a happy gal.
8. Family. I have the most amazing family. So encouraging and helpful on this journey that I am trying to commit myself to. I just want to say thanks to you all for all you do and help me with, though I know that some of you don't read this and some of you do, I hope I tell you guys "Thanks" enough.
9. The Neurotic Cat. So, Isis. Our wonderful cat that talks to us and acts more like a dog then an actual cat. She's crazy. From her fear of the outdoors and strangers, to her disinterest in her food (I can not count the amount of times I have had to change the brand of food she eats because she stops liking it -- similar to a toddlers attitude toward food -- maybe she's a kid and not an animal at all), to her hyper bolting and knocking over things, and her obsession with cardboard (boxes, paper towel rolls, etc) and plastic. I love her dearly but I cannot tell you how much I sometimes want to put her in a box and see if she'll eat herself out of it.
10. Hmm. Not sure what I have to say for ten. I think I'll just end with a have a good weekend!
Cara Mia Amore
Friday, October 21, 2011
Tuesday, October 18, 2011
So, one day I made a goal...
Alright, so here's my confession on this wonderful, fall Tuesday. I made a goal and started to slack off.
If any of you follow my Twitter or Facebook you would have seen that around the beginning of this month I decided I wanted to save up and try to go to the Pike's Peak Writer's Conference in April of 2012. I put together a savings plan to save a little each month until then until I have the conference fees ready (which I should have soon since registration starts on November 15th!) and of course some extra spending money. I decided to make my first conference an "easy" one. Meaning it's only up in Colorado Springs so that means I will be driving there in the mornings and home at night, so no hotel stays.
One of the other things I wanted to do is plot out and finish writing one of the stories I've been working on. Aislynn's story has been the focus of my spare time for awhile now so I decided to work with her. So I got myself all excited with "I can do its" and "there's plenty of time". And I got some great encouragement from my family and friends when I told them what I wanted to do.
But...
I STARTED TO SLACK OFF.
The first week or so of it worked wonderfully. I sat down and tried to do a bare bones plot outline for my story and got it pretty much squared away. Then I sat down and started to rewrite. From the beginning. Most of you out there probably think I'm crazy, but I needed to make this story get done and the only way for me to do that was to refocus myself on the writing instead of the plotting.
So I picked up a pencil (which I never write with) and started writing. Let's just say I went through at least one eraser that first sit down session trying to get the words to sound right. I was encouraged, I was getting words on the paper. And yes, some were along the same lines as my original ones but I got quite a bit of new product in there as well.
Then I started to write while at work -- on breaks and lunches -- and found that I would get into the flow right as my time would be up and would have to stop in the middle of a good writing spree and would lose my train of thought. Which meant more time of "catch-up" before trying to write again on my next break.
So, it got to the point where I didn't even want to try and write while at work because I got too distracted and really didn't get anything good out of it. Then my strategy changed to just writing before and after work. Well, that also meant that writing was on my mind when I left for work and then I didn't have enough time to destress after a day of work and honestly the work was still suffering.
I really need to restrategize and I hope that this slacking hasn't ruined my plan. I won't let it.
I think I'll focus on NaNoWriMo this year but a little more focused to me instead of how they do it. I will set my goal to 50K new words written during that month. If I do that, that will be a majority of the novel right there. That will give me time to wrap it up and hopefully have some people read it. Then by the beginning of the year I'll be ready to add changes and get into the process of making my manuscript sparkle.
And there you go with my confession of the day!
If any of you follow my Twitter or Facebook you would have seen that around the beginning of this month I decided I wanted to save up and try to go to the Pike's Peak Writer's Conference in April of 2012. I put together a savings plan to save a little each month until then until I have the conference fees ready (which I should have soon since registration starts on November 15th!) and of course some extra spending money. I decided to make my first conference an "easy" one. Meaning it's only up in Colorado Springs so that means I will be driving there in the mornings and home at night, so no hotel stays.
One of the other things I wanted to do is plot out and finish writing one of the stories I've been working on. Aislynn's story has been the focus of my spare time for awhile now so I decided to work with her. So I got myself all excited with "I can do its" and "there's plenty of time". And I got some great encouragement from my family and friends when I told them what I wanted to do.
But...
I STARTED TO SLACK OFF.
The first week or so of it worked wonderfully. I sat down and tried to do a bare bones plot outline for my story and got it pretty much squared away. Then I sat down and started to rewrite. From the beginning. Most of you out there probably think I'm crazy, but I needed to make this story get done and the only way for me to do that was to refocus myself on the writing instead of the plotting.
So I picked up a pencil (which I never write with) and started writing. Let's just say I went through at least one eraser that first sit down session trying to get the words to sound right. I was encouraged, I was getting words on the paper. And yes, some were along the same lines as my original ones but I got quite a bit of new product in there as well.
Then I started to write while at work -- on breaks and lunches -- and found that I would get into the flow right as my time would be up and would have to stop in the middle of a good writing spree and would lose my train of thought. Which meant more time of "catch-up" before trying to write again on my next break.
So, it got to the point where I didn't even want to try and write while at work because I got too distracted and really didn't get anything good out of it. Then my strategy changed to just writing before and after work. Well, that also meant that writing was on my mind when I left for work and then I didn't have enough time to destress after a day of work and honestly the work was still suffering.
I really need to restrategize and I hope that this slacking hasn't ruined my plan. I won't let it.
I think I'll focus on NaNoWriMo this year but a little more focused to me instead of how they do it. I will set my goal to 50K new words written during that month. If I do that, that will be a majority of the novel right there. That will give me time to wrap it up and hopefully have some people read it. Then by the beginning of the year I'll be ready to add changes and get into the process of making my manuscript sparkle.
And there you go with my confession of the day!
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