I’m Procrastinating

Yes, I said it.  I admit it.  I’m Procrastinating.  A lot.

On the bright side though, my office is uber-organized now…  and it’s clean…  My bulletin board is hung with storyline index cards all over it.  The word processor is open.  My mind is spinning out thoughts and ideas… However, I haven’t typed in one single new word on any of the stories.  Oh joy!  It’s not writer’s block.. because like I said, the ideas are there.  Dreams, thoughts, ideas come all the time.  So what to do… what to do?

Maybe it is because I have noticed, through tweets, that people actually take time to write their blog posts.  They formulate, they think and they write brilliant posts!  I tend to  come here and just type and type and then publish.  Should I spend more time?  Come up with good anecdotes?  Write the post like you would write a paper…  have a beginning with points given on what is to come, then a body dissecting through those points and finally a nice summary with great philosophical meaning??

I’ll have to think on that one…  But if I think to hard, I would probably not write anything in a blog.  Believe it or not, I am a very private person and writing down thoughts and personal adventures for everyone to read completely takes me outside my normal comfort zone!  But I do it… and I’m glad that I do.  These posts are cathartic and fun at times!  I think what I need to do more often though is pose questions… ask for topics…

So does anyone have a topic they would like me to blog about?  Anything question anyone wants me to answer.  I’ve noticed some people have been doing the ‘ask me anything’ site – very interesting questions and answers I have seen!

Anyway – that is all for tonight.  Off to bed to dream about finishing my book and writing that next word in one of the stories!  Hopefully, I will stop procrastinating and connect my mind to my hands and get all of these thoughts written down!

Best Intentions

I always have the best intentions… I really, really do.

I am still so excited about changing my game – though I am starting to realize that I need to decide what exactly I am going to change.

It is 1 am now, and I am about to go to bed – still earlier than normal, but later than I need it to be.

I need to get up and get going in the morning – something I have not been able to master in all of my ‘grown-up’ years!  Ever since my hubby took this new job – he has to leave the house between 5:45 and 6:00 am… which means that the days of me being able to sleep in while he handled getting our son to daycare (now school) is OVER.  It is up to me.  5 days a week. so my new ‘resolution’ about going to bed early isn’t for me – it is for him…  I need to be awake and functioning in an efficient manner in the mornings – and that has not been the case since this new schedule has taken effect.  I will make this work… but whew is it hard!  I do my best thinking and working at night when everything is quiet, no interruptions and I can focus.  It is going to take a big shift change in my way of thinking and doing…

Back to the best intentions… besides going to bed early, I planned to start writing, working out again and removing the BS that is in my way. Oh yeah – and eating 5 times a day…

So far, the only one of those I have done is start to remove the BS in my way…  Which is a good start, don’t get me wrong…  but the morning after I wrote my last post, I woke up (so did the whole household) coughing up my lungs…  It has been a bad couple of days let me tell you..  I don’t even want to take a deep breath because it hurts so bad… so you can imagine how much I will NOT be working out until this stops!

However, I did organize some charts for me to keep up with my daily eating, exercise and activities!  and starting tomorrow, I plan to at least start stretching out – that shouldn’t make me breathe hard right?  As for eating 5 times a day – I have lost 7 pounds because I haven’t wanted to eat at all and have forced down protein shakes!  (yeah, I know – the violins are playing… LOL – and I know I will survive on the fat reserves I have!)

Now writing…  now that the headache (from the broken nose) has leveled off back down to a functioning level – I will be organizing which story I want to write and start kicking it out.

So here is to the morning!  May it be a good one – giving me a happy son, a lesser headache and coughing, and the energy to JUST WRITE!

Until next time…

It is about to begin

I think I have my ducks lining up in the row…  I plan to change my daily schedule…  Starting Monday – considering that it is 4:40 am right now – starting tomorrow won’t work…  but by the time Monday rolls around, I plan to have my schedule penciled in.

Hopefully some days I will write more than my ‘scheduled’ time or word count goal for the day…  I feel my creative juices starting to peek out of wherever they have hidden and I plan on grabbing on to them and not letting them run low again!   I have a lot of stories in my head, written down on paper and typed in to the computer… I have spent time organizing all of them – and they are there for reference….

So, I am working on turning off that internal editor, and plan to just write  it all down – all the thoughts – make the story flow and THEN go back and edit!  I am getting excited!

I need to write

A while ago, I wrote a post about story ideas that I had – a few people voted on which one they liked better… (original post here) .  That was over 6 months ago – and while I did dig out all of my old story ideas, note cards, etc…  I still have not written…

But that is going to change!  I am going to start with putting aside at least an hour out of my day, to just write…  Hopefully, that will get my creative juices flowing again and I will find more time to write and actually get a novel completed to the editing stage!  WOO HOO.

My goal is to get a novel completed in time to have my uncle read it and edit it…  (he has Stage 4 Liver and Colon cancer) – He is an awesome editor and is also one of the people in my life pushing me to use my talents to write.

Then a friend came in  town and we started looking over all the (very rough) writing I had done – and it started the ole mind a workin’ again!  It also showed me that I have GOT to turn off my internal editor (wrote about that a few posts ago)…  I need to get down the thoughts on ‘paper’ (am actually typing, not writing – but you know what I mean! LOL)  – bad grammar, bad sentence structure and all (kind of like how I write these posts on here   It is VERY tough however, to turn off that editor and just let the ideas flow out – I wonder if there is help for that (and no – I do not mean meds for OCD)

Anyway – if anyone reads this post and would like to click the link back to the other post and vote on the story ideas – that will help!   I do thank the 2 people who did vote though!

Internal Editor

I am really trying to figure a few things out.  Not the deep ‘what is the meaning of life’ stuff, but the ‘little things I notice every day reading web pieces’ stuff…

First of all, I wonder where all the good editors have gone, and then I realize that maybe for online stuff – nobody edits the content before it is published.  Maybe it is the neck-breaking pace of people trying to be the first to get information out – or even that they don’t take the time to re-read their posts before publishing them that causes all of the mistakes.

To top all that off – I have no idea why it bothers me so much.  I have read so many ‘articles’ and ‘interviews’ on people’s websites and blogs, etc – and there have been many mistakes…  it is actually an exception now to read an article without a mistake… even on the sites that should know better than that!!  I can *almost* overlook a missed word, still cringe though at bad grammar… but spelling mistakes?  Really?  COME ON!!!  I’m not even talking about the ones that the spell checker won’t catch (though those still cause cringing) – I’m talking about ones that ANY spell checker would have highlighted or caught if a spell checker was run…

So the question becomes, do you point out these mistakes to the person writing the article?  I hate to put it in comments – who knows if those really get read by the author… I think telling people they made mistakes is the right thing to do – then they can go fix them and not look so inept (yes that is a strong word for in a hurry and too lazy to read through their post) to the next person reading their writing?  Anyone agree?  I have actually posted a few things on here that when I go back and look at them, I find a mistake… I roll my eyes at myself and then fixed it and republish.  Feel free if you find any errors or stupid mistakes on my part – to comment and blast me and let me know!

Lastly, it seems to me that this internal editor I have – that I cannot turn off (believe me I have tried) might be the cause of my inability to get any real writing done.  I have good stories (I think) in my head that I would love to write.  I need to figure out how to just vomit the words out, not care about form, content, sentence structure, grammar, spelling, etc…  THEN go back and EDIT…  why is that so hard?  OCD?  is there a cure for that?

ball

Have to say – I bought a big workout ball and have been using it as a chair at my desk.  Heard that it is supposed to help you work on your ‘core’… I have noticed that I definitely sit up straighter while sitting on it!  Only problem so far is getting up from it!  My feet touch the ground, but this is a big ball – a little clumsy!!

So I am going to get used to sitting on my ball – and get comfortable and start writing.  Oh joy!!  I really am excited to think about opening back up that part of my brain and writing again… OH to be creative!  There is nothing like it in the world!  Going to just be excited to get a book to completion and start the editing process… Ah hell, I am actually going to be excited to start a routine and get some sentences, then paragraphs, then pages down!! Going to start this weekend hopefully!

Will update!