A Time For Everything

It's been longer than intended since I posted last, but my life really is unexciting right now. Even I was bored with myself.

But I celebrated my birthday this past Saturday while on a writers retreat with some lovely ladies and fellow writers.

We stayed at a lovely house in Granbury located on one of the small canals off the lake. Here are some pics of the lovely yard.

From the back porch...

 

Taken from a seating area just off the back porch... There's a small dock just below where that squirrel is.

Another seating area under the shade of three large oak trees. Even mid-afternoon it was pleasant as long as there was a breeze...

And Saturday...in the neighbors yard, as seen from the seating area above...

I also saw a goose family floating down the canal. A parent on each end and three goslings in the middle. :0)

It was a lovely weekend and I got a huge writing/editing task taken care of along with a little brainstorming help from the other ladies.

Hope you're well. Take care.

Now that Thanksgiving is barely but officially behind us, it's time to think about and start planning for Christmas.

DD has already requested something non-traditional for Christmas dinner. Actually she claims that Christmas dinner has no requirements like Thanksgiving dinner does and has requested spaghetti. Spaghetti is not something I eat often anymore, so I don't think we're going that route, but chips and queso and deviled eggs are already on the short list of nibbles.

Sadly, Sonshine will not be flying home anytime soon, but the Brown Eyed Girl and her soulmate are planning a visit home.

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So far, so good... I reached my word count goal of 1400+ words yesterday and today. Just Saturday and Sunday to go. I do think I'll end up exceeding the projected final word count. Not that it's a bad thing, more words just means completing this WIP might take a little longer, and I'm trying to get to some other projects sooner rather than later.

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I hope you and yours had a lovely Thanksgiving. See you Monday.

It is, actually.

I phrased it as a question because I'm churning out a lot of words. I'm ahead of where I planned to be in terms of number of writing days and words written per day. I'm closing in on the 10K mark. My limit is 15K. I have told maybe half the story!!!

There will eventually be lots of red pen and removing of words. I will have to jump time. I will have to make each word count. That's not a bad thing. It's a very good exercise for me, but gah!!

Now that I've gotten better acquainted with my two heroes, I'm working backwards from the end. I'm writing all the scenes no matter how choppy or crappy they come out, so that they're there. I can fix and tidy up or delete them as needed once I have the full picture.

So, yeah, fun times. I'm only being slightly sarcastic there because I'm actually having fun with the story and enjoying the flow of words and of creation.

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As of the writing of this post (Wednesday morning), the Stars have a 96% chance of making the playoffs. All the games are now important and must-win. Depending on the opponent, some are more must-win than others. Tonight they'll play a team who has already earned their spot in the playoffs. They can afford the loss, we cannot. So please send all your good vibes to Calgary, Alberta, Canada tonight.

Be loud. Wear green. GO STARS!!

Have a great rest of your week.

Let's start with the writing first. A friend of mine shared an opportunity to participate in an anthology. At first I dismissed it out of hand because the deadline for the 1st draft is just over a month out. There's no way I could write 10-15K in that time frame--is there? Well, yes there is. I can actually produce that many words in that time frame if I'm super focused.

But to get super focused and know where this story is going requires some pre-planning and that has been a struggle for me.

Another hurdle is the synopsis requirement. I have never written a synopsis in my life. I probably could if I knew the trajectory of the story because that's all a synopsis is--a quick and dirty road map of the story along with a few extra details.

That circles back to the pre-planning.

Like I said, at first I just told myself I couldn't do it. But as I worked on a proofreading job, ideas started niggling at me. I didn't allow those ideas free reign because I really needed to finish that proofreading job and send it back to the author.

But once I completed my responsibilities...I opened the floodgate. I thought about the characters, as well as about the main requirement of this submission--that one character be dealing with a disability. That was the easy part.

Could I spew out 10K in a month's time?

Can I come up with well-rounded characters and a plausible plot that I could pull off in those 10K to 15K words and the 1 month I've been given?


I really want to do it because it's sparked an excitement in me about writing that's been lacking.

I have until Monday to decide. No pressure.

One of the reasons that writing has taken a back seat and been hard to focus on lately is hockey. (This is the trouble part of the post's title.)

Now that I'm a partial season ticket holder, I pay way more attention to the team. I mean obviously, right? I have these tickets that I pre-paid for, I'm going to the games. Going to that many games means I'm even more invested in the team and their progress through the season, their place in the standings.

Last year by this time, the team had gone on a ten game losing streak and had lost any hope of making it to the playoffs. I was only attending a game here and there. Not much investment on my part. The rest of the season was for individual players to better their stats as much as they could.



This year, though! Partial season tickets! New coach, new system, new hope!! We've been in a playoff position all year, despite a revolving door of injuries to key players.

Now we're staring down the last fifteen games of the season and in a dog fight every day for our place in the standings. There are four teams vying for those two wild card slots I talked about a couple of weeks ago. There are five points separating those four teams. We beat one of those teams last night. A team we hadn't yet beaten this year. It was a huge win on more than one level.

So, yeah, my head is full of hockey hockey Stars hockey and not very full of writing writing writing.

I need to learn to balance, manage, and compartmentalize....

Today and this weekend...working on characters and plot for this anthology. If I can get a good enough head start, I might just throw my hat in. Also, though, this weekend >>> HOCKEY!!

Be loud. Wear green. GO STARS!!

Have a great weekend.

It's taken me a couple of days to decide what to post for today. I was trying to be proactive by coming up with a topic in advance and jotting down the bulk of my thoughts before tweaking for the final posting, but a true milestone happened yesterday and so, that's what I'm going to share. :)

I'm going to be a (self) published author by November! That's the goal, anyway.

But that's not the milestone. Not yet anyway...

Last December, my writer peeps and I were sitting around Cotton Patch for our after-the-meeting get-together and my dear friend Clover said, "Anyone interested in doing a box set for Christmas next year?" Pretty much everyone at the table said they liked the idea and we moved on to other varied and random topics. But that question and the possibilities stuck in my head all through the holidays, and ideas percolated.

When we reassembled in January, I asked if Clover meant it and if everyone was serious about participating. Everyone agreed and we brainstormed how we wanted things to work. I started writing my contributions at the beginning of February and yesterday morning, I sent it out to the other participants! It was pretty exciting.

That was the milestone. My first major for-publication effort was sent out into the world for the opinion of others. Yikes. YAY!

So this is it. I've danced around the idea of being published for years--like twelve of them, but the route of traditional publishing never appealed to me. Luckily for me, the romance publishing industry began growing and changing back when I first joined and now the options are much more to my liking.

The next milestone will be to finish and publish a book. I want to have something else available should someone enjoy my storytelling in Christmas thing so much they want to see what else I've got out there. It's not going to be much. One book, possibly two.

One's in a completely written first draft state and waiting for me to start reading the paper copy I printed. The other's not quite done and will be in a similar state once it is. I have a lot of work ahead of me. Hard work. Energy-sucking work. Energizing work.

So that theory of mine that things are going to calm down after my trip to Atlanta...yeah--maybe not so much. :)

WHEEEE!!