I wrote today. Those three words mean a lot to me right now. I am at a point where I let myself get intimidated out of writing easily. I seem to have so much else to do, and there are no guarantees with writing. It is a hobby, a long shot dream that might not ever amount to anything. Why should I keep up with it so obsessively? The reason is simple, even if I lose sight of it rather frequently. I write because it is lifeblood to me. It helps to keep me (somewhat) sane. It helps me to keep perspective in my life. It is my favorite means of creating. I believe we are beings who create. It is a matter of finding what we love to create. I have many things - from concocting things in the kitchen to knitting to sewing to writing. But writing is the one I love most of all - and I wrote today.

Fresh Start

I think I know part of why I was feeling bogged down and not writing as much as I wanted to now. I just finished doing a read-through of the draft thus far, and there were a lot of inconsistencies. I went through and corrected those yesterday and today, and I wrote almost eight hundred words today. That isn't the most record-breaking day of writing I've ever done, but it is getting myself pointed in the right direction again. That feels better. I have also been reading more. My memory isn't as strong as it used to be, which makes reading long novels rather intimidating for me. (kind of ironic, considering the task I am undertaking - to write a novel. At least when I am writing, I can have notes and reminders on my desktop, waiting for me to need them!) I finished one novel the other day and started another one today. It has been a long time since I've read just for fun, and it feels good to go back to it. I know that reading more will strengthen my writing too. Steeping yourself in language and expression is a good thing to do when you are writing.

less sunshine

The days are getting shorter, and that means my seasonal affective disorder is raging stronger and stronger. I keep telling myself it won't be too much longer until the winter equinox, and then the days will slowly start to get longer again. I have felt really down this year - curl up and cry on the couch and not feel like doing anything on some days. I know what I need to do to feel okay - things like light therapy, exercise, and writing all help me to feel more content and less depressed. It's just that some days there is a huge gap between knowing what I have to do to feel okay and having the desire to do it. Thus, I have not worked on my novel much in several days. I started exercising again yesterday, and that has helped my motivation. It also has my knee feeling a little better, even with all the cold air moving into our area. I think I may need to give myself a fresh start working on the novel - read back over what I have, review my outlines and plans, and write any other ideas that come to my mind. That will help me feel like I am not trying to push a tractor-trailer up a hill to get started again. Having a memory that does not work as well as it could makes it harder to write consistently - both time-wise and story line-wise. I am doing the best I can, though, and when my depression and my frustration at my funky memory don't get in the way, I enjoy myself.

I've been thinking

I have been thinking about how I do my blog. It is essentially about how I use writing to hold my life together - hence the title of the blog, creative glue. But I also want to focus more on the craft of writing: what methods I use, everything from the essential hammer and nails of my craft to the minute details. I want to post more details that might be useful to other writers. I am still figuring out how I would be able to accomplish that. I still want to use it as a means of accountability as well - post when I have been doing well with my writing goals and when I have flubbed, and analyze why I may have flubbed. I think seeing my efforts documented like that is helpful to me, and may be helpful to other writers as well - accountability to the goals you set is a major part of accomplishing what you set out to do in writing. In the writer's group I attend, I got a LOT of feedback on Thursday. I had people apologizing for tearing my work up one side and down the other. I was not offended, though. I knew that what I had brought in needed a lot of work. I was excited to have a new perspective and to see what I could do to make it work better. Humility goes a long way when you are revising and getting feedback on your work. That is hard to do because your work is your baby, and you have the innate desire to shelter and protect it. But it cannot get strong if you defend it all the time instead of letting it grow. I was being mature this week, and taking the criticism from my fellow writers, plotting to make good use of it. I am getting excited about NaNoWriMo. It will start in November. (For those of you who haven't got a clue what that is, see www.nanowrimo.org) This will be my third year participating in NaNoWriMo. I have the ideas planned out for what I will write, and it is mostly a matter of doing the arithmetic to see how many words I need to write per day to make the goal of fifty thousand words by the end of November, taking into account the days I will not get the chance to write. I guess that gets to count as my method mentioned for today - set specific goals for your writing so you aren't just floundering. My usual goal is to get at least a thousand words written per day on the novel. I find it works better for me to do it in five hundred word spurts rather than trying to conquer it all at once. If I get more than a thousand, more power to me. If I get just the thousand, I have still made a lot of progress. Specific goals are something that help me make progress.

it's been a while

It has been a while since I have posted in my blog. I am not entirely sure what to write about, because I haven't been writing a whole lot in the last little while. It seems like I go through cycles - times when I do well and writing comes easily, and times when I am distracted by other things and don't get much done. I guess that is human nature in general, but there is something that drives me to accomplish more as a writer, and I feel like I am letting some part of me fail when I am not consistent with my writing goals. That sounds like I am being really hard on myself when I say that, but I really do feel guilty for not having written much. I went to a conference with J out of town, and brought some free writing stuff with me to work on while I was there. It wasn't very practical to bring the novel with me - it is in a file on my old mac, and it is long enough that printing it out would have been more trouble than it is worth. I got some ideas jotted down, but that was about the extent of it. We had cleaned out our kitchen pretty well before heading out on the trip - just for the sake of not having stuff left behind to go bad while we were gone. Now I am in the process of cooking and getting some stuff in the freezer to be quickie meals later. That is taking up a decent portion of my day today. I have made applesauce bread as well as a few batches of chicken pot pie filling to freeze for later. I have some tortilla dough started to go with the chicken enchilada filling that is waiting in the fridge for dinner to roll around. I am thinking that either today or tomorrow, I will make a large batch of burritos and freeze them. I have done that once before, and it was nice to have a quick meal like that on hand. That will be a major production - cooking black beans, rice, and pinto beans, then putting the pinto beans in the food processor with some salsa, and mixing it all together with some corn, cheese, and seasonings. Then I will make a huge batch of tortillas and assemble a bunch of burritos. I wrap each one in foil individually, then store them in gallon ziploc bags. That way, I can use them like you would a store-bought frozen burrito, but they are a lot healthier. I don't put any lard or gook like that in there, and I use brown rice. I guess I am writing on this blog partly to show that although I haven't been writing a lot, I am pursuing some creative endeavors, and partly to convince myself to get some writing done, even if it is just a little. This counts as my own personal guilt trip/motivational speech. Now I had better go do something so I can claim that it worked!

I'm a worrywart, but I have wheat to play with now!

I am trying to get back into the swing of things with writing, and only succeeding somewhat. J has suggested that I try writing plays and dialogues and try to get them published. He thinks it would be good to submit some stuff to the company where he got the play the drama club will be doing in one-act competition this year. I am going to free write and brainstorm and try to come up with ideas for that. I ordered a hundred pounds of hard red wheat from a local store recently, and it has come in, so I am feeling the need to play in the kitchen some. I made some double-sized english muffins this morning, and right now some tomatoes are simmering with peppers, garlic, and onion to become the pizza sauce to make english muffin pizzas. I am also contemplating making some carrot cake muffins and some soft pretzels. I need to be good and not get too wild with all the baking I want to do. I don't want to make more than we can eat before it spoils. Baking does make a good creative outlet for me, though, although not quite as good as writing. I keep thinking about this winter. Everything I have seen and felt makes me believe it is going to be a nasty one in our area. I got particularly good harvests from both the berry brambles and the apple trees. There has been a lot of fog in the morning. My old, arthritic knee has been grousing a lot more than usual without any storms nearby to explain why. So all told, I am suspicious. We have plenty of wood for our wood stove to help us get through the winter as far as our power bill goes. I still wonder and worry, though, since I am a worrywart in general. I guess more than anything else, I need to write more so I can focus all my wondering in a more positive direction - wondering what I will do next with the story line instead of what will happen in a few months that I can't do anything about just yet. I could wonder what story lines and ideas I could come up with based on the idea of a hard winter.

canning apples, and a pig in my yard!

I have not been writing a whole lot in the last little while because the apple trees in my backyard, and the apples they have produced, demand attention. I have been canning apples with all my might. This year, I have mostly been making apple butter and apple cider - it makes more sense to can the stuff we use more frequently. I figured out a quick cheat for making cider. All the recipes I've found online talk about making applesauce and then straining it seventeen billion times! That gets rather tedious. i decided to try making applesauce, then watering it down significantly and boiling it to get the apple flavor all throughout. I then add the sugar and spices and can it. It works pretty well, and it still tastes just as good to me. Everything I have been looking at suggests a nasty winter for our area - both berry brambles and apple trees producing really well, lots of fog in the morning in august, and my old, arthritic knee grousing frequently - more so than usual. So I am imagining myself curled up a lot this winter with a mug of hot apple cider while the wood stove crackles away, giving the house a slight hint of wood smoke aroma. I am being naughty in not keeping up a good writing schedule right now. Part of it is that I have been called in to substitute teach a lot in August. (Strange to be called in that early in the school year!) Part of it also stems from being afraid that I won't be able to keep up the pace and quality of what I have been writing. I am getting too perfectionistic and intimidating myself out of writing. I need to stop it - to slap myself on the wrist and allow myself to write whatever I write, then go back and fix it if it needs fixing, and if it doesn't, enjoy what I have been able to create. It amazes me how many times I have to remind myself not to get so caught up in writing perfectly that I am afraid to write. All I can do is keep on going back to that when I get writer's block. In other random occurrences, I went to take my dog out in the yard to do his business, and found a black pig walking around in the front yard! The postman was coming by at that time, and I asked him if he knew who she belonged to, and he said that she lived down the road. I tried driving down to the house he indicated, but no one answered the door. Since she was hanging around, and i had apple cores from working on canning apples, I gave her some to munch on, and after she finished those, she went on her merry way. That's not something you get to do every day!

back to school and back to work

J has gone back to work with the new school year - a year padded up with extra days in case of snow. That means two things - I am going through sweetheart withdrawal right now, and I have a lot more time on my hands. I have been good and tried to focus my energies on getting myself back into gear. I am going back to the goal of at least one thousand words a day on the novel. Right now my word count on the rewrite of the novel is a couple hundred words shy of ten thousand, so I think I get to claim to be making some progress with it. J and I have been in the back yard examining the apple trees some, and I think they are going to follow the example of the black raspberry brambles and produce a lot this year. I have already talked to a few people about borrowing crock pots so I can make lots of apple butter. That seems to be what J likes best of the things I can make out of the apples, and we both tend to use it the most. I will can some apples to make pie out of later, but I think we will focus mostly on making apple butter, and I'll save the scraps to make apple cider vinegar if the batches i have in the works hiding in the back of my cabinets turn out well. It takes several months to make apple cider vinegar, but since I have the ingredients and space on hand, and I know we will use it, why not? J has made the proposition that I go back to using loaf pans with the bread I have been making instead of doing it french bread style. He said it was because the bread rises well enough that it falls a little bit and ends up being very short, wide bread. I will try that the next time I make bread. First we need to get through the bread I have made up. I am in a mood to cook a lot right now, but I need to be good and wait until we have eaten the food we have made up already. Maybe I will go after some of the canned apricots we have on hand and turn them into jam. That might quell the craving to cook something, right?

I am reestablishing the fact that I am really not as good about writing in the summertime. There is lots of other stuff to do, and it is so hard to convince myself to write. Another of my creative venues is currently out of reach, but if life goes according to plan, it will be possible again later today. We have been redoing the kitchen enough to yank the ancient double oven and the el cheapo countertop range out, and we should be able to pick up the new full-sized oven today. Our friend got everything ready with the wiring yesterday, and another friend is going to help me pick up the new oven later on today. I am excited about that since baking is one of my favorite creative outlets - you get instant gratification in the form of yumminess! The old oven's broil feature hadn't worked in a while, so I haven't been able to make things like pita bread and bagels. I am plotting to do that soon after the new oven is installed. I think I might even be able to use the full-sized cookie sheets for something other than letting english muffins rise! That is pretty exciting. I think I have been dubbed a good dog trainer now. My brother-in-law inherited a puppy from his girlfriend who can't be more than a couple of months old, and he requested that I take him into my home and house train him. The tiny thing is sitting on my lap as I type, twitching in a way that makes me suspect he is having an exciting dream. This puppy is still getting used to my dog, A. A is an old fellow - at least fifteen years old, maybe more. They will be about the same size when the puppy is full grown, from what I have read. He has been good so far about doing his business outside. I have been taking him out frequently and praising the heck out of him when he is successful. (It is hard to tell when he is peeing because of how short he is! I have to hunch over.) School starts in a couple of weeks for my husband. It is so early because this school system tends to be snow day happy. I think I have given myself permission to be a bum about writing until school starts - this is my summer vacation. I don't know if that is me being too lazy or allowing excuses to keep me from writing. It probably is. I don't think writing today would work very well, though. I do have a stove to go get at some point today, and then I know I will want to play with it. I will write soon, and I will relish it.

Well, I've done something crazy with the novel I have been writing. I set it all aside and decided I needed to rework it. I sat down with J and went back through what we had originally talked about for the plot and story line, and I realized that with my funky memory, I managed to mixed things up and get myself very much on a tangent. So I am doing a literary u-turn now and getting things straight again. I went through and wrote down the main points of the story in an outline format, and I still have the notes from before to help keep me straight too. But now I have about five thousand words written instead of sixty thousand. I feel good about it, though. This will help me keep the story straight better, and if nothing else, when I was writing the flub/first draft, I did succeed in getting to know the characters better. I am trying to get at least a thousand words a day written during the week, so about five thousand words per week. I have been running around and doing errands a lot today, so I have procrastinated the writing. Maybe I am blogging to help motivate myself to write - self-guilt-trip! At any rate, it is coming along, even with a big old u-turn as a part of the process.

almost done with the read-through

I am almost done with the read-through I've been doing of the novel to try to get back in my head where I was heading with things. It has helped a lot - I've been writing a summary as I went along to make sure I don't get lost again, and I have also been writing notes about plot themes and ideas I want to use later. It has been a good time to do it because I have been able to bring the hard copy with me to work when I get called in to sub at the school. The next step will be to take all the notes I've scribbled all over the hard copy and make those changes on the digital copy. Then I think I might actually be ready to go forward with the plot again. That will be both an exhilarating and a frightening experience. It is hard to switch from writer to editor and back again; they are two completely different modes of thought. I have been pursuing some other creative modes, or at least trying to. I have been knitting a lot - trying to make a bunch of stuff to sell at summer fairs and the like. I have also been trying to figure out a sewing pattern for cell phone holsters made out of recycled denim so i can make a bunch of those to sell as well. J succeeded in getting the tiller we inherited working, so now it is just a matter of figuring out where we want to put the garden exactly, and waiting for the rain to stop enough that we can till and prepare the yard to be turned into a garden. I thinned out the cabbage sprouts we have the other day, and most of them seem to be recovering well. J said they are fairly hardy plants, which is good, since I am working with them! I have a long history of not doing well in caring for plants. we shall see, I guess. I am doing a lot of creativity in the kitchen today - cooking up a chicken and dividing its meat among a few dishes to be frozen and served later. I am also making some bread and some english muffins. I will have a lot of dishes to wash today, I think. That is okay. Cooking is fun for me - one of the few times you can still make a big old mess without getting fussed at too much, and when I wash the dishes afterwards, I get to play with bubbles in the sink! It is the small stuff in life that is most enjoyable, right?

I have been plugging away at going over the draft of the novel thus far in a hard copy. I don't know if it is the warmer weather, or that I have gotten to a certain point where I feel the need to review, or a combination of those sorts of things, but going back through what I have so far is helping me get a better picture of where I am going with this project. I think it might be partly that I am trying to get what I have so far in long-term memory better. Whatever it is, I feel like I am actually making some progress now instead of just beating my head against the wall. As far as creativity for the outdoors goes, we have a lot of sprouts starting to come up. They are still in the sun porch, being protected from weather, and also waiting until the garden plot outside is ready. J got the tiller to start yesterday after slaving away at it for several evenings. I am proud of him for getting that figured out. I know I don't have nearly the capacity he does to look at things and how they are supposed to work and be able to figure out how to fix them. So far the sprouts I have coming up are peppers, cabbage, sunflowers, eggplant, and some melons. I think we are going to buy tomatoes that are already started because those are supposed to be really hard to start from seed. I have been knitting some - mostly pot scrubbers with the hope of selling them at different events over the summer. I am thinking about trying to figure out how to make a cell phone holder out of denim that has a loop so it can button onto a belt, belt loop, or purse strap. I am still working that out in my mind. We'll see what I can come up with.

I haven't posted in a while, mostly because it is prime substitute teacher season, and I have been busy. I have gotten some work done despite the subbing, though, since I decided to go with a hard copy of the novel draft - one that I can bring around with me (and bang against my head if necessary)! I have felt more like I know where I am going again after reading through some of it. As of today, I have gotten done reading through about eighty single-spaced pages of it so far, and written notes and ideas on there, as well as writing a summary on notebook paper for me to refer to as I go along, to make sure I don't get the story line too mixed up in my head. It is coming along better; even though I am not adding new stuff to the word count each day, I do feel like I am making progress again. That is reassuring. We are almost to the end of the school year now, so J will be home more before too long. He is still trying to convince the inherited tiller to work; his current suspicion is that it might have too much engine oil in it, and that is why the engine won't start. In the meantime, our seedlings are happily hanging out in small pots in the sun porch. I have a lot of cabbage sprouts, some sunflowers, lots of peppers, and melons and eggplant are also starting to sprout. It is fun to watch them grow and think I had a small part in their growth. Most of what I have been knitting these days is small pot scrubbers. I am hooked on using them instead of sponges because they are machine washable. After washing something like a greasy frying pan, it feels good to just stick it in the washing machine instead of trying to get it decent again with dish soap and running water. I am told that doing it this way doesn't give bacteria nearly the chance to grow, either. I am thinking about trying to sell some at craft fairs and summer events as the season goes on. I have a friend who does other handmade stuff to sell at those sorts of events, and he is willing to sell some stuff for me. I am also thinking about making some sort of cell phone holder out of recycled denim that can be buttoned to a purse strap or a belt loop, but that idea is still very much in the works. we'll see if I can figure it out.

Rediscovering the symbolism I was weaving in there

I got some decent work done today in going through and reviewing the draft thus far. I think one of the big things that had me stuck was that I had lost track of the symbolism and trains of meaning I had been weaving into the story line. So going back through and doing an edit/review thing is good right now. I am taking notes on the story line as I go, as well as the symbolism I want to keep using. I still have a long way to go in reading through and noting everything, but I am working on it. I like the idea of setting the timer for thirty minutes and doing a spurt of editing, then leaving it be for a while. If I feel up to doing another spurt later in the day, I can. If not, I will work on it more the next day. Editing feels like heavier work to me than writing a rough draft. I wonder if all writers feel that way, or if different writers are more skilled with different parts of the writing process. That would be an interesting question to ask of my fellow writers at the next writer's club meeting. I just have to succeed in remembering to ask it!
I have done more creative work in the kitchen today than I have in my novel. I made pumpkin bread and pumpkin muffins, as well as a pan of beef pot pie. I am subbing on Friday as well as Monday and Tuesday, so I figure I should have some food on hand to bring for lunches in the next few days.
We are also plotting some creativity in conjunction with nature - a garden in the backyard this year. So far, we just have seeds that we are starting inside. The cabbage and the sunflowers have started to sprout, and I can see the beginnings of a sprout for one of the peppers. J laughs at me when I say so, but I keep declaring the seedlings cute. It is fun to water them and watch them grow.

keep on plugging

I have been working on the plot to pick through the hard copy of my novel thus far. I am liking this process in part because it is more tactile and mobile. I can flip through pages rather than scrolling up and down on a screen, and I can scribble all over it as ideas and possibilities come to me. I remember feeling this way about writing plays when I was in high school too. I also like the mobility of it because I can take it with me as we get into substitute teaching season (everyone still has sick days and vacation days, and the end of the school year is approaching!). I am going to keep on plugging away at the hard copy of the novel draft. I am also knitting more. I found a good solution to my wrists feeling weak and tired. It involves stealing a tennis ball from the dog and squeezing it for five seconds at a time, ten reps per session, three sessions a day. I am doing a little physical therapy on myself that way. I tack it on at the end of my little interval workouts on the stationary bike, along with some other exercises to keep different grouchy parts of me from misbehaving (knee, back, etc), and I am stronger and happier. I am going to keep on plugging with the knitting, the writing, and J and I are also starting to grow seedlings for our garden this year - another creative outlet. I am excited about the first sprouts coming up - the cabbage beat all the other seeds, with the sunflowers a close second. We will see which seeds decide to sprout next. This is fun to watch.

a plot to conquer writer's block (hopefully)

I have noticed more and more how much I am doing the writer's block thing right now. I haven't gotten a lot of new stuff written in a while - I have been coasting on what I wrote with the last bout of good writing. So my plot for now is to work my way back to being able to do another good bout of writing. It feels like it is time to get the vehicle of my writing serviced - tune up type stuff. So I have printed out the rough draft so far - all of it - 116 pages single-spaced. I am reading through it right now and trying to pick out discrepancies and things that need to be fixed. I am not sure how many times I will need to read through it. Maybe this will be partly getting things in my memory correctly that I have written before. When I feel fairly confident that I have things straight there, I want to go through and make more of a plan of how I am going to work from what I have towards the rest of the story line. I want to make sure I keep myself pointed in the right direction. My goal is to get back to my daily goal of getting 2,500 words a day written. One thing I need to figure out is how to set a goal like that for editing and reviewing purposes. I am not sure if it would work better to think in terms of time spent - like setting a timer - or pages reviewed and edited. I am leaning towards the timer because it is less biased. There will be some pages that won't need more than just a quick read through, while others will need a lot more attention. So measuring my edit and review efforts with a timer seems like a better way to do it. For now I will review how much time I spend each day editing and reviewing, and go from there in deciding how much counts as a worthy goal for each day.

not meds - now what?

Well, it wasn't my meds that were off. I'm not really sure what it was. - maybe J's sinus infection and temporary sleep apnea throwing me off. I have had a lot of stuff going on that leaves me feeling really discouraged. We need a new range; ours is dying. I am still tired, and the best I can figure is that it has to do with allergies and lack of rest. J has had to work really hard, and I am just hoping that things will change soon so he doesn't have to. I have felt off and fuzzy-brained enough that I haven't gotten much writing done. I have just been napping and subsisting. I was crying a lot last night and this morning because I don't feel like I do enough to pull my own weight; I feel like a burden on those around me. I feel like it is the middle of winter again and I don't have any access to sunshine. I've been trying to write and knit and find aid in my creative outlets, but that is harder to do when I feel so fuzzy-brained. It is hard to concentrate. I have been reading more, which is something. I tend to have a harder time reading for long periods of time because my memory makes it harder to keep track of what I've read. I have been reading shorter pieces and stuff where the story line isn't as hard to follow. That is helping some. I am ready for some resolution or change soon, though. I feel like I have been at the end of my rope just hanging on for a while now.

the unsettling kind of tired

I am tired today, the unsettling kind of tired. I have been for several days now. I got blood work done last week, and I am hoping that it will confirm my suspicion - that my anti-seizure medicine levels are off, and they just want adjusting. I do not want to have to switch medicines right now. It is an arduous process involving some trial and error. I feel like junk during the trial and error period - like a zombie version of myself. I have been feeling well and decent for a good long while now, so I cannot fuss too much. I just hate having to stop and wait a while instead of continuing to live my life. I hate being so disoriented and tired that I have to stop and rearrange the letters I have written on the page because my brain is having a hard time translating my thoughts into actions. Writing is what I love to do most of all, and when I feel like this, I have a hard time even doing that. For now, I will rest and wait and hope this will be an easy transition into whatever new combination of medicines will be best to keep me from misbehaving with seizures.

how to make it work while it's still rough?

I have felt a little rough the last few days, so today is the first day in a while that I have worked on my novel. I am still trying to figure out where to draw the line as far as getting the plot line in order without going overboard with revising while the draft is still rough - while I am still trying to get the story line on the page. I don't really know what I am doing here. I don't know how much is just setting things straight and how much is being obsessive and perfectionistic. I am trying to just work on it in small doses so I don't get too carried away and see if that helps me some. I have done one dose so far today, and I am thinking I will do one more before the day is out. Tomorrow, I will be substitute teaching, so I won't get much chance to work on the novel. I will get the chance to knit some while I watch kids do their assignments. That will be fun. I have a hat I'm working on knitting as a present for a friend; I will get some good progress done on that. I don't know if it is just me, but I always feel that I am neglecting something, no matter how I choose to spend my time. I guess that is just me being too perfectionistic, though. I need to relax on that score - a whole lot!

more today

I was a good girl and sat down and worked on the novel for a good while. That felt good. I am still trying to control my perfectionism and just go through and fix the major story line flaws I have discovered instead of doing nit-picking editing as I go along looking for plot gaps. It isn't always working, but I am trying. If nothing else, I am having fun with it. I know that is important. I also spent some time daydreaming today about what it would be like when I get this book done - and if I can get it published. I know that is a pie-in-the-sky dream, but it doesn't hurt to dream some. It's better than staring at the ground all the time! One thing I have noticed about my writing style as I have taken snippets with me to writer's club at the library is that I tend to be wordy - my colleagues frequently tell me to get to the point instead of leaving my readers hanging and thinking, "blah, blah, blah - what happens next?" That will be something to address more when I really am revising instead of just going back and fixing a few plot holes. I am leaving all the "blah-blah" in there for now because I don't know yet what I might be able to use for a twist in the story or some symbolism just yet. It doesn't come out of my brain perfectly carved and polished. It will get there, though.

got some done today

Well, I didn't get much done on Monday, mostly because I was still doing the tired thing. I did get some done today, though. Where I have been either tired or busy in the last little while, I had two weeks' worth of suggestions on about six pages of the novel. I went through and made the changes I thought would be helpful to keep the novel going in the right direction. At least I can claim to have done something today, right? I will keep on plugging away tomorrow - trying to get the story line straight some more and get to where I can plow forward with the rough draft.

subbing, among other things

This post might feel a little bit like a confession. Maybe I should start a procrastinator's anonymous club. Hello, my name is L and I procrastinated writing this week. (Hello, L). I had some decent reasons. We went to visit my sister B on my birthday since schools were closed for snow, and I subbed two days this week and had to get some routine blood work done another day. I have also been tired this week - I am still trying to figure out why. So I did not get a whole lot of anything done as far as writing goes. I have two weeks worth of pages from writer's club meetings with comments and suggestions that I still need to work into my novel. Right now, I am trying to convince myself not to berate myself too much. I had an off week, but that does not mean I cannot do better next week. I am trying to treat writing like a job, so I am leaving the weekends out of it unless there is something I want to jot down. I will start again on Monday trying to catch up and get back into the groove. Sometimes it feels like the groove is a high ideal, but I will continue to strive for it.

experimenting

I am still working on going back and fixing the elements of the story line thus far that are out of whack. It is harder to figure out how to measure progress when I am doing that than it is to measure progress on a rough draft - just looking at word count. Setting specific goals is helpful for me - both to maintain productivity and to prove to myself that I am making some progress. I guess I get to claim to be very goal-oriented. The best method I have figured out so far to measure progress as I work on revising is using a timer - working in fifteen minute spurts and seeing how many of those I can accomplish in a day. Doing too much more than fifteen minutes tends to cause me to get lost in what I am doing and feel overwhelmed, but spacing them out a little bit helps, and also gives my subconscious a chance to mull things over and come up with different ways to approach things. I am thinking a lot about methods for revising because I know it will be something I'll use a lot as I go along both in this novel and other ones I write later.

about perfectionism

I have been busy with a lot of different things. I have been substitute teaching, I have been getting other stuff done around the house. I think I have been procrastinating because I am feeling the influence of undue perfectionism. This is ironic, because as I have been thinking about it, the novel I am writing right now is essentially about perfectionism. A major theme is focusing so much on making things perfect that you end up messing things up beyond repair - or at least so difficult to repair that the one who made the mistake will never see things set right. As I write, when it is time to fix something that does not fit with the story line, it is difficult to go back and just fix it. I get stuck trying to fix everything before I go on. I want to set it all right before I go on. I forget that this is still a rough draft. The obsessive fixing needs to come later, after I have things laid out more. I am trying to be too perfectionistic while I write a novel that has at its core a theme of the danger of perfectionism. Ah, the joy of irony. I am going to try to go through and finish making the changes I need to make to get the story line back on track. Then I am going to continue to get the story line on the page. I don't want this bump in the road to stop me, even though I have been slacking for the past several days because I am not sure what I should do next. The only way to figure out what to do next is simply to try something. Today I will try something, then something else, then something else. I will get it done a single task at a time.

a pause - attack of the appointments!

I subbed a few times this week, as well as getting kidnapped and taken out to lunch. Next week, I have three different appointments: gynecologist, optometrist, and neurologist. I am feeling the lack of writing time, but as I have been waiting for the chance to write more, I have been mulling things over in my mind. I know I have a lot of changes to make in the novel to make it flow correctly; I feel like I'm tripping over a rug that needs to be straightened so it will lay flat on the ground again! I have made some notes on the sticky note computer program (J put that on my computer for me!) to help me keep track of what needs to be reviewed and altered. I think I may go back through and double check things a few times before I continue on. There isn't much point in continuing to write when you might be following a train of thought that is going to be cut out anyway. It is time to get my writing back on the right track again - time for the first round of revising and double-checking. I will let it be until after we finish traveling and visiting this weekend, and after I have conquered my appointments. In the meantime, I am expressing my creativity in the kitchen - I blanched, diced, and froze some tomatoes that would have gone bad if I left them in the fridge, and now I am getting ready to make some potsticker filling so the cabbage in the fridge doesn't go bad before we get back from all of our running amok.

progress slowed

In talking with J somewhat over the past few days, I have figured out that I have gotten some details of the novel mixed up. That may not seem like much, but to me it is more like having the compass off by a few degrees when you start your journey. It will not make a big difference at first, but as you go along, it will throw you off more and more. So I am not writing any new stuff today; I am just going back through and double-checking and/or correcting the inaccuracies and errors I have in there. Today, and possibly the next few days, is for editing.
On a more positive note, I did find the outline I have been going by. I have been looking for it the past few days. I thought I had lost it, thinking I had put it in the black notebook where I keep printouts and notes about my work. It turns out that it was hiding underneath the two thesauruses I have sitting here next to my keyboard. Now I feel foolish. If I had kept that in plain sight all along, I would not have gotten off course nearly so much as I was writing along. Oh, well - lesson learned. If you make a plan, be sure to refer to it now and again!

technical stuff

I haven't gotten quite as much done today because I have been mired in technical details. I am getting to the point in the story where the scientific aspects of the events are important to how things roll, and I have had to go back and delete and fix some stuff just to make sure it all makes sense. Better to do it now than to have to go back and fix even more stuff later. I did break eighty thousand words of rough draft today, even with all the deleting and fixing of stuff! That counts for something, maybe even a smiley face. =)

back in the swing of things . . . at least a little bit

I did not get to write on Friday because I was subbing, and I had appointments on Monday, so today was the first day I have written in a few days. When I miss a few days, it is hard to start up again, I feel like I have lost my groove a little bit. I also did a lot of cooking today. I guess that counts as part of my creativity for the day. I made some french bread, some banana bread, and a turkey pot pie (this will be the last of the turkey from Christmas - out of my freezer!). I did write some today, but I did not get up to the usual goal of 2,500 words. i am 1,350 short. Still, getting some done as I try to get back into the swing of things is better than postponing it another day and getting even more out of my groove. I will work on it more tomorrow, and try to work more in the morning when my brain is more coherent. I am getting close to eighty thousand words total. I will easily pass that if I do the 2,500 tomorrow. Little by little, I will finish this story line.

part bum, part substitute teacher

On Wednesday, I did not get to write because I was substitute teaching. I pretended to be an art teacher, so I got paid to sit at a desk knitting and watching kids draw pictures. Not too terrible a thing to get paid to do! On Thursday, I was a bum. I felt down and did not choose to do much about it. I had to make some phone calls to try to keep our finances straight, and worrying about that (among other things) kept me from doing my writing. So today I am going to work on getting back into the groove of things. Wednesday evening, I also learned that a friend I grew up with died in a car crash - he was a little less than a year older than I am. That sort of thing is staggering to hear. It makes you step back and wonder if you are using the precious time you have in your life as well as you could. I know I did not do as well with that on Wednesday. Maybe I was busy trying to process things. I don't know. I do know that I want to get a full day's writing done today. I want to reach my goal of 2,500 words today. meeting that goal will put me over 77,000 words total on the rough draft. I am plugging away at this piece even with all the interruptions and distractions life is throwing at me.
Okay, I have finished writing for the day, or at least accomplished my goal for the day. I am up to 77,664 words on the rough draft. It is interesting when you get closer to the end of the novel; it is a major change in your line of thought. Instead of coming up with plot twists to throw in there, you have to start to think about how you will weave all of those twists together into a satisfying ending. I am getting closer to the end now, but I still have a while to go. I am also starting to think about the sequels J and I have envisioned. I need to make sure I have an idea of what I need to be setting up for the next novel. This will be a major project when all is said and done. I am having fun with it, though, and feeling like I am accomplishing more with it than I have with anything in a long time.

plugging away

I did get my 2,500 words written today, a little more than that. My word count for the rough draft is now at 75,146. I am starting to feel like some of the characters are feeling a little bit too mirror-image-ish, but I will figure out as I go along - if that will work with the story line and symbolism I end up using or not. The goal for right now is to get it all down on the page. I can worry about fine-tuning it after it is all written. I feel better today than I did yesterday. Writing does wonders for my depression this time of year! I keep wondering how long the novel will be when I finish it. I also wonder about the sequels and how they will play out. J and I have talked some about the subsequent novels - this story idea is the beginning of a series! Until I get it written, nothing is etched in stone. Even then, I will probably do a decent amount of revising. I find that I love the process of discovery that is involved in writing a novel. I have some things mapped out in my mind, but I couldn't possibly map everything out before I write it. For one thing, I would not be able to keep it all straight in my head - not with my memory! So I keep track of the skeleton of the writing and see what happens when I flesh it out. (how's that for a pun?!?) I am thinking that this afternoon, I might go visit our neighbor if she isn't busy, and maybe bring my knitting bag with me to let my wrists do something different - help them stretch out after all the typing they've done today!

seeing the shape more

I wrote on Friday as far as the novel went, but I did not succeed in writing on here about it. I got 72,500 words completed on the rough draft. I am seeing the shape of what I am writing more and more. I am actually starting to see how I could wrap things together. It is kind of like seeing all the loops at the end of a knitting project and casting off. I am not there yet - I still have a lot of loose ends to fiddle with, but I am getting closer and closer. I could see the rough draft of the novel being more than 100,000 words long. I don't really know how long it will be - just until the story line is completed. It is kind of funny to me. I remember a couple of years ago when I first tried nanowrimo, the idea of trying to write 1,667 words per day seemed like craziness, and the prospect of finishing a 50,000 word novel in a month was sheer madness. now i am doing a minimum goal of 2,500 words per day as a regular routine. I guess that means trying something like nanowrimo has helped me grow significantly as a writer. I do have to admit that I was a silly head on Thursday, though. I went to writer's club after substitute teaching, but I did not succeed in bringing a couple of pages of the manuscript with me to edit and revise like I usually do. Silly me! Oh, well. I had my little story dice (I think their official title is story cubes or something like that) with me, so that was my contribution to writer's club this week. I am thinking more and more about what will happen when I finish the rough draft of the novel. I don't know as much about revision and tightness of story line as I do about just dumping all of the ideas out on the page. This will be a learning experience. I have revised pieces before - papers for school and stage plays. I have not finished and edited a novel before. I will be playing that by ear. You do have to start somewhere, though. That is all there is to it. I just have to do it a little bit at a time - have a minimum goal just like I have been doing with the rough draft. I just have to figure out how to measure the goal.

being a bum because of fear

I was a bum yesterday, and the best way I can think of to describe why is fear. Every so often I just get afraid of writing for various reasons - afraid that it is a mirage and it really isn't going as well as I think it is, afraid that I won't be able to keep it up, afraid that something will go wrong and mess things up - pick one. The fear tends to immobilize me. Yesterday I did not write anything beyond my morning scribbles in my journal and notes to myself in my planner and to-do notebook to make sure I did not forget anything. I did forget the writing, though, and yesterday evening, I was depressed. This time of year, writing feels like sunshine to me. I have started writing on the novel already today, and typing a blurb on the blog is me taking a break, and also making a promise to myself that I will finish the full 2,500 words I have set out to do today. I know I probably won't be able to do the 2,500 words tomorrow because of the simple fact that I will be substitute teaching. Long as my arms are, I probably shouldn't try to type from the high school, and I should probably focus more on keeping the students from doing anything foolish while they are in my class. Knowing the teacher I am subbing for, I will probably be making them watch a video and take notes or do some worksheets, or something along those lines, so I will bring my knitting bag along with me. I can knit well enough to be able to watch the kids and knit at the same time, so that will be my creativity for tomorrow, at least until I get to the writer's club meeting at the library tomorrow evening. But for now, I am going to stop procrastinating by typing away at the blog, and get some rough draft written . . .
Okay, I have written for a while now, and I managed to break the seventy thousand word mark on my rough draft today. That involved writing 2,983 words today - more than the 2,500 goal, but since I was so close to breaking seventy thousand anyway, I thought I would plug along and conquer that today, especially since I will be subbing tomorrow and not able to write as much. In the story line, two characters died today, so the writing was rather dramatic. I am going to leave it as is for a while and review it later; I think I am too close to it right now to look at it and decide if it is too cheesy or overdone or anything like that. This is the part where I keep rough draft writing and editing separate. i might have to do a little victory dance for having broken seventy thousand today! This is a lot better than the immobilized fear I let myself focus on yesterday.

foggy

I just finished my 2,500 words on the novel for the day. I am trying to keep that routine in place. I am later in finishing it today than usual, but I think that is in large part because I slept horribly last night and went back to sleep for a while after J went to work. I am getting to the part in the novel where some of the characters are going to start dying, and I am having a hard time figuring out how to portray that. I am kind of attached to these characters now, but it is necessary for the plot line. My word count for the rough draft is now 67,033. It is getting up there! I still have a lot of story line to cover, but I also tend to overwrite in the rough draft and then cut and make it tighter when I revise. Who knows how long this book will end up being. I guess it is kind of fitting that it is rather foggy and cloudy down here in my area as I write that - it feels like my view of how things will go with this novel is kind of foggy right now too - I am just going ahead with what I can see so far, and I will figure more out when it gets easier to see as I go along.

back to the routines, mostly

I am trying to get back into the routines I have set for myself. I am mostly over the cold or flu or whatever that was - just a little bit of a cough now. (I think I was terrible and shared it with J - oops!)
I did start to get myself back into the writing groove yesterday. I did not add significantly to my word count - I am up to 61,875 words as of yesterday. I did get myself out of a writing funk by going back through and fixing a gaping plot hole in the story line. I realized that it doesn't work well to want to have the main character alive at the end of the novel if he is in grave and inescapable danger early on! silly me! So I went through and changed that up - put a different character in his place and had him further away and supervising from another location. Now I do not feel like I am beating my head against a wall so much as I write, and the 2,500 words should not be so hard to achieve.
I have tackled a different sort of creativity first today before going to the writing, mostly because it takes a while to work with yeast. I have been working on making bagels! I found a good recipe online - learned that it works better to broil them for a couple of minutes on each side before you boil them, and then you can bake them without fear of shriveling bagels. I made a test batch with this recipe yesterday - cut the recipe in half just in case, but it worked well. My only complaint was that the bagels were very small. I made three varieties today - regular, brown sugar cinnamon raisin, and cheese with crushed red pepper - six of each. We will definitely have some bagels to munch on in the next little while!
Okay, I have written my 2,500 words on the novel today. It took me a while; I think I am still getting back into the groove of writing this much in day after the holidays. I also had the bagels - I made eighteen of them, and they all turned out yummy!