A Funny Story

Let me tell you a funny story. I sat down tonight at the kitchen table to do some actual writing. Keeping in mind the co-writers that usually sit in the other chairs and that they were absent, I began to write. Of course I had to check my email first and then I moved on to Facebook and after too long a time I gently reminded myself to get back on track. That worked for about thirty minutes and then I had an epiphany. My eldest had recently moved out and it was time I repossessed his room to write in. I spent the next hour scrubbing and polishing the long abused desk and found a usable chair and dug in.

Reminded of “The Three Bears” and the girl with the golden hair it all felt just right. The writing Karma just flowed so nice. Another hour and two pages later it was time to stop. Tomorrow is another day.

RWA Conference 2012

Day three of the conference is coming to a close and I am in nirvana. The intensity is so strong here. Just walking thru the lobby radiates the forces of a combined effort by almost every person I can see to walk, eat, talk, and be romance. Every nook and cranny, every seat and square tile on the floor is owned by a past, present or future romance talent.  I have never ridden on the New York Subway but this is the rush and crush of bodies I picture passing through the turnstiles every day.  What makes this a happy place is all this energy is positive. All the attendees, volunteers, speakers, and icons are friendly and more than willing to speak to you, help you and guide you to your own personal pinnacle of writer satisfaction. My time is almost up here tonight and I am missing a workshop to play hooky to come and write and post this but the need was there and I decided to follow. My slow crawly path to writing has taken another swift kick to the pants. I'm looking forward to making that energy last. 

On our first night here I tagged along to the Golden Heart nominees meet and great dinner. Here are a few pics of the wonderfully large group.

Sarah

Sheri-the woman of the hour

Three for Three

WRITING—last Friday was a writer’s day for me. It started as soon as I got back from dropping off my son at school. Since I work nights my Friday is the first day of the weekend. I had a whole long list of things to do. I made a decision to forgo the list and just write for as long as I could without interruption. I was surprised at how well this worked for me. I completed the rewrites from last Friday, edited the pages from my critique group, and produced several more pages of my own work. I am looking forward to working like this again.

DIET—there was no progress on this front. I am still struggling with which meal to eat as dinner and which to eat as lunch. I make my family the evening meal at 11:30 in the morning and put it away for them to heat up later. I want to eat that meal myself while it is still hot. This works some days and not on some others. The problem is that some days I don’t cook until just before I leave for work and eating a big meat just before driving is not good for your digestion. And then if I take it to work to eat then I feel heavy and slow at work. I have tried several variations of what to eat but have not hit on the solution. Call it a work in progress.

EXERCISE—of course there was no improvement this week. Saturday morning after my writer’s group meeting I stood at the same number as I did last week. In a surfing session on the internet I found this site. http://www.bing.com/videos/watch/video/1-mile-walk/atcexz6c

I was intrigued by the line that said you could walk a mile at home. I do not have long stretches of empty spaces in my house. I don’t believe many people do. I followed the link and started the video. I was pleasantly surprised by the simplicity of the steps and loved how you could do it all in such a small space. The best part of the whole thing is that I could do it in my bare feet. As I said before I am very flatfooted and have a hard time exercising in any kind of shoes. I recently read an article about barefoot runners doing marathons. I wondered if that would work for me. I have done this twice before now and was happy with the results. I just have to be careful of slippery surfaces.

Welcome to Wednesday

Welcome to Wednesday, sometimes called Hump Day. It is the day for overcoming hurdles or making it past the middle of something. I have a lot of the same feelings about this day only mine extent into the half empty part of the hump. By Wednesday I’m thinking over all the things that didn’t get done this week and all the missed opportunities to write or even participate in life outside my own little world. So Thursday and Friday are my power days. I work hard to catch up and then on Saturdays and Sundays I start over.

WRITING: I spent a lot of time this weekend working on research for the novel I am working on. I love doing research. If given the chance to make a living doing research I would probably jump for it. Since that is not going to happen I have to stop myself at some point and get to the business of the actual writing. For the book I am working on now I am pretty much finished with the research. Maybe a little more down the line will be needed. So I should be writing right now. Working on the next pages for chapter one. The goal, finish chapter one by next Friday (4000). I want to finish 10,000 by the end of the month.

DIET: Still working on making small changes. This week we moved to 100 percent whole wheat bread to go with the whole wheat pasta. Non-fat yogurt and non-fat milk will be added at the grocery store trip this week. Still working on the adding of more fruit and veggies’. The bread, yogurt, milk will be easy. For me the fruit and veggies’ will be the hardest.

EXERCISE: Keeping to the schedule this week so far. I have these wonderful workout tapes I bought many years ago that were from a popular workout show in the 90’s. The reason why they are so good is because when they made the recordings of the 30 minute show they took out the commercials and so each segment is only 20 minutes long and there are three segments on each tape. I bought seven tapes. I can watch a new one each time for months. I can do this and I did yesterday morning. I will workout again tomorrow. Next week I will do the tape three days and stick with that schedule for awhile. Each day in between I am doing stretches and sit-up. I’ve lost 1 pound since Saturday. Still better than nothing.

Split Three Ways

Welcome to my blog!

I have posted before about doing the NaNoWriMo but then felt I had nothing else to write about. I kept hearing to write whatever you want to. That helped a lot (not) and got me no closer to a true idea. Until now. So here is what I want to write about. My writing, my struggles with dieting and my never ending love hate relationship with exercising. So join me, gripe with me and sympathize with me.

WRITING—Last nights meeting of my Friday Night Write group felt like the most productive meeting we have had. A week ago we marked the six month anniversary of our blog and a little over a year as a writing group. We have experienced a lot of ups and downs in that short time. Each of us writes with different styles and talents. I would call the last six months our breaking in period. We have learned more on the craft of writing and at the same time discovered our critique partners’ individual style. This has been a learning process all the way around. I see this as a very promising progression. I am currently writing straight romance, but who knows, one day I may want to write romantic suspense or delve into the world of literary fiction. I believe our combined talents bring out a broader WHAT IF to each of our stories.

Our current goal was to bring at least two pages to the table. With that done we will turn towards our next goal. Our ultimate goal is to complete our entire novel before the end of the year.

Check out our blog for our weekly rundown of how we are progressing.

DIET—I’ve lost only half a pound this week. Not the goal I wanted but a good end to the week. I am a serial weigher. I know the consensus is to only weigh your self once a week for a true picture of your weight loss but I have been weighing myself every morning for many years. It is a hard habit to break. I do use Saturday morning as my weekly mark. This is the morning after our meeting and depending on what we eat and how much coffee I drink this is my starting point for the rest of the week. I drink a little less coffee these days but I just can’t give it up on Friday nights.

EXERCISE—I did not stick to the workout schedule this week. I only did the stretches and sit-ups twice. No walking. I’m not a big fan of walking because of my flat feet. Yeah I know that’s not a good excuse. My goal this week is to work out to my tapes twice and do the stretches and sit-ups three times.

I’ll be back on Wednesday.

Beginning, Middle and The End

Day one of year two. Hi again. So lets talk about last year a minute. I did participate in the magical land of NaNoWriMo in 08 and fell behind miserably. But I did write over 20,000 words. So to me that was an accomplishment. I learned many of the ways of the great NaNo wizards and hope to use that great wisdom to move through this years efforts. I did work on the outline for my new story but did not get far. So this year I'm going to use this blog to walk the steps I travel as I write. Hence the title for today.

The Beginning-I have dozens of them. I find beginnings easy to write. Not hooks or full chapters, only the first few paragraphs that tell me who takes center stage and where they are and what the problem is with the perfect picture I have devised.

The Middle-This should be easy. Everything happens in the middle. All the twists and turns and the action climbs higher and higher.

The End-The big climax and the resolution to all the loose ends. Of course they live happily ever after.

That all sounds so easy. But it is not easy as I can attest to. Sometimes you just have to think, think, think till either your head explodes or the answer does.

So that is today's goal. Wish me luck and hopefully I will be back tomorrow with my head still intact.

Opening Day at NaNoWriMo

The official first day of getting ready for NaNoWriMo is up and running. The home page is full of useless but fun stuff that you can waste your precious writing time on. That's why they give us a full 30 days before the real start to get all that looky-lou out of our system. They offer a lot of support in the form of information and forums. You can get a mentor or set up your own challenges with friends or other writers from the far reaches of the globe. Check out the latest and greatest tech upgrades for the site and drool over the prizes for completing your word count.

I am looking forward to our regularly (more or less) scheduled letters from the man himself, the great and wonderful Chris Baty. Our own personal cheerleader who will try his hardest to inspire, cajole and help push us along.

One last very important piece of information I will take advantage of for this year is to try and finish as many of my obligations during the month of October so I will have as much time as possible to just write.http://www.nanowrimo.org/