The Ready Writer

I can't believe I forgot to write a stats post!  Life has been a little crazy right now, so here it is a couple of days late. Monday: Added 154 words to Chapter 2. Tuesday: No Writing Wednesday: Added another 154 words to Chapter 2. Thursday:  Worked on some dialogue exercises. Friday: No Writing Saturday: No Writing Sunday: More dialogue and scene work. Last week was a little tough.  My work schedule is changing a little and I am preparing for company this weekend.  I definitely did not want to have 3 days of no writing...but that's what happened. However, the scenes I am writing are good. I am getting some of the crucial scenes written and mapped out so I am excited to see some work and progress even though its in a way that I am not used to.

In light of the tragedy in Orlando a couple of weeks ago, I thought I would write a little something here to combat the hateful religious rhetoric that is all over the place lately. So I have been secular for most of my life.  My parents never raised me in a church, and other than going to the churches that my friends went to after a slumber party, I never really went, or had much interest in going.  I considered myself somewhere between spiritual and agnostic, and loved the history of the earth based religions (like Paganism) because they showed value of the Earth that we live on. I honestly can't say when I became a Jesus Follower (I have a little trouble calling myself a Christian because of the baggage and drama around it), it was probably around 5 or 6 years ago, and it wasn't until this last October that I wanted to start going to church. I'm going to say here that I don't think you need to go to church to be a good person of faith or a good person, it was j

So one of my biggest writing goals is figuring out a writing schedule.  I don't like just writing "when I can" because I either don't have time, or I find something else that is "more important".  I need to learn to schedule it out during the week.  Treat it as a 3rd job (because to me it is). There are 2 common times that people write: In the Morning In the Evening Now both of these have their good parts.  Writing in the morning when you're in a dreamy state, not yet awake, allows you to write with little to no censorship, to just freely put your ideas down. Writing in the evening allows you to wind down, to end your night on a high note, and can get you into a dreamy calm state so you can sleep. But, I'm not a morning person.  AT ALL.  I have a hard enough time getting up with enough time to get to work by 9:30 in the morning.  Let alone, get up even earlier to write.  I have said a million times that I am allergic to mornings.  It'

Hello readers! So here are this weeks stats: Monday: Edited a friends piece.  The awesome thing about having writer friends is that I get to read awesome stuff and edit some awesome stuff. So while I wasn't working on my OWN work, I kept my writing brain active. Tuesday: Edited a friends piece.  And I did setting development for my Haunted Hotel piece. Wednesday: No writing progress. Thursday:  Worked on scene development and added 24 words to chapter 2 of my Haunted Hotel piece. Friday: No writing progress. Saturday: Scene development for my Haunted Hotel piece. Sunday: Character development for my Haunted Hotel piece. So if you all remember my writing resistance entry, I mentioned that my progress was going to change a little bit.  I'm putting my Haunted House project on the back burner until August. I'm also not doing much free writing.  I've been working through this book  and each day is an exercise and with each exercise I am writing a scene.  H

THE FIRST PORTION OF THIS POST IS FROM THE UCC SUNDAY BULLETIN PRINT OUT. THESE IDEAS ARE NOT MY OWN I JUST LIKE THEM AND I'M NOT MAKING MONEY ON THESE THINGS.  MY THOUGHTS WILL FOLLOW. "God is still speaking! God is a god of thunder and wind and rain. But we also know that God speaks in a still small voice whenever and wherever hearts are open and there is a cry for justice. That experience of a still speaking God, addressed by our denomination's identity materials, has given the United Church of Christ an unusual brand: the comma! Of course, that comes from the Gracie Allen quote, "Never place a period where God has placed a comma." The good news is we are not uni-punctuational. Just as Elijah experienced God in a new voice on that mountaintop, there is more than one punctuation mark that might express how we feel about this still speaking God. The question mark is always a faithful witness to every question we ask from the heart in our seeking and wonder

So you'll notice in Monday's stats blog that I won't have a lot to write about.  I haven't made a lot of progress. I've hit resistance.  I won't call it writers block for a lot of reasons, but mostly because I HAVE ideas.  I have good ideas. But I've hit this type of resistance before. You see, I've been trying to write a novel forever.  I remember starting to try to write novels in high school, and then for various reasons, I kinda gave up writing all together for a few years, and then fell back in love with it when I transferred to Southern Oregon University.  But, I gave up novel writing.  I wrote (and still write) short stories.  I've published short stories, I make money (sometimes...very much sometimes) writing short stories.  I'm good at it, and for a long time I gave up again on the idea of writing a novel Until I went to library school.  I guess being around all of those novels, and talking about novels, and helping people find n

Hello Readers! I know I have been gone for a little bit, but I was on vacation!  I had brought devices to blog as I was there, but then decided once I was on my vacation that I would enjoy being with loved ones and not worry about blogs or even writing.  So this post is sort of going to be a quick 3 for 1 blog post: Stats, Writing stuff, and Faith. I won't go into specific writing stats for the week of May 30-June 4 but here are some major updates: I typed up Chapter 2 of my Haunted House project.  The chapter itself is 1667 words but I want my chapters for that project to be 2000 to 2500 words so I have some work to do on that chapter. I also did some more work on the handwritten draft of Chapter 2 of my Haunted Hotel piece, but haven't finished chapter 2 or anything. There will be NO stats blog tomorrow, as I didn't really do much writing over my vacation.  The only writing I did do was on a short story.  The prompt was given to me from a fun fact that my dad te

So in the chapter I'm on in 'Writer with a Day Job' the author states that there are 2 things that separate "real" writers from "wannabe" writers: Desire and Discipline. I have a lot of desire to write. In fact when I think about it, there is nothing I want more than to write. It's the second thing, discipline that I have a problem with. I would imagine this being the case for a lot of writers who have a job other than writing. You work an 8 hour day...you're tired when you get home...the last thing you have energy to do is write. Me, I want to write so bad but sitting on my couch watching Bobs Burgers sounds so much better. I think that's why I write better at work. Either during downtime or a break. I'm already in the 'work' mindset so writing comes easily for me. What I need to get better at is being that productive on my job days off or after my workday is over. The trick is to schedule it like a workday. Right now my schedule