The Ready Writer

Happy Eclipse day Y'all! In Southern Oregon where I am we got about 93% totality.  Got to watch it with my SO and then have a nice breakfast date before we both had to head to work. I know I've been absent for the last month, but I've been working really hard on my library career. The children's librarian position is open at the library I work at, and as someone with my MLIS in Youth Services, you can bet that I'm gonna apply! Though I am a published writer, it doesn't pay enough for me to quit my day job, so I have to make sure I have the day job of my dreams so I'm not too burnt out to write. But, in the meantime, that means that I'm spending so much time prepping for the interview (and for my first time doing story time tomorrow!) that I haven't been writing like I should.   I'm using prepping for the interview of my life as an excuse. But that can't last forever. I'll elaborate later.    Also, I'm not sure it'...

I have written about writing resistance before, but seeing as I am currently in a slump, I thought I would bring the topic up again. I'm having some troubles with a short story. I wrote one for a deadline and because I had only finished the draft the day it was due for submission, I didn't get a chance to edit it.  It got rejected (which wasn't a huge shocker to me), and quite frankly I was a little relieved because that meant that I could polish it. I found another place that was accepting submissions, so I thought "Perfect!" and I got to editing. Only I wasn't really editing.  I was just cutting. My story was well over the word limit for this particular journal, so I just started cutting.  I chopped and chopped and chopped and eventually I just had a collection of fragmented sentences that were sort of going in a direction, but not really telling a story.  In the midst of all of this cutting, I missed the deadline for that journal too. So I scr...

So I have to confess that I haven't been the best at writing so far this year.  And yes, I know that the year is still young.  I DID submit a short story in January, and that is exciting, but I haven't done much else. Here are my excuses: -New Years Party -Grandfather Passed Away -Water Heater Leaked -Been working lots of extra hours since my SO lost his job -Applied and interviewed for a job that I really wanted and then didn't get it (which put me in a bad place) -My Birthday Okay. Got that out of the way. But things are on the upswing. My SO starts his new job in March, I'll be back in town (I'm going out of town to visit family in a couple of weeks) and my hours at both jobs will be back to normal (ish). I know I already stated my writing goals in a previous post.  But I'm committing to it (again). Right now. I'm in the process of re-writing the ENTIRE first act of my novel so it works with the plan I have for the next 2 third...

So... I don't have any writing stats for this past week because...well...I didn't write. Here are the quick excuses: I devoted a lot of time to working out, picked up extra hours at my library job, and finished 2 books.  But the real excuse: I felt burnt out. Some of you who know me, know I've attempted to write books, and tend to get burnt out in chapter 2, and give up only to start another project and do the same thing again. This is why this project has gotten me so excited, because I've made it almost to the end of Act 1, and until this week I had no plans on giving up.  But coming back from my break for my wrist, the words just weren't flowing.  And I was terrified.  I was thinking I was gonna burn out and give up...again. As I sat down to try to write I kept thinking "this isn't scary enough" "my characters aren't deep enough" or the usual "are people even going to like this??" But instead of giving up, I just decide...