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...

I can't believe it is time for another writing update! I hate to say, but I've been in sort of a slump.  I haven't worked on my main project in a few weeks, and I've been writing sporadically on a short story in 50-100 word chunks. Part of it is because I'm working a lot, so I just write when I can squeeze in a few moments, and its easier for me to work on my short story in tiny chunks than my main project. But another part of it is because I'm just...tired. Between my 2 jobs I've been working full time, and when you work one job that you hate, and another job that you feel stuck in, it feels like a LOT more than 40 hours, and all of that leads to writing resistance. At the beginning of the year, I did a tarot card spread for myself and it told me that the one thing that will make this year successful for me is moderation.  For me, this doesn't necessarily mean cutting out things that I want to do, but rather it means allowing myself to not do ...

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...

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 fi...