Category Archives: Personal Notes

What are you talking about?!?!

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I’ve heard that from my boyfriend more then once… per day.

It usually happens when I start trying to tell him about something, or describe something that happens to me. Usually at work.

I mean it’s really easy to understand “there was a snake in a storage unit”. Yep, that is simple enough. Snake. Storage unit. Screaming customer. Animal control. Oh wait, cameras?

But sometimes I get excited, and the words start tumbling out of my mouth. Worse yet, sometimes they get stuck somewhere between my mouth and my tongue. I don’t know why, but it is far easier to get the words out when I type then it is when I speak. I suppose it’s a good thing I decided to be a writer and not a stand up comedian, because people don’t find comedians funny if they sit there saying “um” all the time.

I really have no point to this post. But I will let you know, if you’re still reading this, that I am half way done re-editing “Small Bites – Complete Collection” along with the extra content, and formatting for a physical book. The paperback will take an extra week, but the ebook should be available this weekend.

Stats

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year graph
Half way through March, and I thought I would share my progress.

Now that I am tracking my daily word count I am having a lot fewer days with zero word count. I have had a few days, this month, of less than 200 words, but a lot more of them have been over 500, and I see it growing.

Last night I sat down to write and kept checking my word count after ten minutes or so watching the numbers go up hundreds, not just tens and twenties. I was thrilled! The words are tripping off my fingers with ease now. It isn’t a struggle to sit down and write. It’s more of a demand.

I bought a new game. Tropico 4. Instead of playing it I dangled it as a reward to get myself to write. Now that I’m in the habit of this it is completely natural for me to deny myself something until I write.

I do not yet have a set word count that I need to reach each day, or else. That is my next goal. At the moment I have a monthly goal of 9000 words for March. That’s about 300 words a day. I am just about half way there, so I think I need to increase my expectations.

What I’m learning is that just putting that expectation that I will write, no matter what, each day has been the most effective way of getting the words down on paper. And the more I exerciser the muscle that is my brain, my fingers on the keyboard, my imagination, and my story telling skills… the easier it all comes.

I’d been fretting and lamenting my writers block for all these years. And I am going to give myself a small… I guess it’s an excuse, but I really did have a reason to fall into the trap of writers block. I did not, however, have a reason to STAY in that trap, especially for as long as I did.

I think I’m going to talk about the trap of writers block, and the exercising of the brain like a muscle next blog post. It’s been on my mind a lot lately.

Stats

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I happen to love numbers. And anyone who has watched some videos from vihart might understand why numbers are so fascinating. They can draw pictures, tell you stories, and draw a world on a flat surface. Music is math! Art is geometry. Words are symphonies played out with the written language.

One thing I learned from NaNoWriMo is that I love to watch the numbers going up. I love to see how much I wrote each day, and try to beat the number from the day before… or at least writing more each day.

I started keeping my own set of numbers to help me write without the help of NaNo forums, graphs and news letters.

I have a database that tracks how much I wrote on what projects (including this blog, though the blog is not added into the graph below) and I am trying to track how many hours I spend on each project each day. Reminding myself to punch in and out of the little app on my phone that charts the time isn’t always easy though since I write in 20 min spurts several times a day.

feb graph

The graph shows my daily word count, with red dots for every day I skipped. Since I hate putting in those red marks I’ve actually been writing more. I even added in the blue line which is my guess (hope) of future progress upward.

Speaking of progress. “Osiren’s Tears”, which I did for NaNo, is half way through the final edit. Then I will start looking for an editor to clean up my spelling and grammar before I publish it. I still have to polish the cover, but hopefully that won’t take long.

As for “Small Bites”, I’ve decided to break it into four mini books, each with three short stories. They will be put out as 99 cent volumes, then I will put up the entire “Small Bites” book with all twelve stories for $3.99 once they are all finished.

Once I have all of these up I will feel comfortable trying KDP select and start offering a few titles for free.

Writing is a long process, but I still believe it is worth it.

Meeting of the Pets

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image

My boyfriend and I rescued a california king snake the other day and brought him home. My cat has been quite curious about him ever since.

We love Winchester. He loves to be held. Often you’ll find my boyfriend and I curled up on the couch with Winchester warming up on our necks.

Everyone talks about rescuing dogs and cats, but other pets get left behind, too. Snakes, rodents, turtles, birds and lizards among them.

These pets could be let lose, but more often then not they aren’t capable of surviving on their own. For my snake… he’s a warm weather snake, and we live in a very cold region. He’d die out there.

I’m a pretty strong believer in “spay and neuter your pets” to keep fewer of them in shelters. And not buying dogs and cats from puppy farms. There are enough lonely pets that need love in the world already, not to mention genetic problems due to over/in-breeding.

Anyway, I didn’t exactly mean to be preachy today, just wanted to share my wonderful new pet with everyone.

Giving for the sake of giving

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I have had a lot of Christmas’s where others have been very helpful. When you’re down on your luck, I guess, having someone get your kid a present, a doll, or an MP3 player, can be incredibly uplifting.

My family is at a point now that we’re getting by alright. I don’t have a lot, but we have presents under the tree. But I wanted to give something back this year.

On that note, I found Random Acts of Christmas on Reddit. I didn’t have much to give… I mean, we’re okay but I still can’t go out to eat every week (not that’d I’d want to, it get’s old after a while). But, I did have a bunch of things I made. Stickers, magnets, bookmarks, and some simple jewelry.

So I stuck up an offer to give away some stocking stuffers…

It’s amazing how good it feels just to give away these little things. There not much, but hopefully some little kids will really enjoy them.

Maybe you can’t do much, but even the little things count. And I hope you all have a great Holiday season, whichever Holiday you’re celebrating.