5min – Writers Block

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I was listening to an episode of The Creative Penn today and she mentioned that all the pro writers at a recent convention she went to all have the same idea about writers block….it doesn’t exist.

The idea I see is “a plumber can’t have plumbers block, they have to go out and do their job.”

And they are right. Each and every one of them. A pro writer has to be able to get past “blocks” and just write, weather or not they feel like it. I have to go to my day job and do my work, or I don’t get paid. Same with a writer.

But, the idea of writers block is a thing. Perhaps it shouldn’t be called writers block though. Rather it is something causing the writer to spend their energy elsewhere.

For me it’s often bills. I have to pay bills, so I go to a day job, and I spend a lot of time on that day job. It’s a tough, and stressful day job. I often come home with a need to just close the door, and stay away from words for sometimes hours. That’s because my day job is using words. Talking to people. Trying to explain to them how to fix things. Depending on the day that is easier sometimes than others.

Other people might be “blocked” because they have family problems, medical issues or stress going on in their life that they are spending so much time on those things that they just don’t have time (or don’t think they have time) to do something creative.

Then there are the people that actually do sit down and try to write, but end up staring at a blank page for hours instead of writing. Now that, I think, is true. That isn’t a block so much as a lack of confidence. Inability to progress. Or plain don’t know what they are supposed to do.

I think I’ll come back to this idea later. But for now, my 5 min are up, and I need to go finish writing.

5min – Movie review – Split

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I started this morning with checking emails, and going down the rabbit hole of reviews and twitter messages. Not a productive morning. Or maybe it was. I guess it depends on how you look at it. Social media is a necessary evil of trying to get people to notice you, so there is that.

Last night we watched Split finally. It is a movie about three young girls that are kidnapped by a man with multiple personalities. They talk about how a person who has to go between personalities will sometimes have physical differences depending on which personality s/he is in at that time, and they describe it as “taking the light” from the others. being an M Knight Shyamalan story we were waiting for the twist. But there really wasn’t one this time. It lays out the movie from the beginning, and I could see the ending coming. I don’t know if this makes it better or worse for that. The “twist” might have been the cameo at the very end from an earlier movie.

I liked the story, and the ending made sense. I am glad they were very subtle about the abuse of the main character in her past, but you knew it was there. Not good. But integral to the story. Split was a little slow for my taste, taking a very long time to get to certain things. But that’s normal for a Shyamalan story. Signs, the village, and lady in the water were the same way. Slow. Meticulous Calculated. That’s Shyamalan for you.

But overall I enjoyed it.

And that’s my five.

5min – Not this!

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I woke  up this morning and turned on Twitter to help wake up my brain. It’s an easy enough thing, read a few lines, laugh at some cut gifs, and slowly wake up in the morning.

What I see is a raging debate over abortion. Should we find alternatives? Should we even be debating it? Abortion is just a pill now guys!

Okay, here’s my take on it…Abortion is sometimes necessary, but should be treated with respect, not used as a birth control option. But it should definitely be there for molestation, medical problems, rape, or any number of other things that can just go wrong. And for the record, a pill (morning after pill) is not an abortion, it’s just making sure you don’t get pregnant in the first place. Most people who are talking about abortion are not talking about the pill anymore. The pill is a normal part of life.

So, of course, there is a number of people saying “Why don’t men stop getting all up in our biz”…my first thing to do is go search “How to get pregnant without…” and the results for secretly getting pregnant without a boyfriend, husband, or whatever finding out are INSANE!

And that, dear people, is why it should be at least a little bit talked about with a significant other. If men can be forced to pay child support for the next 18+ years to a woman he just met at a bar and had sex with for a night maybe there should be some way of helping him, too.

Oh, but the woman carries the child, etc. etc. Ya, and the woman could also make him put on a condom, take birth control, go get the morning after pill for herself, or any number of other ways she can keep herself from being pregnant. Not to mention page after page after page of women actively trying to get pregnant without their SO finding out, some of them specifically saying “he doesn’t want a child, but I do.”

Just saying, if personal responsibility for both sexes was enforced we would no longer be having a debate over abortion, because they wouldn’t be needed except in very rare cases. What woman is going to trick her boyfriend into getting her pregnant if she is guaranteed not to get child support for doing it?

 

I have several friends who have gone through abortions, and all of them have been emotionally and mentally hurt to various degrees, by the whole thing. It wasn’t as easy as people tried to tell them. It wasn’t “I do this and never think about it again.” They definitely think about it, and it definitely bothers them, some more so than others, though they all agree it was for the better. But from one having to get an abortion because she was raped at 13, to another having to choose between an accidental pregnancy (that they took precautions for) and the rest of her life, I can see why they did it. But I wish we would stop trying to convince people that there is no emotional side effect to this decision. Maybe some people have none, but that’s not necessarily normal.

And, again, I’m talking about people who go in to have a child surgically removed, not a morning after pill. They are two separate things.

Lastly, can we stop pretending that the only people against abortion are men? There are MILLIONS of women who are against it, too. And just because they don’t support other women in their right to just go in and have an abortion whenever they feel like it doesn’t mean their beliefs are invalid. That they aren’t “feminist” enough. No, they all have reasons to believe this way. Some of them had abortions and feel so guilty about it that they never want anyone else to go through it.

But, FFS, can we just maybe start pushing personal responsibility, and giving men rights to their children as well, so we can stop debating this f*ing thing?

And that was way over my 5 this morning.

5min – Rutines 

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I’m trying to get into a new routine to make editing and writing work for me. 

Edit one chapter in the morning before work. A bit of writing on a different project after work. Another chapter of editing after writing, if I can. Even with one or two chapters edited a day I should get this first book finished and edited by the end of the week, which is when I need to get it to my editor. 

This project has been a lot more challenging than the first trilogy. Partly because I’m building an entire world from scratch, including how the mythos of creation and the magic system works. There are no elves, no dwarves, no other races in this series except humans, dragons, and ifrits. The magic is still elemental based, but works more like alchemy than  it did in my other series. 

It’s been fun to design a whole new world. I can’t wait to share it! 

And that’s my five. 

5min – Editing

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Today has been pretty busy, so far. We went out to a birthday lunch with friends, went shopping to get supplies for Gregg’s armor that he’s making, and I cleaned up the house a bit.

Then I came home and I spent a few hours playing a game. This was a much needed mental health moment because I know I’m going back to work tomorrow, and I needed some time to just have a little fun, and veg out. Most people watch TV for that, I play video games.

But now it’s time to get back to work, so here I am writing my morning pages in the evening. It’s 9, and I usually go to bed at 3am or so, so there is plenty of time.

Over the last few weeks I’ve been stuck between editing and writing. There is a huge difference in mind sent with both of these. If I’m writing I just put the words on paper, and let them flow. Easy. I sometimes get a thousand words in less than an hour. It feels productive, and if I actually did it for more than an hour a day I would probably be able to keep up with everyone else. With the writing at least.

But once that first draft is out I need to do the revise. Read through, clean up spelling, grammar, rewrite a few sentences. Add in bits that were missing, or sometimes add in whole chapters. This part takes me forever. I need to figure out a better way of doing it. It doesn’t matter how good or clean the first draft is, there are those little bits of filler that I need to put in so that the 50k words make one sensible story line instead of just scenes strung out on a page.

I don’t know why, but reading back over my words is really tough to do sometimes. I get so easily distracted, or just space. Probably because I know what’s going to happen, and I just can’t stand to read it again so soon after writing. Maybe if I put it in a draw for a while it would be easier, but I’m going to have to write a LOT to be able to do that.

And there’s my five.

5min – Hurdles

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My daughter came by with a friend today so I started clearing some of my clutter by giving her things that she loved. Some of the pop figures, and a dagger, a few shirts that didn’t fit me but do fit her. It was good. Cathartic even.

I’ve got a number of things already packed up and ready to be taken to various places to sell or donate. But doing that is sometimes tougher than it appears to be. Time, effort, motivation. That’s what you need, right?

I know it sounds so easy. Pick up a box, put in in the car, drive it to x store and sell it. But sometimes I look at all the things that need to go, and the filed house still waiting to be taken, and it’s so over whelming.

Video games, board games, hundreds of books, figurines, miniature bottles…I’ve been collecting for a very long time. And I’ve already started thinning things out and it helps, but boy is it overwhelming.

One room, one item at a time. That’s the trick. So I think I’m going to have to just do that. Start with a shelf, clean out the ones I don’t want, and take them directly to the car instead of storing them in the closet. It’s so easy to ignore a box in the closet, but a box in the car in the seat next to you…not as easy to do. Especially when you start getting a lot of boxes.

I have a nice plan for the tiny home, and it looks affordable if we buy a premade shell, with the wiring and plumbing in it. But where do we park it? And how do we deal with the internet issue? That’s the next big hurdle after clearing out our stuff.

And that’s my five.

5min – Tiny House Dreams

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​The first time I thought about living in a tiny home I was 14 years old. I was probably hiding in the shed out back from my sisters, and I looked around at the huge space and thought….I could live in here. Then I wouldn’t have to share a room with my sisters.

Over the years I never quite lost the idea of having my own place, my own room, and my own building that I owned and no one could tell me no to. But, alas, I have always rented. Always had to stick with the ugly beige carpets that stained within a week of cleaning. Always had to deal with stark white walls, and be okay with the white kitchen that got gross and stained more and more each year.

But it was cheaper to rent than buy, right? Well, yes and no. I was always okay with buying a place, paying morgage, ripping out carpets and putting in the work to clean it myself. I wasn’t able to, though. Houses are expensive, especially in our area. So I’ve often dreamed of taking a shed out to a piece of land somewhere, and just making it into my home. And there are really large sheds now that you could comfortably live in.

But we live in Washington, and tiny houses aren’t exactly legal here. They say it’s because of fire hazards, but we know it’s mostly because of real estate interests. But what can you do?

So now that Tiny houses are more common, and people are actually making them work all over the place, I’ve been looking into it again. I’d like to build one, but I want it to be comfortable for me, and Gregg. And that’s the trial here. We have very different ideas of what will work.

And that’s my five. 

5 Min-Day 12- Goals

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​Goals for the rest of July- Finish the second draft of Dragon’s Flame and get it to my editor. And do a synopsis/plot for book three in the series.

Goals for August- Finish the first draft of Dragons book 2 (no name yet) and start on book three.

So much writing, so little time, at least that’s how it feels.

The other thing I need to do is look more into tiny houses. That’s right, tiny houses. My boyfriend and I would like to do both of our businesses full time instead of me working for someone else and having only an hour or two a day for writing. He has a nice income from his leather working already with commissions and donations/subs on twitch. Now it’s time for me to get to a point where I don’t need to have another job. The best way to do that is lower our monthly expenses.

At $1300 a month, plus all the utilities and everything, I’m pretty sure our apartment takes up the most time and money. Cleaning, and cleaning some more, and trying to throw away half our things. Ya, it’s time consuming.

But, if we get rid of all but what we really need (or love) and move into a small trailer or tiny home then we can pay less than a grand for everything. And if we make our tiny home then we can configure it to suit our needs, instead of someone else making it for us.

God I hate carpet. There will be no carpet in my next home, or any other from now on!

Cabinets, little drawers, and a couple of big closets for clothes, and there we are. Not much to it. 

And that’s my five minutes. 

5min – Day 11 – What a day

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​Yesterday was an interesting day. I had to get up at 8am, get out of bed, and leave for my daughters house in order to avoid being trapped when they painted the stairwell outside my apartment. 

I don’t usually wake up till 11am. I work nights, and stay up till 3 or 4am, so this isn’t a problem. But yesterday, trying to get up that early, really was. I woke up to the alarm just long enough to turn it off. Realized I turned it off instead of hitting snooze and tried to reset it to go off in ten minutes. Woke up at 9:15 from my boyfriend telling me “you’re screwed. It’s after 9, they are probably painting already.”

Thankfully I was able to roll out of bed, throw on some clothes, and stagger down the stairs half asleep before they actually started painting.

I don’t like mornings, if you can’t tell. That’s why I write in the evening, when I’m more awake and my mind is working.

But I managed to have a nice breakfast with my daughter, and went to a little toy shop near my house that was having a big sale. Picked up some new charms for my necklace, and some cute little figurines for my desk. Half inch rubber ducky? Got it! Do I need it? No way, but it makes me smile every time I look at it.

When I finally made it home from work I was so tired. I never got a chance to do my morning pages because I was too busy just trying to stay awake.

Note to apartment complex, not all of us have day jobs. Sigh.

And that’s my five minutes.  

5min – Day 10 – Declutter Continues

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Decluttering continued yesterday, and this morning. I cleared out all my craft drawers in the living room, threw out some paints and pencils that were no longer in great shape, and sorted everything. I still have a lot of crafting supplies. I’m going to have to decide if I want to keep them all. Am i actually going to use them? Or am I just holding onto them because I occationaly enjoy using them?

I also started with one bookshelf and I’m going to be working my way around the room to the other book shelves. I’ll need to get a couple boxes because I’m going to be getting rid of a LOT of these books, and downlaoding the ones I like the most on ebook readers. Some of them I might just add to a wish list so I can pick them up from a library later. It’s clear, though, that I don’t intend to read all of these anymore. How can I? I have other things going on in my life, and there are hundreds of books in this house, and almost a thousand on my kindle.

I do love reding, and I read a lot. But the days of collecting because I think a book looks amazing is over. I just don’t have the room for it anymore. Sad, but true.

On the writing front, I finished editing another chapter last night, and then I came down with something. I’m almost certain that I ate something that did not agree with me. I can’t decide what it was, but it was acting a lot like a slight case of food poisoning, or an allergic reaction to something. So I went to bed, and slept early. Then I woke this morning feeling much better.

Today they were painting the staircase just outside my apartment so I we were not supposed to leave the house until 5pm. That was easy enough, the paint smells terrible.

And that’s my five.