Tag Archives: writers life

You Ever Do That Thing…

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Writers, do you ever do that thing where you start writing at some random point in your story because you’re feeling it, and it’s the fun and exciting part, only to realize there’s not an organic way to actually get there, so now you have to re-write everything you wrote? Asking for a friend, of course.

Picture from Unsplash by Benoit Beaumatin

Seriously though, after five completed projects, you’d think I’d just start plotting. I say I will and then some exciting epiphany of a scene won’t be ignored and I find I have 15,000 words of a book that hasn’t really come out of the idea phase. It’s possible I just spent the last three days re-working the front quarter of my current project because of this. I just really, really, really wanted the story to get to this specific place, but it just couldn’t. It wouldn’t. Not without being forced. Because it was forced, and you (I) could definitely tell.

I did a lot of sitting and staring. A lot of but what if I did this… Eventually, I had to accept that it wasn’t happening. These characters do write themselves and my simple-mindedness was not smart enough to outwork them. It just means a little patience (okay, a lot of patience) and some extra work. I’ll get to that point I really, really want to show. It’s just going to take a few more (many) pages. And who knows, maybe when I get there for real, there will be an entirely new place there.

…plus thirty pounds

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So many accomplishments!

Last June, I (self)published my first novel. Since then, I’ve published three more (one under a pseudonym). Four total novels in less than a year. Yay me! Sure, two-and-a-half of those books were the split of a project I’d been working on for twenty years, but I don’t think that takes much away from this.
FOUR BOOKS!!

Pat on the back complete

In that time, I also managed to gain thirty pounds. Well, I was up fifteen from when I quit my gym life, than add another twenty. Add the weight I lost and gained back, well with that math it’s much more than thirty, so lets just keep this PG.

It’s great that I finally found the courage to put my stories out in the world. I love the days of falling into my creations, of spending hours at my keyboard crafting adventures. But I crashed, hard, into the downside of this life. There were days I got less than five hundred steps IN THE WHOLE DAY. I just stopped wearing my FitBit. Who needs that kind of negativity in their life?

I’ve been trying to be better. Trying to make sure I don’t skip physical activity time. I’m a month ON. I started in January- that lasted three weeks. I re-started in February. Was it even a day? This last attempt is good. Real good (I know, my way with words astounds you).

Much of this success is due to pictures of myself I saw after a recent trip to Disney. I can’t even look at them. When did I get so chubby! Oh yeah, this past year…

That did it though. Rather than share my great time with my visiting sister at Epcot and Animal Kingdom, I buried the pictures in the deleted folder of my phone. I don’t like that. I don’t like that I had to get rid of most of my wardrobe because I couldn’t wear it anymore. You’d think that would have been my first motivator. Eh. For a few seconds, but cookies…

How do you stay on track?

What’s your biggest struggle with spawning fiction? Do you let your work overwhelm you?