Time is Already Flying By!

We are ten days into the New Year and already I am struggling with meeting my goals! How frustrating is that? Very! However, I need to take some of my own advice and reevaluate my plans.

Yesterday, I had the opportunity to speak at my Toastmasters meeting. I spoke on New Year’s resolutions and how they involve lifestyle change. There lies the key. It is so difficult to change, especially when you have been as disorganized as I all your life. Maybe I’m a bit ADD as well, because it seems I can’t ever stick to one project for any length of time. Well, I shouldn’t say that. I can do the things I like for hours at a time! Give me a good book and if I’m not interrupted, I could read it from cover to cover. Set me down at the computer and I can find things to do on it that keep me occupied for half a day.

Housekeeping chores are another thing entirely. I can only focus for a certain length of time on going through old mail or organizing my myriad collection of books. So, I’m going to set a goal of fifteen minutes once a day to do that sort of thing. Maybe that way, the wood on top of my computer desk and the spare desk in my bedroom will be visible by the end of 2008!

I received a critique of one of my WIPs from one of the members of my new critique group the other day. Even though these particular pages have been entered in the Genesis contest twice and scored in the nineties both years, she identifies a major flaw. This is good, because the same problem has been gnawing at the back of my mind for months. Still, I have decided to move forward with this manuscript and get if finished. Then I can go back and rework it. If I don’t, I will be forever working those first couple of chapters. Maybe if I finish the story, I will be able to better define my heroine in chapter one. Big change for me. I’m used to rewriting the same chapters over and over until I think they are right. All that rewriting, and still they are not.

Sometimes this whole writing thing is so exasperating! I work out great scenes in my mind, but when it comes to putting them on paper, they don’t sound near as exciting. I think of other writers I have spoken to, published authors, who say it never gets any easier. I derive some consolation from that, knowing there are dozens of you out there experiencing the same agony as me. Searching for the right word. Checking sentence structure. Researching facts. Dreaming great dreams of touching lives with words.

So, I will press on and hope that I see some success in 2008.

Thanks for reading my blog!

Something New

Goodness, it’s already been a whole week since I wrote in this blog! Shame on me. I do have somewhat of an excuse. My husband and I were away for three days to celebrate our 30th anniversary and I’ve spent the rest of the week “catching up”.

We also spent a day helping our daughter pick out a new car. As we advised her with negotiations and gave our input to the choices available, I couldn’t help but think how buying a new car is somewhat like starting a new writing project.

You go to the dealership knowing what you want, but when you get there, you discover the price is beyond what your budget can handle. So, you look at the other choices and modify your expectations. Kind of like having dreams to write a three book series and realizing that maybe you should get a few short stories written first.

There are two different kinds of buyers in the automobile market. One is the impulse buyer, like me. I go to a lot, see something I like, and, assuming it fits into my budget, do the test drive, and sign the papers. My daughter, on the other hand, studies the Internet for days, talks to other people, and makes her choice based on carefully studied facts. Kind of like a SOTP writer verses an outliner. If she were a writer, she’d definitely be an outliner. Even though I do some outlining, I lean more toward SOTP.

What about options? My daughter got some pretty fancy options on her new vehicle, like a sunroof and a 6-CD player and all kinds of things I’ve never heard of. I drive a pick-up that has what I call the standard options, but I don’t go that much for fancy as I do for size. I want something big with a lot of power that represents the wanna be cowgirl in me.

I think our writing reflects who we are, just like our vehicles do. I like to think my writing possesses a certain power, the power that the Lord gave me to influence others with words. I like to hunt for new words when I write, not necessarily flamboyant words that leave the reader wondering what in the world I’m trying to say, but compelling words that draw vivid pictures for my reader.

I did a presentation at my local Toastmasters meeting yesterday. It was supposed to be a “tall tale”, so I took a story, personalized it, and threw in some exaggeration. I was in competition with another speaker to be a contestant at our area contest on October 6th and won. I’m excited to be going into competition with a speech. I’ve been in competition in other aspects of Toastmasters, but never with a speech I’ve written.

The person who did my evaluation yesterday said I had a wonderful command of vocabulary and that some of my words carried a lot of power.

If only I can take that power and channel it into my novel, I’ll be as happy with it as my daughter is with her brand new car.