Great expectations

It’s been awhile since I updated, but well worth the wait I’m sure since now I actually have something meaningful to write. After four months hanging in a consignment shop in a village in Virginia, one of my photographs finally sold. So, yes, I’m very proud to say I am now an artist worth something. The irony of the occasion is that it came shortly after I had decided to hang up my digital camera, so to speak, until next summer and focus instead on my writing. I have not been able to accomplish anything literary or fictional lately with all the stress of also needing to make deadlines for county fairs or craft shows. It’s enough just thinking about the deadlines for writing contests and NaNoWriMo and writing club meetings … and Christmas (the stories I plan to write and give as gifts, because I'm crafty ... and cheap), not to mention that I hope to begin freelancing in earnest one of these days.

Though I write for a living, I currently write full time for a newspaper, which is great and challenging and even spontaneous … but it’s just so gosh darn factual. I crave retreating into the fictional world inside my mind, where it can be winter at the snap of my fingers, or where I can rewrite past real life stories to make them play out the way I would have liked. Of course freelancing likely will not supply the freedom of which I am speaking, but that’s okay. It will balance out the fantasy; only I’ll be able to write from home and move on to something else whenever my work is done. By that point in my life I will also be able to reincorporate my photography into my work schedule.

So, that’s the plan … for now. In the mean time I just eat, breathe, and sleep the written word, whether I am reading the work of others or constructing my own tales on the page in front of me, and for now that must be enough.

Unexpected challenges

No sooner do I restart my blog after 10 months then my Internet connection at home decide to fail! I will have to find out what's wrong with it, but in the mean time I can write from my work computer. If I had a laptop, maybe this would not be a problem. Soon, however, I WILL have a laptop, something basically everyone in America already has. I've been saving up for the past few months in anticipation of NaNoWriMo. I can't wait! I've begun the outline for my story in preparation for Nov. 1. I will not repeat the mistakes of last year and approach the beginning of NaNoWriMo with a story that is not fully-formed and characters that are only shells of actual people. Of course at the time of beginning novel writing month 2008 I thought I had everything all set and ready to go. It wasn't until I started writing that I realized I just didn't have any idea what would come next, and though that can be a bonus to the creative process in general, when you have only 30 days in which to write 50,000 words, that really is not a good thing. My other problem last year was not having a laptop. The only way in which I could attend the write-ins with friends was to bring along my trusty notebook and pen my novel by hand, afterwards returning to my desk and typing up everything I had already written, a practice that slowed down the entire process not only while I laboriously hand wrote the text but then while I wasted time typing it all up when I could have been making better use of that time by plowing through unchartered territory. But, like I said, this year will be different. I will put into practice the Girl Scout (and coincidentally the Boy Scout) motto, "Be prepared," I will have my brand new, gleaming laptop buzzing in anticipation of what is to come, and I will have a year of experience behind me from which to draw for inspiration.

In the mean time I have been keeping busy planning writing groups for my writing club, Just Write. The club began as an e-newsletter in November 2007 and has risen in ranks from about six members to our current sixteen. Four people have told me they plan to do NaNoWriMo this year, plus I've had interest in our meeting in person to do other writing as well, hence the writing groups. In the works are three groups: the writing meet-ups to meet once a month and focus on members sharing and critiquing short stories and such, the noveling group to meet once or twice a month and work to encourage those novelists who enjoying the company of others while writing, and the online group, which will meet once a month on our discussion board at http://justwritenow.ning.com/

Please come by and see us and maybe even sign up for Just Write. We are an international group, and welcome anyone who enjoys writing.

And I'm back!

It's been ten months since I last wrote on this blog, but I plan to finally make a go of this for real. My original intention in beginning the blog was to chronicle my progress through National Novel Writing Month 2008, but, seeing as that was such a limited objective, I can now see why it failed. I didn't have a projection for its future; I didn't have a plan, but now I do.

I have long wished to keep up a blog, but I lacked a purpose. You see, I want my blog to have a theme. The problem was I couldn't think of one. I'm a writer, I'm interested in nutrition and exercise, I even love cats, but am I an expert on any of these subjects? Expert enough to be able to write about any of them with authority ... every day?

Then, two weeks ago, I got my answer. My co-worker who has been very sick lately and in and out of hospitals called us at work asking for help. I drove to her house and found her in a really bad state and ultimately had to call 911 to send an ambulance for her. She has since had two surgeries (and this is after the two she had had for her initial illness.) Looking at her that day I realized that I have no excuse for not accomplishing everything I want in life. Whereas she's weak and unhealthy and has been bed- and couch-ridden for weeks, I am not afflicted by any of those handicaps. She can barely walk. I can run if I wish. There's nothing standing in my way except my own insecurites.

So, this is what I have decided on as for the theme of my blog. I will write about writing AND nutrition AND exercise and, hell, even cats. I will write about life and everything that makes it great, beginning today.