Thursday, June 9, 2011

Update

Well, it's been a bit longer than I would have liked since my last post, but nothing of worth of a post has happened in my life to share. What have I been up to you may ask? Well, if you follow me on Twitter you have a pretty good idea of the things that are going on in my daily life. If not, I'll fill you in.

After hitting my head against the wall after a bazillion rewrites of my first chapter *cough* paragraph, I thought I would walk away and do some reading and researching. For me, the next best thing to writing is learning about writing. I really know nothing about the craft. Actually, I need to give myself a bit more credit than that. I've learned SO much in the last year, it makes my head spin, but there is still, still so much for me to learn and even more to apply.

I wrote a novel in 5 weeks, described what I saw as the movie in my head ran, and didn't know what I was doing. Fixing a mess is not fun, or easy. I've often thought about tossing the first draft so I can rewrite the whole thing from scratch, but I can't. I've also tried to write about something different, but it's hard when the first story gets jealous and conflict takes place in your head as the two stories duke it out.

As I sit here typing my thoughts, I wonder if I've already said this in another post. Please forgive me if I have, nothing has really changed in the last few months. What has been keeping me the most busy is getting my house and life in order. As any writer knows, everything around you tends to go to the back burner when you are deeply immersed in a story. It happens and is understandable. But when I came home from a few days in Utah for my mother-in-law's funeral, the shambles we left the house in made me snap. I've been cleaning it ever since. I need my surroundings to be orderly if I am going to think straight. I have a very difficult time writing if my mind is cluttered. I feel so much better already and I only have one more room to go: the boys' room. If you don't hear from me for awhile, check my Twitter, I may need a rescue party.