August 8, 2013

Today was a crazy-mixed up-no good-very bad-day.
I woke early to watch grandchildren, but they didn't come until it was time for me to leave for a lunch meeting.
Lunch meeting was great until my daughter called to say the house was flooding again.
Flooding wasn't as bad as last time and the Rock was so stressed when he got home, I didn't even tell him about it.
A separate mishap that will entail cleaning some carpets tomorrow.
Daughter sprang for dinner. Chicken. A godsend.
Then the rest of the evening was eaten away by twin three-year-olds who had far too much energy, thanks to a nap with Grandma, and a new baby who thinks she needs to be eating all the time--she must have been eavesdropping from inside the womb, I figure.
They finally left at ten. I had about five extra minutes to think about the Rock, realized he needed milk for his protein shake in the morning, so it is now ten after 11 pm and I just got back from the grocery store.

Have I had a moment to think about my characters and their current crisis? No. Did I listen to classical music on the way to or from the store, to get my mind in the right place? No. Would I rather watch recordings of Gordon Ramsay until I'm certain to dream about him? You betcha.

But what am I going to do instead?
That's right. I'm going to write. I'm going to sit down with no idea where this story is going to go next and I'm going to let my fingers to the talking. They always seem to come up with great ideas on their own, so I'm going to let them do just that.

I'm going to get snacks, drinks, and everything set, then I'm going to sit down at 11:30 and write.
I will post an update before I go to sleep. I hate it when Dean Wesley Smith makes me wait until morning to find out what he's done.

And I'm going to be very grateful my writing goal is NOT 100,000 words per month. 80k will be hard enough.I've been doing this for a week and I only made it to about half my goal. This next week must be much better.

Wish me luck. If you're bored, count how many times I've used the word going in this post. Including this last one, of course.

UPDATE:
An hour later, and I'm already drained.
I thought I'd take a moment to list the scenes for the book, to see which scenes I still needed to write, and I ended up with two pages of outline. I have 23 scenes left to write. If I do 7 or 8 a day, for the next three days, I'll be golden.

Did I say I was drained. Well, I am. And I'm going to go lie in bed and let these scenes percolate.
I got some editing done today, so I'm not going to feel guilty about turning in a zero for word count, mostly due to the fact that I know what I'm doing now. The book is going to be twice as long as I had planned, but that happens to me a lot.

I try not to use excuses for falling short on my word count, but the re-flooding of my house was a mental blow. I'm going to have to get really aggressive tomorrow to get my spirits back up where they need to be.
Over and out.