Spring Fever!

"You're a winner. The day you were born - your egg beat out all the others!" Wayne Dyer

So in this respect no one is the fastest, strongest, rightest, or smartest. Each is unique coming out of the womb. Last Sunday night an Oscar winner praised everyone in his life for allowing him to take an old 8 mm projector and make movies. No one ever told him he was wasting his time. He was allowed to follow his soul purpose. What a wonderful gift to give our loved ones.

You have to admire the female director of The Hurt Locker, Katherine Bigelow. I loved Avatar but heaping it with so many accolades while ignoring this movie shows a global propensity for escape, for familiar themes and happy endings. Why? Maybe because we're worn down and maybe, because we're chicken. Hurt Locker makes us reach deeper, become involved and relate intimately to the more uncomfortable issues like war, death, and loss. An important film to be both entertainment and social commentary.

Don't mind me; I'm morose today.

My creativity is at an ebb. I want to just sit and listen to the second Mistborn book or the next Charlaine Harris mystery but I feel guilty - overflowing with 'shoulds'. I should be writing forward, finishing my class materials, getting taxes together, cleaning the house, swapping out the winter clothes, doing my online workshop, anything besides what I want to be doing, or NOT doing. It's gorgeous, sunny, and I'm ready to sit out by the bayou.

Hell, what is Spring for! I'm for the sun! Bye

Feel the Fear

I guess I mentioned that I started a new job a couple weeks ago and yesterday I was hit with the reality of my fear. Of succeeding. Of excitement, change, joy.

Talk about an eye opener. I didn't realize I'd retreated into my turtle shell of comfortability. When had I stopped stepping out for what I wanted? Where had I gotten the idea that all good things have to come to an end? That too much joy is a bad thing?

Now, before you start thinking I've flipped out, I have to say, I've had a long successful history of working with the public in sales, computer training, management and in my own business. But after taking some pretty hard hits in my personal and professional life, I backed up. Lost my faith. Like a character in our novels, I'd been hurt time after time and I guess I disengaged.

Realizing that is the biggest part of the solution. Affirming that I am going to take hold of the joy. Like Maverick in Top Gun, my favorite movie, I'm going to 'engage', get back in the fight, and see where I land.

Click here for one of the coolest Top Gun compilation YouTubes I've ever seen.

One thing I'm sure of. I'll be in a better place than I would be simply vegetating and waiting for life to come to me.

Just gotta believe. There can't be too much joy, can there?

Epiphany

Yes, I had one last week. I'm trying to get MOL revised to send off a partial.




Uh-huh, I've been stuck for several weeks, feeling like I'd never move past it, that it was something systemic in my writing ability. Or maybe I'd just lost the desire to write. But that wasn't it.

I knew something was bugging me about the plot. I'd decided to move on to something new for May and come back to it, but it kept calling to me in this mean little whisper, get it done, get it done, get it done. I knew the voice was right but what was wrong?

Finally, during one of the lessons from Angela Knight's workshop, I realized what it was. The actions of the main characters needed a minor rewrite in the second chapter to make the conflict and motivations work.

So, the cat's unstuck and I'm back on the job this week in between helping Rae Monet design my new website. (Mine was so amateurish - designed myself with the help of my Mac.)

My goal is to get the minor alterations made to the first 50 pages, and get them revised by end of the first week in June. Work on synopsis and query and get that sucker sent off by the third week in June. There's that voice again, I will submit, I will submit, I will submit.

My CP, Leah Bremael has already submitted three manuscripts! That's just fabulous!

So to use two cliches I'll 'Feel the Fear' and 'Just Do It.'

Three Flying Monkeys

Three things I like about me:
1. My hair, redheads identify with their hair, it's a part of the personality.
2. I'm enthusiastic. My 'son-grandson' says I'm easily entertained by little things which I don't think is an insult. We should take pleasure in little things, sometimes that's all there is to take pleasure in.
3. My voice. I finally accepted the fact a few years ago that I have an exceptional soprano voice. I should have done more with it. Oh well.

Three things I should want to improve:
1. My increasing lack of compassion.
2. My increasing lack of interest in housekeeping. I'm lying, I've always been disinterested in it, but it's still increasing. Ha!
3. My increasing lack of interest in working. It's not like I'm retired or independently wealthy. And I'm plenty motivated to write.
4. I know I'm breaking the rules, but I never used to break rules, so what the heck. WEIGHT goes without saying. More exercise, less food.

Three flying monkey things about me:
1. I have an exceptional almost photographic memory for things I see and hear. But if you ask me to a party tomorrow I probably won't remember it until next week. And I've been known to write something and swear that someone else wrote it later.
2. You just about can't get me lost. I can remember landmarks from years before and have a good sense of direction but can never tell North from South. They say that's a female-male spatial thing.
3. Going for it. Whether it's a heavy job meant for younger people, or deciding to pursue writing after years of working, I'm putting fear behind me and going for my passion. I believe we can achieve our dreams or God wouldn't have given them to us, we truly wouldn't be able to conceive of them.

Keep the Dream Alive - the lull

You're in Revision Purgatory. It's scary here, your momentum stalls. It's a seemingly impossible feat. There's fear, loneliness and a crisis of confidence.

I worry that I won't be able to put it right; that this slashed, cut and pasted version which was once my manuscript will ever look like one again.

I stopped while it was in my CP's hands and read some refresher courses on POV, scene development, and decription and now I see glaring inconsistencies, plot problems and POV slides.

Why did I do that? Well, I did commit to making it - to use an Army slogan - be all it can be at this stage in my career. So better now than later after I've submitted it to a publisher or agent.

I know I'm capable of better, so until I'm satisfied that it's my best effort I won't cut corners. I'll keep my eye on the goal, of being published, not each painful step along the way.

I see my book with my name printed across the binding. A customer taking it from the shelf, reading the back cover with a smile, tucking it under her arm and walking to the register.

While I tackle the excruciating grunt work, I remind myself again to trust the process and believe.