Writerlydreams

writing schedule

So....Assignment b this week - what's your routine? From start to finish, what do you do on an average session when you sit down and write. I'm not looking for a day - I'm looking for an average breakdown of a couple of hours. Lets see what you get up to!

Hmm, okay great now I'm going to see just what I do every day. First, I'm either woke up by the phone at 4-6 a.m. or if I'm not my son wakes me. "Mom, you going to go write down on the computer?" Ugh, does he not know it's early in the morning? Apparently he does not because if I don't wake he nudges me again, all the while he's been in my room sitting on the edge of the bed watching cartoons. I slowly get out of bed, he's right I do need to write his dad. I write him every morning when I wake up this way I know he gets an email right after work.

I trek slowly down the stairs as I'm not gracefully, many times I've fallen down those and they are a pain in the back. Trust me I know. Lights are all off in the house and I like to keep them that way, I go straight to my coffee maker, rinse it out, fill it with water and drop a tea bag or two in, depends how much I need to wake up. Push on the red button and wait to hear the drip, drip noise. Walking or shuffling into the computer/living room I flip on the on button to the computer and walk towards the glass door. I open the door, test the weather and decide if I need it. Normally it's a gentle breeze, this helps to feel refreshened and I imagine the sound of waves.

Sitting down at the computer, I wait for it to load-automatically it signs me on aim and I see Katie and quickly say Morning. :) (Hi Katie!) The homepage is loading and I'm checking the list of people to say hello to, not many normally, who else would wake at this hour. lol. Once it's loaded I go straight to email. Delete any spam that got through the filter while scanning for hubby's last email. I write his email and send it off into cyber space. At this time my tea is done and I get up, dropping fish food two our three tanks and then pour my tea. One large glass cup, not a coffee mug either and two scoops of sugar. Hey I need to wake up and I have quit drinking soda. Woo hoo. :) 

Now I can get down to business. I check any personal emails for me, respond and then check to see if I have assignments. If I do I look and see what I need to research. Pull up another screen and type in the words and start. While waiting for those pages to load I will go back to email and maybe start reading those unless I feel I can't. Massive delete on much of my mail. Sorry but I do have about 14 pages of subscriptions in the yahoogroups and just don't have time. I now have them mostly on digest or those announcement things. I have this one and momwriters on individuals so I don't have much mail anymore.

If I don't have an assignment I open up ws-ftp and start working on my site. That's never done but sometimes I get lost in updates, just like researching. If I'm researching I will find myself to be learning and I love to learn so I continue. I know bad Eliza but that's what I do. :(

Okay so that's basically how I do it. It's a bit scattered throughout the day. I have interruptions, like when the kids start coming downstairs and breakfast, play time, lunch, schoolwork, book reading, it's summertime so now we walk more. But in the end it's a lot of fun and I do get it done. Not sure how but it does get done.

beach and a few things

We made it to the beach today! Woo hoo and I got to be a kid again. So many times when we go to the beach I just sit on a blanket with Babygirl and we look for seashells while everyone else plays in the water. Today however I got right out there with them. We played in the ocean and had lots of fun in it, except for the seaweed that kept wrapping around us. YUCK! Once on land we built babygirl a little pool and had a huge wall around it then we made a second one connected. I taught them in the end we must knock it down and they had a blast with that as well. :) weeeeeeeeee so much fun. :) Okay not writing related but now I'm more focused and it was one of my life goals. :)  Question was cleaning house a postitive or negative 5?  Yesterday I did finish the three assignments I had to do. Now for the next three. Yes, I need to figure out my points as well. I did update all three blogs yesterday as well.

Ultimate goal...

Okay so currently I've stated I want to make $100 by the end of the month, as in June. With the other sites that fell and the one that isn't paying much unless I want the full $300 at $5 at a time but I don't think I want to do it that way.  So it'll be with little assignments but I also want to venture out of that comfort zone and send out email queries to magazines and real snail mail queries.

Ultimate Goal- make $100 by June 30 

Small goals- finish my 6 assignments (3 due tomorrow, 3 due saturday) That one should be easy, however the titles just have me cracking up laughing. The things you learn when you write subjects you have not much clue on.

Medium goals- Send out at least 5 email queries regarding leads and/or a place I want to write for.  Send out at least 2 snail mail queries and 1 for KC (children's book)

Tiny goals for the week- blog every day (I have three I want to keep current, this being one of them) www.xanga.com/elizajane202 and one at livejournal under eliza_writes. Wish me luck. hehe

Life goals for the week- clean house (keep it that way, or try to with these kids), homeschooling so maybe getting their work for the week planned ahead of time. Go to the beach sometime this week. (it is a big thing as the ocean refreshes my soul) Write at least 3 real letters to hubby, not just emails.

Okay I think there are a lot of things here. Let's see if I can do them. Is this what Kai meant? Not sure but it sounds like a good plan doesn't it?

Goal Diet

"GOOD writing, as in the stuff you want to do for yourself, and that which takes you to your ultimate goal is a 10 pointer. Neutral, at five points, are the BC assignments Your blog gains you two points per entry (aside from the assignments) Procrastination loses you 5 points. Housework, five."

So now I must think about what my ultimate goal is. :) Hmm, this shall be fun. Right now it's to find the time to write and make sure all 6 assignments are turned in on time or before due. :) woo hoo. Does that count as an ultimate goal? If not my other is to make $100 total for the month of June. I know not a lot but it is for me because all the sites I wrote for have went kaput. :(

title for two weeks

Myself, that's it, I've learned about my writerly self and others. I knew most of this stuff but it basically made me think more on it. Lots of different ways of doing things and time can be found if we just practice.

why obstacles?

Why are they actually obstacles?

self-doubt- because it just eats away all the positive stuff and makes you begin to doubt what you've written.  Normally this will cause me to delete everything I've written or open a new file and start over. Either way this just prolongs my writing. Self-doubt isn't in just my writing life though it's always there, yes I'm the type of person that normally second guesses herself. Look how many times it took me to pass my driver's test, I thought, my father would've told me to go with the first choice but then again he taught me that everything has a trick question.

procrastination- Hmm, well I do this all the time. I should call myself the last minute gal. Okay this is only true in writing, like for blogger I will normally do it all the night before. Those of you that write for the company know what I'm talking about. hehe. Okay not a good thing yes I know this. I've done it my entire life though, in school I got great grades on those huge research papers, only thing is I did them normally the night before. Granted the tests I studied endlessly for and didn't get perfect marks, it was everything else that got my grades up. Phew.

Time-There just isn't enough time in the day to do everything on want. I think Kai knows that one.  I just need to figure out my day schedule and do it with that but everything doesn't fall into place every day. I have three kids that need mommy and that's that. Right now it's summertime so most days the oldest two want to play with their friends, we still do our walks and stuff but I still have a little one and she needs mommy. When I'm not with them and I'm online, I check my emails while I'm searching a new lead in the writing world or writing an assignment. (currently have 6 little ones right now, woo hoo) So yes I am working. :)

So those are my obstacles and that's why. If I had more time, stopped procrastinating and didn't doubt myself I'd be doing awesome. :)

Is it Procrastination or something else....

I'll just title it that, as that is really the question. I have a ton of novel ideas all over the place, you'll find them in my purse, wallet, the old computer, which currently has 8 unfinished novels on it and this one here. So what do I do? How do I get there? I love these stories so much but can't seem to finish them. Is it truely procrastination or is it something more? Some would say Adult ADD or ADHD I can't recall. Some would say lazy. Others might say she just doesn't have the discipline to finish a novel.

Do I just sit and stare at them all day? No, not really I honestly don't even open them unless someone starts talking about it and reminds me and then I think I bet Rebecca wants to leave that crime scene or Oh I wonder what happened to that stalker. That is the only time it gets me writing again, or of course Nano. Nano is great at getting me to begin stories but like I stated before I need to END them.

Any ideas? My problem isn't that I don't know how they end because I can see it in my head like some type of movie playing, but when it comes to writing it down the words don't seem to pour out. Maybe it's some type of fear? It would be GREAT to have one story finished before my husband got back from Iraq and possibly finding an agent or publishers. Awww the dreams that would be. :) 

Have you ever woke in the middle of the night due to some nightmare and wrote it down? That's how some of these stories began. One story in particular began because I kept getting the same one (a male) entering my dreams and wouldn't leave me alone so I began writing and he stopped. No more nightmares and I was discovering soon that I had began a novel, a scary one but one nonetheless. I love how stories pop out of no where, now if the endings would. lol

okay well my time is up and I hope to come up with some ideas on getting those novels finished or figuring out what's wrong with me that I can't end 8 different ones.

Purely hypotheticals and what causes me to not get them...

My goals would be:

By the end of this course have one book on an editors desk. I have a romance novel just about finished so this would be a great thing. Of course a nice little "We want to buy your book!" would be a nice way to end that.

Send out two more queries on my kid book, yes I know but this would be attached with someone pointing me in a good and promising direction.

Write for a magazine, and send queries out weekly.

Basically to start making enough money that hubby wouldn't have to stay in the military, especially if he needs to get out. To not have to worry about how we are going to pay the bills, etc. Of course isn't this every writer's dream?

What causes me not to get this? self-doubt, procrastination and time...or should that be time management. I need to organize my life to figure out a system where it all works. I need to quit the self-doubt but realize it's part of the writer in me and I'm the queen of waiting until the last minute. hehe. So what about you?

Writing

Looks like now I am suppose to write about writing, this is a funny topic because everyone has a different view on writing. To me writing isn't just words though, it goes deeper than that, it's someone's heart and sould, a book, a movie, a conversation, a sad or happy story, a life, a death. Writing can go several different ways and it all starts with just one word but is never the same. From that first sentence, whether it is fiction or nonfiction, "Once upon a time," or "I shot him where he stood.." they both begin and end and are the same in that form but are two totally different worlds.

Write what you know is a phrase that comes to mind, but lately I'm writing what I don't know and discovery more things. It is so interesting when you learn something new, at least it is to me. Of course once I begin learning something new I want to continue so I may have a little assignment to write 500 words on a subject and read a book on it because I loved the subject so much. Has this happened to you? Sure I write what I know but sometimes I feel that I'm not an expert at what I think I know. There's that doubt bug again, I'm a wife, mother, homeschool and military family but many times I don't think I can write on the topic. I always feel maybe I'm not doing something right or someone does it better. See what I mean, at least when I'm writing something I don't know much about I'm learning so I feel confident.

I don't have very good grammer and that always hurts me because I love to read but still haven't caught on to all that stuff and feel my writing is hurt by it. I will one day go to college and hope to get that fixed but in the meantime I use my computer to fix my grammer issues.

Another thought on writing, I love going into a book store and looking or even just standing amonst the many friends or just authors. What do I mean? I stand beside a book shelf and breathe in, imagine the time those authors put into those books and there are hundreds beside me, maybe 5 that I actually know and have talked too. Once I read a book and felt so bad because I finished it in a day and thought that book was probably wrote in a few months how is that being respectful, I should savor it or something. :)

Okay so that's my take on writing.

1C Where does my house fall? Chores?

Hmm, well a few weeks ago I would say it fell behind but lately with everything going wrong with my hosue and my computer dieing it's clean. :) woo hoo. I keep it that way too and every night before bed I discovered is the best time to clean and a few minutes before kids wake up is the other. Yes, it will get messy before 2 p.m. however that is what having kids home means. What does one expect with three kids all under 10? You can't expect a spotless house, at least not here. :0) I've learned to let things slide just when the kids want outside I tell them to clean a certain room before leaving. While they are out playing I will quickly reclean, yes I know. lol. Then I have an hour or two of writing, after that is me and my baby time....we watch Barney together. :)