ROUND & ROUND & ROUND OF WORDS

Hi Rowers!

A (short) List of Awesome:
Made dinner with youngest, in which a bacon weave was involved!

Filmed dog and youngest in popcorn catching contest!

Goals:
Having a weird time, pulling the proverbial teeth to get anything written. I have a you-know-what storm of happening right now, but I don't think that's it.

I was thinking about this as I folded some laundry--some good ideas can come whilst folding boxers--my characters came to mind and how they might feel about me NOT writing.

Which is when I started asking them questions...
Look, I know that sounds flaky, but it happened, and I went with it.

Here's what they said:
Me: So...what are you guys doing?
Van: What are we doing? What are you doing? Seems like a whole lot of nothing.
Eva: That's harsh. You don't have to be mean Van. Although, he kind of has a point.
Me: Okay, okay I know what you mean. I can't seem to get back in the story.
Eva: What helped you before?
Van: I hope it was the sex.
Eva: Oh, you!
Me: He's kind of right, when I made the big push to finish a lot of it was sex.
Van: Yes!
Me: But I think more than anything I love the banter.
Eva: Yes, I love it too. Never thought I was one for bantering, but he just brings it out in me.
Van: Really, I'd never guess.
Eva: There you have it, and that's why I have to say it to her.
Van: Touche.
Me: Ha! Okay, maybe I can do this now.
Van: Well, I hope so, I really want to get back to the...banter.
Eva: Hahaha...me too!

And then I wrote, now this was pretty late, and I only wrote one page, but it was one page that wasn't written before!

I realized how much I miss these characters, and I want to make their story as rich as I can. So, I'm doing it for them. 

AN AWESOME LIST! AND A CHECK-IN

Okay, totally stealing, er, borrowing this from Karen Rought

{{{LIST OF AWESOME}}}

I know! Right?

Because, sometimes I think our brains latch on to lists of SUCKAGENESS too easily, and we need to stop that. 

Right now.

This minute, this second! 

In fact, not only do I want a list of awesome, I want a box of awesome as well. And, why not? Then, if suckageness scrapes at my door, I can simply look in my box of awesome and be reminded of the pure joy and awesomeness of life.

1. I won an hour of creativity coaching from the awesome Jennifer Blanchard
2. Started watching Downton Abbey! I know. What took me so long?
3. Jamie Ayres is going to visit my blog on Feb. 5th! We'll be celebrating her new release YA 18 Things Jamie's going to be writing about 18 Things You Should Know About Writing--can't wait!
4. Found out my 20,000th day of my life will be August 28th of this year. Seems preeeetttty important. It also happens to be my mom-in-law's birthday. Here's the calculator 20,000 Days
5. I get to see the best sunrises driving my youngest to school.

ROW80

I'm stopping there, for my actual check-in.

I had changed my goals to two simple things:

Write one scene a week Done! Yay!

Research one item a week (from list for manuscript) I didn't do this! And it surprises me, because, usually I'm all over research. So, I will do this today. 

I didn't realize how hard it would be to make actual changes--adding new scenes, etc. to my draft! It was easy to write: this is needed here, more description here, deeper POV etc. but to open the manuscript and start typing was something else entirely.

Inertia had won.

Now, it feels as if I've cracked through something--one thing Jennifer said was: the time is going to pass anyway, you may as well work on something. And I know this! I just didn't think about it in regards to my writing!

Small wins are still wins.

So, how are you doing? Any awesome things for you? Any small wins?