writing – Page 2

Planner Love

Behold the beauty of my personally designed planner. After scouring the internet and bookstores for the perfect planner for–let’s face it–years, I finally decided to create my own. (Side note: I did try bullet journaling for a while, but I hated that I had to create new spreads every day/week/month by hand.)

I originally was going to have it printed at Kinko’s and put it in a binder, but that was going to cost in the hundreds of dollars (?!). I decided to check out a self-publishing website I encountered before (BookBaby), and to my pleasant surprise, my new planner (bound with a hard cover!) was going to cost less than $50, including shipping.

Pen Commitment

catears cropped I just ordered 300 pens with my name and website on them. Perhaps I should post on this website more often. The pens are bound to get out. I do work in a restaurant, after all. Pens disappear all the time. We know not where they go, only that we enter the restaurant with five in our pocket and leave with two or three. I will use one pen obsessively in hopes of losing it so all my pens will be the same, only to lose the others and keep that pen until I intentionally “lose” it. I will buy pens that are different than the hosts’ pens, only to see the same kind of pens I bought show up in the hosts’ pen jar a week later. Well, not this time. And if it does happen, I won’t care because I’ll have 300 PENS WITH MY NAME AND WEBSITE ON THEM. I can take them back whenever I want because I know they’re mine. Or I can leave them there and hope the hosts lose them. Lost pens usually find their way to the right place at the right time, right? Perhaps. At least, I hope my $126.65 will encourage my pens to be lost in all the right ways.

NaNoWriMo and the Hike

You guys, of you are ever feeling stuck or uninspired in your writing, take a hike. Literally. I took a hike today, and I had two big epiphanies. Go alone or take a quiet friend. There’s something about being out in the quiet, listening to the birds and your own steady footsteps, that rattles loose some ideas and attracts whole new ones.

Now I’m off to write 2,014 words (at least!) of new ideas. 😊💜✍🏻💻

Six Days of Camp NaNoWriMo Left

cropped — Here is a random picture of me to add some sort of visual stimulation to this post. Ain’t I cute?

There are six days of Camp NaNoWriMo left (in case you didn’t glean that from the title of this blog post). I have not started rewriting my novel yet, but I have made some good progress on marking up the printed version I wrote. My goal is to finish marking it up by the 31st.

I have a lot of things going on in the next five days (helping someone move and preparing for a camping trip, plus the usuals like school and work), but I am committed to doing this. Even with a migraine that’s lasted for more than 24 hours (ugh), I felt compelled to stay up and write this blog post, since I haven’t written any other updates on how this month has been going. If I can do that, I can finish marking up those pages this week.

That said, I’m a little overwhelmed. It seems the only time I can get anything done has been early in the morning, and I’ve been sleeping in a lot because I’m just too tired. Plus, the whole migraine thing hasn’t been helping.

#thestruggleisreal #justsaying #writersarepeopletoo #thisisablogstophashtagging

Simple Abundance: A Devotional for Everyone

About six years ago, I converted from (Reformed Baptist) Christianity to Wicca. I won’t get into all the details about that process here, but later I found that by distancing myself from Christianity, as so many new Wiccans do, I was throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

There were many things I missed about Christianity that had nothing to do with its theology or doctrines, including going to church (yay for Unitarian Universalist churches!) and my daily “devotions.” As a Christian, I read my Bible every day, sometimes twice a day, as well as my favorite devotional, My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers. It kept me sane and at peace on days when that was a most difficult task. It focused my intentions in the morning and helped settle my thoughts in the evening.

Continue reading “Simple Abundance: A Devotional for Everyone”

3 Steps for Revising My Novel This Camp NaNoWriMo

During Camp NaNoWriMo this July, I “enter the dark and terrifying forest” as I revise a novel for the first time. That quote is pulled from Rachel Aaron’s ebook, 2k to 10k. It is one of the books I have been referring to as I plan to revise Nazrat of the Kora, the novel I wrote during last November’s NaNoWriMo. Other books on my list include Stephen King’s On Writing, Janet Burroway’s Imaginative Writing (3rd ed., though I should have the 4th ed. soon), and even The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Writing a Novel, by Tom Monteleone.

As I’m delving into strange territory, I find it necessary to look at the maps created by the explorers and travelers who have been through the forest many times before me. Looking at these maps has helped me develop my own plan for the upcoming month, along with my own goals. Here’s a little of what I’ve learned and some steps I plan to put into action. Continue reading “3 Steps for Revising My Novel This Camp NaNoWriMo”