30% Done

I'm still committing myself to this project most days. In fact, in August AND September I wrote 18 days out of the month (sounds better in September because that's 18 out of 30 days instead of 18 out of 31). I wrote over 1,200 words today (not to kid you though, this is one out of only 3 or 4 days that I've broken 1,000).

With this consistency comes a frustrating urge to talk about what I'm doing with my family. Unfortunately, it's difficult to talk about a 'wanna-be' book that I'm writing when I have nothing to show for it and no previous success in this area of my life (I've talked about 'wanna-be' books in the past so I'm speaking from experience here...all it gets is a smile and a courteous acknowledgement that I've just said something).

It's just hard to receive or expect to receive any support from anyone for this endeavor. I'm already doing the jewelry shop, I'm a part-time graduate student, and I'm in the process of relocating across country with my husband and toddler. Would anyone be expected to take this seriously?

The only reason even I am still taking this seriously is because I'm using a couple of iPhone apps that are making me keep track of the words I've written. That's how I know what percentage of the book I've written so far. The goal is to get to 70,000 words and right now I'm at 21,147 words (tracked with the 'Word Count' app) and I can see the days of the month I've written by logging the words in my TracknShare app.

At least half the time I force myself to write so that I have something to enter into those two apps. And I don't consider that to be a bad thing. Almost everywhere I turn to for advice about writing tells me that if I want to finish a book, I have to write. This wouldn't be such a constant piece of advice if I were the only one who struggled getting the words written. It takes time and commitment and I highly doubt there's anyone in this world who can spend months straight on a certain writing project without having a day or two where they just don't feel like getting into it that day. And for busy people that have several big and unrelated things ruling their time, they might see those couple of days spread to months. The only way to get myself to do this is to remind myself on a daily basis that it's something I want with every creative urge in my body (it sounds weird, but I have loads of them) and that I'll never feel totally whole unless I do this.

So once again, I'm happy to have this blog to track my thoughts on this topic and be an audience for me to put it out there that I'm excited about this.

"First get it written, then get it right." -not sure who

Thanks!!

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Location:Wapwallopen, PA

Chapter Five

I'm starting Chapter Five of this book tomorrow. It feels way more legitimate now that I've been sticking with it for several weeks. I started listening to an Audible 'how to' book on becoming a successful novelist. It was written by the guy who wrote the Rambo books (I didn't even know they originated from books...sorry David Morrell!!). I definitely don't expect to become a successful novelist because of this audiobook, but I have found that listening to any nonfiction book helps me stay more aware of whatever topic that book is about. And they take me weeks to finish, so if I'm thinking about writing fiction for weeks, it can only help.

I just wanted to give myself a little congratulations on finishing another chapter. I'm using an app to track the amount of words I'm writing (did I mention this already in my latest blog post?) and the app is telling me that I'm 12% done with my goal of 70,000 words. I definitely say 'hooray' to being anywhere in the double digits of percentage done with this. If I could just get to triple digits percent complete...that's obviously my ultimate goal.

This audiobook brought up something interesting for me today. The author asks 'why do you want to be a writer'. He even brings up the really good point that writing one book could involve up to a full year of work that you may never ever be paid for (this is something I've thought of time and again recently..simply because I'm making and selling jewelry now, working for a living, and raising a daughter--all of these things give me a very limited amount of time and I can't help but equate time with money now that the jewelry business is something else I could be putting my time towards here at home).

I still haven't really fully answered the question, to be honest. I'm gonna have to keep thinking about it, I guess. Some of the reasons I can't let go of wanting to be a writer...
-I've been writing in journals since I was younger than a teenager.
-I have stories that I haven't even ended in my head yet...so I feel like the only way I can see them finish themselves, is by writing them.
-I need to feel like these desires to get published have not always been a delusional and childish 'I'd like to be a ballerina when I grow up' type dreams.
But I don't feel like any of these really answer the question of why I WANT to be a writer.


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Goodness.

I'm almost embarrassed to be writing here. But I'm writing a new book and I want a place to sort of post it to the world. I'm big on social networking and getting my thoughts and feelings out there (even if I'm not really getting a response...there's just something about knowing I told some public forum about something that legitimizes it for me).

I haven't finished a book yet, but I've started several. I always have an excuse, and it always has to do with life and a lack of making this a routine. I've started yet another writing project with new motivation (don't get me wrong, I have done this at least 5-10 times in the past...each time with this overwhelming desire to see it through to the end, never with any success).

I figure I can write to you, old ancient blog, to try and keep myself going. This is, after all, the sole purpose I created you in the first place.

For now...my new project is called 'The Earths Project: Book One'. It's an old idea that I've morphed now for the third time. I'm almost done with Chapters 1-3 and a Prologue.

I currently have strep throat for the 4th time since March and my husband and I are moving with our 2-year-old daughter to Arizona after spending a month homeless in Pennsylvania starting September 13th when the military movers come and take all our belongings to storage in our soon to be state of residence. We plan on living with my family and his over the month between September and mid-October, when we're starting our drive across country.

So keep in mind that my life really is hectic. I wasn't just saying that. But as an incentive, I think I'm going to reward myself with an Apple Macbook Air at Christmas as long as I keep up with the book until then. Of course, that would also depend on me having a job in Arizona. This particular Macbook is something I've wanted for years, because of my writing, so I'm probably going to look into trading in my current Macbook Pro for the smaller, lighter, and much more portable Air.

ONLY IF I KEEP WRITING (or else, why would I need it??)

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Location:DuBois, PA

Faster approaching

When I wrote by previous blog post, I had no idea that my finals in my online courses are actually due NEXT week!! A Big UH OH went through my system and since then I have been working on completing the two finals. I am partway through one, and the other is due later next week so I hope to finish that one up throughout the week.

I feel extremely overwhelmed by this extra workload in such a short amount of time, also because I am going to Atlantic City this weekend for a bachelorette party. I live more than 6 hours away from this city, and am carpooling for part of the trip, so I am hoping to get some work done then.

Despite my momentary high in stress levels, I am thoroughly enjoying that fact that no matter what, by next Friday, I will be done with a large part of my responsibilities until the end of August. This will free up a lot of time (which is more precious to me than money as of late) for things like reading, making jewelry, and above all, writing!! I know I have disappointed myself countless times on my writing but I am genuinely excited about this impending writing project. I keep feeling a little bit of nostalgia for my youth and I know that typing my journals up with the added creative outlet of commentating throughout is going to bring up so many emotions and lost memories! Some will be bad, I know, but I think for the most part they will make me laugh and smile.

Well, I better get back to my homework...this is, after all, my lunch hour.

Here we go again.

So with my school semester coming to an end and my impending three months of slightly less responsibility coming up in May, I'm hoping to pick up a new writing project. And, once again, it is going to be a fresh project. I have several big fears in my life but one that has always been in the top five is this: to never finish a (writing) project I've started. This summer, however, when I 'start' this project, it is technically one that I have started and 'ended' many times throughout my life. My idea is to write out my journals into my computer (something I have always wanted to do, and only this time am I starting to try and formulate a way to combine this task with my desired new writing project).

So my homework in order to facilitate this new writing project is as follows:

1. Check and see if there's a way to link Scrivener with Dropbox. If so, this will be beneficial when I do my next homework assignment.

2. Take photos of the pages of my journal with my iPhone 4. It takes decent photos, especially of up close things. But I'm worried that the pages might be a little too large to get the whole page in one photo and still be able to read it.

3. That brings my next homework assignment to my iPad. If the photo takes on the iPhone 4 but is still too small to read, I'm hoping it'll be legible on the bigger screen of my iPad. Then maybe I can use my iConnex bluetooth keyboard to write out the pages in My Writing Spot on my iPhone 4. (I don't mean to be name dropping, but I'm hoping these specific terms make this blog 'searchable' considering I hate writing for nobody but I'd rather be 'discovered' haha).

That's about it for now. The writing project will be something along the lines of a new 'My semester abroad' and 'My sophomore year of college'. So there will be a new 'My [time of my life]' for each journal. I might group some together depending on their lengths. I will also add in commentary as a 'looking back' or 'if I knew then what I know now' kind of thing.

So that's my summer writing project idea. We'll see what happens!!

It has been a while...

I had the baby September 16th...Jane Elizabeth...That will be my excuse for taking off so many months. It became habit again, not to write. I'm still trying, however, and I have probably written a couple thousand words since August. I can't tell you how many though because I have now fully switched to writing with 'My Writing Nook', which only tells me how many words I have per chapter and I don't feel like doing math at the moment. My Writing Nook has changed its name to 'My Writing Spot', which I am not a fan of. I liked the feel to the other name. According to the reviews for it in the Apple App Store, I'm not the only one, so hopefully they'll take a hint and change it back. It is still an extremely helpful program and I have recently acquired an iPad (YAY!) so I decided it would just be easier from now on than to keep copying and pasting back into Scrivener (I LOVE Scrivener though and I plan on using it again when my life becomes less mobile. With the baby though, that isn't happening anytime soon.

So look forward to more updates because I'm not giving up yet folks!!

i-Connex Keyboard

So after about 2 or 3 weeks of waiting, I finally received my bluetooth keyboard from Freedom Input. They're based in England, so all things considered, that isn't that long of a wait. I am finally all geared up with my iPhone 4, the awesome Writing Nook app (which I still love) and now the added ability to easily pull out my full-sized, fold-up keyboard and write wherever I am. I received the keyboard in the mail Friday after work and wrote about 1,000-1,500 words over the weekend. Let me actually total it up...the book is now up to 24,857 words and I really haven't written much in the past month or so (once again) so that really is about 1,000 words since receiving the keyboard. Of course, we'll see how long this little burst of writing energy really lasts or if it's just another product of having fun using a new writing tool (like amazing Scrivener or when I first signed up for My Writing Nook).

Either way, it has me writing and I will literally have many less excuses for not writing now that I can whip out my phone and keyboard anywhere.