Progress by Heartburn

Yesterday didn't go quite as I planned. I had intended to work on typing up more of Anemone's Song during my daughter's nap, but I went on a sudden cleaning jag instead. (I guess the nesting phase of this pregnancy has started.) I figured I might then do a little more cleaning later that night after she was in bed, and then do some writing.

Oh, the best laid plans...

The upshot of this is that I accomplished nothing in terms of my writing yesterday. I was too tired to clean or write, last night. Just picking up my daughter's toys off the living room floor is a ton of work at this point in the pregnancy. Everything is so awkward, and I spend all day standing up and down doing things for my daughter, plus all of the trips upstairs to our only bathroom, I just don't feel like messing with much at the end of the day. So I end up crawling around the floor on all fours trying to clean up her toys to put them away, and the entire process takes two or three times as long as it should. By the time I'm done, all I want to do is sink into a comfortable chair and hope that I don't have to climb the stupid stairs to use the bathroom any time soon.

On the bright side, though, I managed to type up one short chapter of my book tonight, despite how exhausted I am. That makes me happy.

Of course, it probably has something to do with the fact that my husband brought home Taco Bell for me, and I'm afraid of going to bed too soon for fear of killer heartburn. I have near constant heartburn in the last three months as it is.

Meh. Whatever. I'll take what I can get, you know? I'm one chapter closer to being finished with all the typing, which means I'm closer to the editing phase. Progress is progress, after all, no matter how you accomplish it.

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The Write Direction

Writing gives me a sense of direction, a purpose in life beyond the day to day chores and stress and trivialities. I have realized this anew in the last few days while my husband has commandeered the computer in the evenings to work on his projects and school work before his finals. I haven't felt so cut off or purposeless during my evenings for a long time. I feel as if I don't quite know what to do with myself, never mind all of the other chores to attend to. I suppose it's because evening, in my mind, are a chance to relax and enjoy myself, and I feel like I'm being robbed of that, somehow.

Anemone's Song is coming along. Albeit very slowly this week. Last week, I reached a point in the book that I really enjoyed writing the first time around, and it's just as enjoyable typing it up, if not more. Anticipation of finishing up this typing is high, although the end is nowhere in sight.

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The (Short) March of Progress

Frustrated with my lack of motivation (and thus lack of writing progress), I IMed my friend Echo online tonight, and within minutes of talking about writing with her, I was writing again. Of course, this lasted for, oh, maybe 10-15 minutes before my daughter woke up and started crying for food.

So life goes.

But I got a little more writing done. A few paragraphs, at least. Yay me!

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Success Comes in Inches of Time

I don't have a whole lot to report for the last few days. While I didn't get much done in volume, I did get some editing and submitting done. I went back over some of my poems and edited some of them. Some of them were rewritten a bit and tweaked, and I think they came out the better for it. Some of these poems were pretty old, dating all the way back to high school. Needless to say, I wasn't happy with the writing quality from most of those old poems, but I found a few gems that I left more or less the same. And some had enough promise that I reworked them.

The up side of seeing how bad some of the poems were is that I've improved in my poetry since high school. So while the poetry I write now is weak in comparison with my other writing, it was encouraging to see that I've already improved my poetry over time, just by the act of writing itself. Now that I'm specifically motivated to improve upon this weaker area of my writing, just think how much more I may be able to improve it and grow as a writer! That's a very happy thought!

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Feeling Like A Winner!

I. Kicked. Butt. Today. I did a ton of great work today in my editing, I think! After struggling most of the day with the rough draft, trying to add more description to various parts of the story, my creativity finally kicked in this evening as my perseverance paid off! I'll have to type up the changes tomorrow, but I'm really pleased with my work. I think it has promise as it is, and once I polish it, I think it could definitely win the contest. I don't know if it will, of course, but I'm hoping it will!

Yesterday was some of the same. I spent it editing. Mostly, I fixed grammatical mistakes or misspellings. I even went through and changed some words that I had been overusing. I added a little bit of new writing to it, but not a whole lot. In addition to the editing on the story, I began two new poems. One of them...I really don't know exactly where it was going. It sort of turned into a ranty piece about how I feel, being stuck at home without a job. But aside from one or two salvageable lines, it really sucks so far. I can't seem to capture the things I want to say with just the right words. I have a feeling it'll go through a major rewrite. The other poem I started is about writing. It kind of rambled along until it developed the theme of writers block and trying to meet deadlines. I dunno that it's all that great, but it sure pleased me a heck of a lot more than the other poem.

In the meantime, I'm enjoying my new book when I get a chance. I've been pretty good about not letting it interfere with or distract me from my writing so far. It's kind of like when I was in college, or grad. school: I sneak a little of my pleasure reading in during lunch time, or right before bed, to help myself relax. That way, I can read something that I really want to, but not at the expense of my work.

Now if only the book weren't so hard to put down at the end of lunch, or my bedtime...

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The Beginnings of Progress

Well, I'm very tired but happy. Today I managed to reach my daily goal of 500 words. In fact, I went slightly over it, and managed 560 words. I probably could have even managed more since writing was coming somewhat easily tonight, but my husband wanted me to watch all of the Terminator movies with him (we managed to get through the first two, and we plan to watch the third tomorrow, before the premiere of the TV series), so I was pretty distracted for the majority of the evening. Still, I at least managed my daily word count.

In other writing news, that website, http://www.duotrope.com/, that my friend left in a comment to my previous entry is both quite interesting and helpful. I recommend it highly to writers. It makes finding markets for various types of writing a lot easier. Through my own efforts at detective work, I had managed to hunt up some publications for fantasy, but my discoveries were only a handful compared to the treasure trove that this site pulled up for me. To that end, I began poking around some of the websites of these publications and I found a call for submissions that interested me. It's for short stories, but since I'm hoping to improve mine anyway, I figure why not give it a shot? And since they want fairy tale re-tellings, I figure that it's a good place to start, since I will have a loose framework for my short story to build upon. I'm hoping that something like this will help me ease into writing short stories, and that I will soon feel more comfortable writing my own completely original material (I have already begun a list of ideas, which I hope to further develop in the future, after I finish this project).

So, I'm starting to chug (or is it slug? *wink*) along, writing wise. The momentum is slow, and I don't expect it will speed up noticeably any time soon, but maybe one day later this year, I'll be able to look back and say to myself, "Wow, I've really come a long way and accomplished a lot."

Now why is it I'm having flashbacks to that story my mother read me, The Little Engine that Could? Oh, yeah...that's right. I'm the little engine.

Who says books never teach you anything, eh? That's at least one lesson from a book that I guess I picked up well enough.

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