An Awesome Writers Conference.

Awesome Awesome Awesome. It was my first writers conference ever, and I loved every minute of it. I learned so much in one day. I wish I could have been there for days and days and days. And the food was fabulous. Totally worth all the calories in it.

I took pages and pages of notes, and had such wonderful ideas and inspiration come to me and was so excited to come home and just write and write and write. But, I had to do some preserving of delicious jelly and juice and fruit. It took me days to do it all. And now this week, I've had a nasty head cold and have been trying to help my house recover from a week of neglect while I bottled grapes and peaches. So needless to say, I haven't written a thing. I've edited a little, but I haven't done much. And now in 2 days, I'm going to another 1 day writers conference and I'm hoping to get as much from it as I did the other one. And this time, when I come home, I'm going to make the time to write.

I should have taken the class offered in the first conference about how to fit writing into your busy life. I know the summer is harder for getting writing time, as well as the fall, but once winter hits, and we've got no place to go, I'm going to get at least 10 times as much done as I have lately.

I will. I promise. You check on me.

How to exercise while writing.... That is the question.

My gluteous maximus hurts. (spell check tells me I spelled it wrong, but I didn't want to be vulgar and say my butt hurts.) Its all because of the time I've been spending on the area previously specified while I'm sitting on it working on my laptop.

I've been trying to figure out how to incorporate exercise into my schedule, but its only half hearted. So I'm just going to have to make a goal to stand up, stretch, do some squats and leg lifts to get that area in question a little happier. So here is my goal. After every page edited, or written, I'm gonna get up and move around and do some exercises. (or maybe I should do it after every 3 pages if I'm really on a roll, cause if I stop working, then I'm tempted to check email, FB, other blogs, or waste my time in other ways.

Now, I'm going to get off this blog and do my exercises, then get back to the WIP and kick some writing butt, then exercise my writers butt.

So easily distracted.

Man it is too easy to get distracted from writing. I had a golden opportunity to spend some quality time with my laptop today. And I did. Except for I didn't do the revisions I had planned. Instead I watched some shows on Hulu. Love hulu by the way.

I have been changing one of my stories from 3rd person point of view to 1st person point of view. I believe it will really enhance the story, yet I've discovered it is difficult to change it since I did so much of it in 3rd person. I have to cut out whole sections, since my main character wasn't there to see what happened, but it is still fun to see things from her eyes, instead of from the eyes of an all knowing narrator.

So as I'm going, I start to think of something else, go research it, or go check email, or FB or other blogs, and then realize. Oh crap! I've only got a few more minutes before the kids get home from school, and then its homework time.

I really need to stay focused, but so far I've been able to return to my focus and do some more revisions. I'm halfway there, with the revision of 3 to 1, but then I have to write the rest of it from 1st Person and that will sure be fun. I know where I'm going with it at least.

I'll let you know when I get there.

Home construction and writing?

We've been working on finishing our basement for a while now. It has taken longer than I thought it would, but is actually coming along faster than I thought as well.

How is that possible? Well, when we first got started, I had in mind what it should look like at the end. We only have a half basement, filling the underneath level between our kitchen and front room, since we have a sunk in family room that isn't a basement, but isn't on the main level either.

SO I knew we'd only have two rooms, a bathroom, and a storage room with a small utility room there as well. My image of it and my husbands image were similar, but until we actually got to the framing, and building, of it, it was just an idea.

After the frame took shape, then we could tweak the little things, like the wall texture, the paint, the lighting, the flooring, the molding, the fixtures, the cabinets, and such in the bathrooms, as long as they fit within the frame of our rooms. (sometimes it took a little force and some shoving, but we made things fit when we really wanted them in there.) In the bathroom, I picked a color I loved, but the honey didn't like it as much, so we tweaked it a little by splotching it with some white paint and a loofah sponge. Easy fix, and I could see the change made a big improvement.

It came together little bits at a time, with a lot of hard work and effort going into it. We (and I mostly mean he) worked on this and did most of the work by our(him) selves, but on things we knew we needed help on, we went to a professional, or one who knew exactly what to do and how to do it.

Don't ask me why, (I'm a writer, I couldn't help applying what I learned to writing a book) but I started to think how the writing of my story followed a similar pattern. I have a basic idea of a story. The size is determined by the genre, and the age range I'm writing for. The frame is what I have to work with and relates to my plot. The little things I can tweak are easy to do for a bit, and I have a lot of options, but once I pick them, I need to stay true to them and their abilities, strengths weaknesses, and so forth unless I want to go to a lot of effort to redo them, so the thinking things through before I commit comes in handy.

There are times when I needed the opinion and a fresh view of someone else to tell me how to fix my problem, and make it work. Other times, I pushed and shoved and edited, and changed things until it fit.

Thankfully I never had to completely tear out anything, in either situation, but this thing called writing sure takes longer than I thought it was. Once I had the frame and the walls set up, I thought I was done, but now I'm going through, fixing the dings, making sure the cement holding it together is pretty and smooth, the paint needs to go on evenly, and the accents are being worked on to make it all a beautiful finished product. I'm still working on it, but I sure have come to understand that it takes more than just the framework to make a good story or a beautiful room.

I sent my kids to school today.

School has started up again, after a fun and busy summer. I used to always think summers were easier to deal with, and the school year was hard.

That must have been because I was a student for a lot of those years, and a teacher for a couple more. I looked forward to summer and couldn't wait for all the late nights I'd enjoy (and growing up in a small town, it probably doesn't resemble the late night that may come to mind for some people).

I loved working in the little mercantile for my dad while growing up. Having a built in job was awesome, plus, I could always have whatever kind of snack I needed or wanted and just put it on my tab. Somehow, my income was always sufficient to cover my wants. Plus I even had money for school shopping just before school started. We'd load into an old green van, and head to the BIG city. Of course, Salt Lake City is a big city, but to me from my grass valley roots, it was humongous. What fond memories are mine. I even sat on a bucket in the van, because there weren't enough seats, or seat belts, cause my parents took the back bench out to make room for all the supplies they'd pick up at the bulk stores. Good thing we never were in an accident or I'd be dead by now.

Then when school would start, everything came rushing in. After school activities, drama club, musical productions, drill team, and keeping good grades made for a busy life. I LOVED school, but always felt excited when summer rolled around again.

However, now that I'm a mom, I still keep thinking summer will be easy and laid back. It so isn't. We go on vacation, usually a couple of trips to our favorite lake. Lake Powell is awesome. And we do some other things, with busy nights, and weekends, and trying to keep a handful of kids occupied and entertained. No wonder moms start the month of August looking forward to shopping for their kids back to school needs, knowing that soon, they will have a few hours a day of peace and tranquility, or in my case a lessening of the fantastic chaos since there are still two at my house who aren't in school yet.

But just the difference of having two in the house instead of four, plus me of course, allows for more time to write. I'm excited for my new project and have been happily banging away at the keyboard, and making some adjustments to the beginning I'd done on it months ago. We'll see if I use my time wisely, or not.

Probably some of both.

It is DONE

I may have said this before, but I am done with the first one, and I'm putting it away for a month and focusing on something else entirely. I'm not gonna look at it at all. I found the first time I put it away for a few months, and came back to it later, I saw all kinds of ways to fix it. I'm hoping it wont need fixing again, but it feels nice to know I can put it away.

Now onto my next project. I really want to start on it right this second, but my battery is low, my energy is low, and my mind is tired. (sort of) Maybe I can dream about what all I want to do with this next one.

On a side note, I got to meet another published author a few days ago. It is so amazing to meet other people who have accomplished what you want to. And such a nice feeling to know that others succeeded and it is possible that you can too. Such a kind man too. I met J. Scott Savage, the author of the Farworld Series, and the Covington mysteries. His sister also came and told us about her experience in breaking into the publishing world. It takes more than just a little work, but it has been worth it so far.

I have such crazy dreams. I rarely go a night without having a dream of some sort.

The other night, I dreamed that my husband came home from work with a family following him, and he informed me that he had just sold the house and these people would be moving in immediately.

I had to start packing my stuff (I have a lot of stuff) and moving it out while the new family started moving their stuff in. I was making good progress, and wasn't panicked at all (which is so NOT like me.) I need to have weeks or months of prep time to wrap my mind around a concept, so in my dream I kept wondering why it didn't bother me that he had sold the house out from under me, and that I was packing everything up so well.

He was even so kind as to get a horse trailer to use as our moving van/truck. They even put up some nice blankets to keep the messy horse droppings from getting on our stuff.

The thing that did concern me, was that we didn't really have a house picked out that we were moving to. I asked my husband where we would be on Sunday (the next day) because I had to teach sharing time in Primary. I also started wondering which of my neighbors I could go ask to help haul out the heavy furnitures and stuff.

I woke up before we moved, or even finished loading the horse trailer.

The thing that cracks me up about this dream is that we have no intention of moving from our home. At least not anytime soon.

Ahh, I just love my subconscious mind. Gives me such interesting insight into myself.