About A Girl

It's dark and gloomy outside and I'm sitting at my dining room table listening to Nirvana. How's that for a Friday morning?

The second half of this month has been a total wash for me in terms of progress in my writing. Write Motivation is a great thing, but I've been backsliding like crazy. Last week, I went out and did social stuff four days in a row. I had a great time in the moment, but damn did I miss some serious recharging time. (I'm a big ole introvert if you didn't already know.) So that's basically what I've been doing since Sunday night. Which is why I've been remiss in blog posting, still haven't finished the episode of Holyoak Five that was supposed to be up last Friday, and have fallen behind on every other goal on my list.

Yesterday, I tried to do the write-all-day thing - but I drank waaaaaay too much coffee and spent several hours trying to bring myself down to earth again. (Stupid caffeine sensitivity.)

Today I'm back to one cup of coffee, no sugar. Also attempting to get the house back in order... Although to be fair, I've done a ton of dishes and laundry in the past few days... But the big thing is to get my writing schedule on track. Ugh. I suck at forming habits that stick.

Actually, I've been pondering that problem, and I'm thinking that part of why I suck so much at habit-forming is how I self-treat my anxiety/depression issues. A lot of it is straight avoidance of "responsibilities" in favor of "turn your brain off" activities. (...I play a lot of Pokemon and watch a lot of Netflix. Sometimes I read a book or two.)

I'm not saying I think this is healthy. But sometimes it does feel necessary. If only to give me a kick when I reach the end of my rope and realize, oh hey, I would actually like to be a functioning human being!

Booking Through Thursday - The Purpose of Reading

What is the true purpose of reading...?

And so … this, right here, pretty much explains exactly WHY I like reading so much. Yes, it’s fun and entertaining and diverting, and all that, but ultimately, it TEACHES me things. It broadens my horizons and makes me look at ideas and people and life in general in new and interesting ways. Isn’t that what reading and art in general is SUPPOSED to do? How do you feel about this? Do you agree? Disagree? Discuss!

This will be short and sweet.

I'm going to answer this by saying I don't disagree, but "broadening my horizons" is not the main reason that I read. The vast majority of the time that I pick up a book, I'm looking for escapism, pure and simple. Most of the books I am writing were also born of this desire.

I do read non-fiction when I want to learn something. And I do imbue my novels with themes that might one day help to broaden someone's horizons of thought. But those are not the first things I think about when I think about reading and why I love it.

Weekday Work Schedule

March is the month of being awesome, so I am trying to do a new thing every week in that vein. Last week I created my goals for the month and started in on all of them - with mixed success. But my overall effort pleased me (no burning out so far!) so I'm not going to detail the failures.

This week I am implementing a structured weekday work schedule. It's something I've tried in the past, but I always ended up taking a day where I said "fuck it" and spent the whole day watching TV and eating cereal straight from a box. Ugly, I know. But I think I've set myself up for a relatively painless segue into a structured workday this time because for the past month or so I've been good about working every day and - much more importantly - treating it like work.

("Work" has always motivated me. Ask any boss or teacher I've ever had; I was one of their best employees/students and they never had to wonder if I'd have something done on time or if they'd find me idly not working whenever they stopped by.)   

Here is the schedule I am striving to maintain, starting today:

Wake up at 0700 - doable since this is when the boy's alarm goes off.

0700 - 0800: Make breakfast (COFFEE) and read a book.

0800 - 0900: Blog stuff / social media stuff.

0900 - 1100: Work on Holyoak Five.

1100 - 1200: Pick something in the house to clean. (I use Unfuck Your Habitat for motivation and you should too.)

1200 - 1300: Make lunch and read some more of that book.

1300 - 1500: Work on current WIP novel. (For now, Grave of the Goddess.)

1500 until the boy gets home or until I'm done: Clean the kitchen.

Wish me luck! I'm confident in my abilities to focus, but I have the worst time forming habits. I have actually put an alarm into my phone for every single one of these time frames just to keep me on task. Or, you know, cause guilt if I'm backsliding.

How's everyone else in the Write Motivation community doing with their goals? This week I hope to start making the blog rounds during my social media hour in the morning to do some cheerleading. :)

Going camping next month!

 I'm using Camp NaNoWriMo in April to continue writing episodes of Holyoak Five every week (at about 3000 words an episode) as well as doing at least 500 words a day on my current WIP novel.

Holyoak Five: http://holyoakfive.blogspot.com/

Current WIP novel will be Grave of the Goddess until it is finished, at which point I'll move on to Chaos Waking. (Make with the link clickys if you want some more fun details about the characters in said novels.)

Grave of the Goddess: Two teenagers search for the grave of the long-dead Moon Goddess who used to be the mate and counter force of the now mad Sun God.

Chaos Waking: A goddess of chaos is exiled and buried by her brothers and sisters. Centuries later, two grave robbers wake her up.

As always, my camper/NaNo username is greenandgrey.

Booking Through Thursday - Censorship

On the question of censorship for kids...

I think most of us are probably against censorship on principle, but … do you think it should vary depending on the impressionable age of the readers? Or is it always wrong? How about the difference between ‘official’ censorship by a government or a school system, as opposed to a parent saying No to a specific book for their child?

This is a really interesting topic, and there was a great blog post that inspired it. 

I feel strongly that censorship of books in any kind of official capacity is Grade A Ridiculous. A parent saying no is a personal choice and not something I'd interfere with, but when a government or school system bans books due to subject matter, that frightens and appalls me. I (and my family) should be allowed to decide what I'm morally ready for - not an institution made up of people with potentially vastly different beliefs and values.

I know that when I become a parent I will follow the same rules my mother used for me. If they're old enough to read it, let them read it. I read a lot more sex and violence at a young age than I ever saw on TV or in movies. And I'm pretty sure I learned more about sex and violence from written fiction than I did from any visual media (which seems to use it mostly for shock value rather than story integrity and progression).

On Being 27, and My Monthly Goals

Yesterday was my birthday. And now I'm 27. There is a funny thing about this age – and by funny, I mean morbid. Have you ever heard of the 27 club? By pure coincidence (I'm sure), several famous musicians have died at the age of 27. Amy Winehouse, Kurt Cobain, Jim Morrison, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin… Just to name a few.

Okay, I don't actually think I'm going to die this year, but I am morbidly convinced that something awful is going to happen to me or someone I love. Is that stupid? Maybe, but it's there. I've been obsessed with the idea of the 27 club for a long time; I'm even writing a book about it - A Hunter's Fire.

At any rate, I think 27 is going to be much better than 26. On a superficial level, I like odd numbers better than even numbers. Also, the number seven has always been kind to me. Both 17 and 7 were wonderful ages for me. Not to mention, I still have three years to go until the dreaded 30. So that's not too bad.

Enough of that. Let's talk about writing.

January was a total wash in terms of writing. I was supposed to be finishing Grave of the Goddess, but I barely got anything done on it. February was much better: I started writing Holyoak Five, and that has been going swimmingly. (If you haven't read this story blog yet, please consider checking it out. Link is below, or in my sidebar.)

I want March to be my month of Awesome. Because I'm still unemployed, I'm able to be extraordinarily productive in terms of my writing. I want to take advantage of that for as long as I possibly can. So in that vein, let's take a look at my goals for this month.

MARCH GOALS
 1 - Participate in Write Motivation
2 - Blog post about writing once a week
3 - Booking Through Thursday post once a week
4 - Post an episode of Holyoak Five every Friday
5 - Finish reading at least 4 books (in an effort to catch up to my Goodreads challenge)
6 - See note.

Note! I posted on Write Motivation that I wanted to catch up on my backlog of critiques for Grave of the Goddess's first chapter, BUT I think it's far more important to just finish the rough draft before I start in on the rewrite. I was hanging with my boys yesterday, and they agreed with me about this. So I'm adding a goal of ~500 words a day of work on GotG for March.

All right. Wow, if you stuck around through all that, thanks. My final note is this: I followed everyone from the Write Motivation roll call sheet on Twitter and by blog, and I'm hoping to participate a good deal in a community of motivated writers. Here's to making friends and enjoying the community spirit.

Hopefully next time I'll have something more interesting to say. This post made me feel wicked self-conscious. o.0