Determination

I am determined to get this right....I have a contest to enter which I know if I even make it to the finals could be a stepping stone to the career I want....heck just to enter might get me motivated to succeed....and the only way I can enter is if I have a complete m/s...I do have one but not sure if I can tweak it enough to make it work for the comp but thinking about that one....maybe if I really get my act together I will have two to offer....

So much for professionalism....

I know if I was working in a "real" job I'd have been fired by now for my lack of work....I know I've not been feeling well....but can't keep making those excuses...I'm on the mend so should be able to spend at least an hour here and get a couple of pages done over the next few days until I am feeling better
I intend to enter a book in a major writing competition....but have to finish it first...have deadline middle of November to register and early December to have it completed and on it's way so really need to pull my finger out and get it done

MMMMM

I'd love to say I'd been writing....but I haven't....still in recovery.....head spins a little too much to focus on the screen ....heck reading is difficult enough let alone actually trying to create something as well....I hope that I can shake this bug in the next couple of days and be able to do something more than spend thirty minutes at the computer adding a couple of blogs and checking to see if there is anything important in my email that I need to deal with straight away...or wait until later when I can focus properly....

What a week......

and that's not in a good way....had the worst writing week....life got in the way....or rather illness....could barely lift my head off a pillow.....running hot and cold(and not talking about my love life)....a cough that still hurts like hell....and what was worse I couldn't even read....I could understand not writing...hard when you feel like crap....but I couldn't even read when I was sick...the words blurred and I got a headache....NOT GOOD!!! I feel a little better today hence the blogging and hopefully will get a couple of pages done today ....

Another day...another

well I'd like to say another five pages or something which I should be saying.....BUT....I was going through old half written m/s ....after having a real block....no that's not the word...but I just couldn't relate to the story I was writing ...it didn't flow and it became a chore sitting at the computer to try and tell their story ....and as I'm still in the unpublished stage of my career...the only deadlines I have are ones I set myself and I decided to put the story away to dust out at a later stage...and return to one that I should have never let go....Sage and Noah's story...I've already written 8 chapters...the first three have been edited thoroughly and maybe a comma here and a full stop there was all I needed to tweak today...the other eight pages are pretty much good to go with maybe a couple of paragraphs that need work on in each chapter which I highlighted today rather than starting on the editing stage....I find that if I start on editing I get stuck on writing something new so I am going to try doing something different with highlighting those passages I want to work on and then get on with creating rather than molding and tweaking....it will be much better to actually edit a full rather than making the first 8 chapters shine and never get the rest of them done.....anyway that was today's task...highlighting the previous chapters which helped me get a feel for the characters again and I think tomorrow I will be ready to create again....well at least I hope so :)

A good day

Pleased with my efforts today...even with life getting in the way with household chores and grocery shopping and four kids underfoot I managed four pages on my children's book....not a lot for some people I suppose but for me who has been thinking rather than writing it is great....a beginning...

A new day....

a new attitude.
I am trying to schedule so I can do everything I want to do....to pull out the dusty rejection of Isabel and Craig and pull it apart and put it back together, to work on my children's story and to focus on some two new characters, Penny and Ty, and to dust off and add to two old, Sage and Noah and I hope in the future to be able to blog about those successes...or heck the not quite so successful aspects...but to learn and grown and continue the process and be proud of myself with every step of the way.....
I AM GOING TO MAKE A SUCCESS OF THIS,
I AM A WRITER, NOW TO JUST GET PUBLISHED
I AM A WRITER, NOW TO GET A FOOT IN THE DOOR AND A BOOK ON THE SHELVES

My journey continues.....

I consider the last four years of my writing life to be the apprenticeship....maybe not even that...maybe that will be the next four years of my life where I am learning and enhancing my craft....
Maybe mid 2000 to mid 2004 is more like highschool were you are still trying to decide who you are and where you want to be in life and you try different paths to see where they lead you....
The journey continues and I can only hope that with every twist and turn that I learn something from it and move on instead of going backwards.....

My journey....part five

2004....the perfect opportunity...my youngest child started school, my DH is being supportive and saying I don't need to go out and find a job so I can concentrate on my writing....and I have a whole six hours in my day that are child free so what is my excuse.....
That I have a whole six hours in the day that are child free ....the first time since 1990 when my first child was born....and I wanted to enjoy it...to go shopping without dragging kids along and having short timetables (preschool years) that I had to adhere too....and then six hours.....who said you had six hours...it just slips away....and you find that you have less than an hour to actually sit and write once everything is done and you wonder why to bother....just in case.....I know wrong attitude but....
Come August I decided that I had to take myself seriously....do I really want to be an author or am I kidding myself, am I fooling around because I don't really want it or to avoid really going out into the world to find a job...
And then a thought struck....I really really really do want to write...and I want people to read what I write to cheer on the good guy, to boo at the bad, to laugh and to cry....to think and to wonder what if.....to give people a chance to escape reality and realise that in the end the good guy can prevail that justice can be served and that there are such things as happily ever after

My journey.....part four

2003 the worst year ever...and it should have been the best...I was going to a writers conference in New York...which should have been totally and utterly inspiring...well it was...but it was also very daunting....
For the first seven months of the year before the conference I couldn't concentrate properly because I was so excited...finally getting the chance to go to New York a place I have wanted to visit in...well forever....and I was not to be disappointed...I'd go back tomorrow if I could...(well shouldn't that be inspiration in itself...to write so I can go back every year and meet with editors etc...well you'd think so wouldn't you :) )
And the last five months of the year where spent wondering how on earth I was going to ever break into that world with so many wonderful wonderful writers in it already and even more trying to do exactly the same as me...break in....and the doubts set in about how good my writing is or was or whether I was wasting my time etc etc etc....tossing story ideas around again...wondering what would be more suitable etc etc, spent more time thinking about writing than actually doing it......

My journey ...part three

2002....wow wow wow...even though I spent very little time writing this year I had two fulls requested on I&C and M&F and played around with well....lots of different story ideas....I was so excited and so sure of my success that I came down with a thump when both stories were rejected....soundly....before hand on a query the rejection wasn't soul destroying because I thought of all the reasons why they could have been rejected because the story idea didn't fit at the time, they'd just bought a story from a known author with similar themes etc etc, but to have my writing rejected well that hit hard....and I think I'm still in recovery or denial one or the other but lets say...I didn't learn from it ...I wallowed in rejection and the rest of the year was totally and utterly pathetic

My journey ....part two

2001....I finally committed to something....a decision to write romantic suspense where I could combine a happy ending with a bloodthirsty crime....and to my credit I did write one full story, Isabel and Craig's story, and played around with six other couples which are still in bits and pieces and the childrens story I have sitting in the wings.....
I don't think I sat down for a full day or full week once in that year to write...in fact going through writing journals I would be lucky if out of the twelve months on offer that I wrote properly for more than three.....
I even got up the courage to send off queries on I&C's story to publishers only to be soundly rejected...but I didn't give up then....I began Maggie and Fox's story....and then September 11 happened....
Even though it didn't happen over here it hit hard and I wondered why on earth I was worrying about trivial things like some fantasy characters life when there were real problems in the world....... instead of thinking that maybe my characters fantasy lives would be a break in reality from the crap going on in the world.....just realising that now....duh how slow can you get :)

The journey....part one

June 2000 ...I decided that it was about time that I actually get on with what I had been talking about for the last few years...writing....for years I had piles of exercise books with notes in various locations around the house, but we finally entered the computer age in 1999 and I decided that it was about time that I used the computer for something other than games...so all my notes I transferred onto the computer...tossed most of them...and then sat looking at the rest for the next six months....trying to work out what I wanted to write....a few words here a few there....I wasn't sure if I wanted to try my hand at kids books, full blown thrillers, light romances what......(think I'm still having that problem.....)

My career....

hmmmmm.....what career....two rejected m/s gathering dust underneath my desk...another half dozen, in various stages in folders on my computer and way too many other ideas in different stages of plotting and planning in others....hmmmmmm

My story......

my earliest memories of writing were my own take on fairy tales, or the book we were supposed to write in school at 11 or 12 and most of the girls were writing about horses and I chose to write about someone who had been kidnapped and managed to escape her kidnappers. I got good marks for that....and who knows one day it might evolve into a full blown novel. Another good memory was being told by a journalist friend of my parents that one day I would be a writer.
I took that to mean I would be a journalist and for most of my high-school years I contemplated journalism....but in all honesty I had enough of the truth and what the big bad world had to offer in my own home I didn't want to write about that....I wanted to write about things that had happy endings of at leastif not entirely happy that the conflict was resolved and everyone went on with their version of happy....or of the wonderful fairytale life of adventure and magic that I would have loved to experience myself....
I didn't go on to study journalism, or go onto any further studies what-so-ever(university is not the same down-under as it is in the US where so many kids go to college)..... most kids only go on if they want to pursue certain career paths like teachers, doctors, lawyers etc etc...to go just for the sake of studying, socialising etc is done yes....but for the majority of kids once they leave high-school are out in that big bad world in search of jobs)
...anyway I digress...I decided that my next biggest passion maybe my biggest at the time....to travel was more important than writing...I worked a couple of jobs to get overseas....(and to be honest I haven't been back to New Zealand in nineteen years....it helps that most of my family moved over to Australia so this was the logical choice in countries to come to when my soujourn in Europe was over-six years later) Anyway the most writing I did was very very long detailed letters home, and the occasional journal entry.....damn I could have done with a laptop and blogging in those days....)I met my husband in England, did more traveling, even had my first child there....then moved to Australia where we set up home and had three more....and all the time in the background I knew that I had stories inside that I was ready to tell....and still have....now to just committ them to paper and get them out there for all the world to see

To be professional you have to what?

Well I suppose it helps if you actually turn the computer on, open up the required writing folder and write, or pick up the much scrawled hard copy and scrawl on those pages that haven't been done yet....that would be a start!!!!!!

Resolutions...

I know it's not New Years...but I'm doing it anyway

1) to get a SCHEDULE (with flexibility) so that I can fit everything in....family, writing, me time, more writing, exercising(ick) more writing, housework (bigger ick LOL),and even more writing so that nothing falls by the wayside

2) to be more PROFESSIONAL about writing and not treat it as a hobby

3) to WRITE instead of sitting thinking about writing

4)to not let REJECTION get me down, to cope with it, to learn from it and to get on with it

It's all in the attitude

....I have to have the attitude and belief in myself that I can do this....that I can make a success of writing....

Yes I do want to be a writer....where

I am committed to doing this (no that does not mean I should be committed for doing this LOL)
I will not quit and I will make a success of this business, no matter how long it takes and how many rejections and knockbacks I recieve along the way
I am an author...now I just need to get published
I am an author....I just need a foot in the door and a book on the shelf