It's Friday.

Instead of going out on the town tonight, I'm mixing myself a rum and coke, turning on a ridiculous movie, and settling in with the outline for my book.

And I might do my nails.

Anyone for Seconds? or Consider This a Pity Post

Yesterday I just wasn't feeling the novel. Probably because I had set aside a day to work on it. Today I need to be cleaning, and all I want to do is work on my book.

I've been tossing around a few titles lately. The working title is The PDX Project. I have considered Curiouser and Curiouser, but that title is overdone, as appropriate as it may be. My top choice right now is my NaNoWriMo title from last November: Peanut Butter: A Tale of Unrequited Love. For now, I'm sticking with my working title, so I don't write myself into a corner.

I have several promising pieces to the tale at the moment, but no through plotline, so my next step in the process is to develop a vicious antagonist and draft a new outline. I'm toying with the idea of introducing The Devil, folk tale style. The magic is missing from the story. I'm going for a Big Fish or American Gods adventure, so I either need to introduce Death or The Devil.

I like concept of trying to outwit Death. Maybe that's where I should be going with this. Hmm...

My 100th Post!

I feel an obligation to write something groundbreaking for this, my 100th post. It ain't happening.

Right at this very moment, I should be toiling over the outline for my novel. There it lies, open on the table, a stack of notecards neatly placed beside it in my work area. I have hours of time today!

What am I doing? Laundry. Sweeping. Putting sheets on my bed (long overdue).

I fully intend to write today. Just not right now.

I can give myself a pat on the back for being diligent enough to write an entry in my blog, as promised, and I can welcome procrastination with open arms, like so many before me.

Happy Hump Day!

It's time to start taking myself more seriously as a writer.

Sometimes the trick is to simply leave for a while.

I have always considered writing a hobby of mine, but it is clearer to me now that my goal is to be a published author. I have no unrealistic expectations to make it big as a bestselling author overnight (or at all), and I realize that I am wandering down a path of hard work for minimal return, but this is what I want. I have rewritten my schedule to include regular writing sessions during my week.

Forgive me if I offend, but I have been attempting to read Bill Bryson's the lost continent, and I can't help but find it unforgivably boring. It seemed well-suited to my research--I'm writing a travel tale, and I generally enjoy Bill Bryson--but it's all description and no meat. Yes, I laugh at passages and appreciate the portrait of small-town America, but for what it is, I find it's too long for its own good. Having made the cross-country trek recently, I know that most of the trip is dead space, which is partly why I'm having so much trouble writing about it. No one cares how long it takes to get from Point A to Point B, how many toilets there are in a rest stop in Texas versus one in Arkansas, what we ate at the truck stop, etc. Bryson's book is serving as a cautionary tale to my novel: Don't write it like this, as tempting as it may be. No one wants to read an entire book of "You had to be there" stories.

My hope is to write in my blog every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday from here on out. You know, to prove I'm a serious writer, or something.

I may have temporarily stopped writing...

...but only because I want to give my brain a brief break before delving into the hard part: editing. I will be back in September.

JulNoWriMo: The Wrap-Up

Word count: 55,630

I finished my 50K, and I ended my novel. It's a mess, and it's 220 pages long, but it's workable, I think. Maybe I'll actually follow this one through, folks.