Watermarks

Been so crazy busy at work and dealing with my father’s business…and the electronic versions of my stories…well, I haven’t had any time to write anything. Also, at the moment, I’m questioning my abilities as a short story writer. So, I’m hoping to switch gears and write a new novel this month. Working title is called Statuesque. I’m hoping to get started on it over the long weekend. It’s going to be a fun fantasy romance type story, something I haven’t written in a while. Something I haven’t been able to even think about writing for over a year due to last year’s breakup. I’ve survived a lot of that pain and I would love to say I’m completely over it. Sadly, I’m not yet.

There’s still a great deal of pain left to overcome, but I’m better than I was this time last year. For the longest time, I couldn’t even look at anything involving romance. But this fun idea came to me a couple of weeks or so ago and I think I’m ready to give a romance novel a shot. I wrote out a synopsis just to crystallize the plot in my head and now, I’m ready to write it. Wish me luck!

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Okay, so way too much stuff going on, none of which is writing. But I’m experimenting with online fiction and have just posted my first short story to Smashwords. It was one published a number of years ago, so it was a good choice for this format.

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Got back Monday night, but have been too swamped with stuff to post. More Life Rolls craziness. Still dealing with my father’s business and the will stuff (being the executor) as well as my brother’s impending divorce and the job unrest. Things are changing too quickly to keep up with unfortunately. Started a new story, but haven’t managed to get past the first page yet. Maybe I’ll get more written this weekend. Workshop was very good and very insightful, gave me WAY too much to think about. With so little time left in my days, it will take me a good while to get going on some things. I need to write a business plan and do some other things related to my writing. These are things I need to think about without interruption, but that hasn’t been possible this week. argh!

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Came home from surgery to 3 rejections, one for a novel. Couldn’t even read them, had to get my mom to read them to me. Got majorly screwed at my job (my boss thought it best to tell me the day before my first eye surgery. Sigh. Feeling really, really low. Can’t seem to be good at anything in this life. I think I’m as close to rock bottom as I can get. Looks like I’ve got to look for a new job since my boss threw me under the bus. And I can’t even see well enough to update my resume or get these damned stories back out again.

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It’s been a rough week with the eye surgery. Really dizzy and nauseated because each eye wants to do its own thing. So no writing this week. I did however wake up one morning with a new novel idea (argh), but all I could do was jot down some notes about it. Second eye gets done on Monday, so hopefully it will end this dizzy, sick feeling. Wish me luck.

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Happy Birthday, Ron — hope it’s a good one!

Just finished the newest short story. Title is now Horizon. This story isn’t really a genre story, I don’t think. It’s kind of a near future story, but that’s not really the core of the story. So I’m gonna submit this one to general fiction markets. Final word count is about 3600 word. Need one more pass on it and it’ll be ready to submit. Then I want to get one other novel out and do some work on another one. I have 2 new books that I want to write soon. I don’t know if I’ll be able to write a story this week. My first cataract surgery is on Tuesday, so I may not be able to see well enough to do anything. We’ll see.

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Got another novel out tonight and wrote a 1000 words on the new short story. Wow, had no idea I was going to write a story about my dad. It just sort of popped up out of no where and I got all choked up and teared up. I’ve been missing him a lot these past few months. Anyway, this story is on track to be finished tomorrow as I’m about to go into the story’s final act. Haven’t thought anymore about a title, so it’s still untitled for now.

The sports med doc gave me 5 trigger point injections today. Needless to say, my shoulder is REALLY aggravated tonight. But I still have pain meds I can take. The doc said I’ll probably need at least a couple more injections, but hopefully this will alleviate all this pain. Makes it really hard to do anything. He also gave me some terrific shoulder exercises that I can’t wait to try in a few days (gotta give the shots a few days to do their thing.)

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Finally got a story back out that had come back last week. Also got another full novel out tonight. That makes 3 novels out at the moment (2 full, 1 partial). I think that is a milestone for me. I’ve never had that many novels out at once before. I have 2 more to mail, too. Can’t imagine having 5 novels out at once, so that will be pretty cool.

Got about 400 words done on the new story too. Still no title yet. Moving into the second act. Don’t think this one will be terribly long, probably 3k to 3.5k, I’m guessing. It’s kind of a weird story, but we’ll see where it goes. I can already see the ending, so I think it will turn out well. Just found a story submission app for my iPad, so I hope to play with that this weekend. : )

Shoulder is still screwed up. Hopefully, the sports med doctor will have some ideas for me tomorrow when I see him.

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The shoulder is intermittent, so I gave it a rest for a few days. Started this week’s new story tonight. I kept avoiding this story for some reason and this morning in the shower, I realized that I still didn’t have the right idea for the object I’d chosen. This is like idea number 6 now. I turned idea 5 on its head and took it in a different direction. And that’s all I needed to put words on the page. I’m about 700 words in so far, but I’m enjoying the story.

One of my old demons has surfaced and I’m trying to turn it on its head. One of the things I struggled with was feeling like I need to write “great big important stories.” I couldn’t just write to entertain or tell a story, that in order to make a sale, the stories had to be big and important and ground-breaking and blah, blah, blah. I’m struggling with this crazy thing again.

I got my iPad on Friday. Yay!!!! I’ve got to tell you, it’s really awesome! It helps me at work and at home and everywhere in between. I never really liked smart phones (too small) and the net books just didn’t quite fit my needs (no wifi, no connection). But the iPad with 3G has just been a perfect fit. I still love my Dell notebook for a lot of things, but the iPad has easily replaced my ebook reader and lack of smart phone. Having both is the best of both worlds. : ) : )

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Well, last week didn’t go like I’d planned. On Friday, I came down with an ear ache/sinus infection and injured my right shoulder. Got a messed up tendon in my shoulder that needs to be injected. Spent the weekend in my recliner. Needless to say, I got no writing done, no new story. I think my ear and shoulder are better now, but I don’t know how much work I’ll be able to do. We’ll see.

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