A Cure

I've been a bad blogger lately. No schedule. No real subject. Just lots of randomness to fill each day and only some of it do I remember to share. I really must do better.

I'm just not yet sure what will help me do better right now. I'm not really writing much at all, blog or wip. Even my tweets are growing sparse and if you know me, you know that is a major sign that something isn't flowing right. I mean, I've even lost a lot of my thrill and will to read. Seriously. It's taking me days to get through books that once would have taken me a few hours.

Anyone else know what this is? Is it just fallout from the insane weather we've been having in Utah? First 80* then the next day blizzard? Is that what is messing up my jive?

Any magical cures out there?

Stuck.... Yes, Again

I've been in Revision Hell.

Am currently to the point where I've pretty much stopped revising and, as many of you probably noticed, have taken up farming. My 4-yo kidlet is highly supportive of this. She's the one who says (as soon as I walk into the house after work), "Mommy, we need to check our farm! I need to go collect strawberry milk from my pink cow!" And yes, she speaks in exclamations. Much like she only has 1 volume and it is not an inside voice.

Those have become my priorities of late.

And my brain must be fried. I don't even know what to blog about. Maybe I'll just go check on my crops.

WiP Wednesday: . . . And Cupcakes For All

The Husband has asked politely if I would start today's post with a big fat: GO UTES!! (even if the game isn't until Saturday)
So there you go. Moving on.

I've been in a rut lately. Stuck in the mud. Or quick sand. Or drying concrete or something. I haven't written anything in weeks. Weeks I tell you!

For all these many days I've loitered about the house. Mostly I spent time with the family, which has been really good, and then after they all went to sleep, I read this and that (I probably wouldn't have finished TTW if I was writing), worked on my crits, did laundry, pretended I knew how to cook and just generally putted about.

I have to say holy huge THANKS! to the gang on Rallystorm Throwdown and my Twitter Critter buddies for all the words of encouragement, sympathy, and just because you guys let me whine without making me feel lame! You guys ROCK! You kept me just this side of drowning myself in Jalapeno Kettle Chips--a recent new MUST.

So after all this many days of dinking around, I had to go to live crit group. The last meeting was 6 weeks ago and we've gone through a "management change" so I did have a chance to submit something back then. It was a good meeting and I got some insightful feedback.

On the drive home, as I was jamming to my Fallen CD because I <3 Evanescence and can't listen to it when the kids are in the car. (Phephe calls it my scary songs, yeah, I guess I can see that.) And then IT struck me.

I pondered IT some more overnight. When I woke up still thinking about IT I knew I was on to something. So I dropped a quick note to one of my BFFs with a 1-liner thought on the whole thing and got the most AWESOME positive response from her. She's even going to help me with research and everything!

So YAAAAAAAAAAAYYYYYYYYYY! Adorable Hello Kitty Cupcakes for ALL!

What's In The Bag??

Just something for you to think about today, as I'm (again) out of town with work. (I know you are all TOTALLY jealous I'm going to spend 2 days traveling for a 1 day meeting, but *sigh* what do ya do?)

Since I have this trip I'm currently on and another trip next week, I decided I'd clean out my purse so I could travel in a semi-Zen state, yanno, where I could find my passport at check-in and know where my wallet is and stuff. Wow, I couldn't believe the things in there. It was like a treasure chest, full of things I didn't even realize I had, a bunch of stuff I thought I'd lost and yanno, just stuff!

Maybe this is why so many of my thoughts were jumbled up and all over the place and I felt like I had writer's block on the current wip. My working notebook has to live in here! If I was my notebook, I'd be all jumbled up and easily confused too! (Not that I'm not anyway, but that's a whole other post.)

So I've decluttered and reorganized and determined what my MUST-Haves were. This is what was in my purse when I got onto the plane:

Sorry for literally dumping all that on ya, but wow, I can't tell you how much that helped clear my head.

Blocked by the Evil Pencils

I know I've been kind of quiet for the last week. Aside from the weekly quote, I didn't post ANYTHING last week and I feel guilty about that. When I first started this blog, I seriously didn't know what I was doing. I did 3 blog posts in 3 months. That's how pathetic I was. I vowed to be better. And I have been. Since then, I've been consistenly posting, not everyday but I've tried to post at least 3x a week. Except for this past week. I believe my issues bled into my blogging.

My problem (as for many writers/blogger . . . people in general) is that real life just sort of, jumps out at me and Ta-Da! throws my normal routine all out of whack. Real life. Gets me every time, sucking every little tidbit of creative mojo from my brain.

While we're on this whole lack of creative mojo, something I wanted to get out in the open: I've written almost nothing in the last couple of weeks. Revisions, sure. But new wordage. I believe the magic number might be something like . . . 10? That would be words, not paragraphs, pages or chapters. 10 words. I suck. Whew, I feel better just confessing that.

I blame it on the evil pencils . . . no matter that I do almost all my writing with my laptop or notebook & pen . . .

On a different note, I'm going to be attending my first in-person writing group meeting tonight. Totally stoked to meet some new people and learn some things. It has taken me a while, but I think I'm on firmer ground now, with the whole crit group / beta readers thing. (Thanks to everyone who helped point me in the right (write - LOL!) direction!)