Hello, gentle readers! Hope you are all well and staying safe!
Dinner is in the oven (I’m making
one of my mother’s favorite dishes), salads are prepared for the week, fruit
& veggies are cut up and in containers for the week as well, so I have a
few minutes.
It’s been a busy weekend for me. In
addition to my regular weekend chores, I cleaned my guest room and hung up new
curtains. It looks nice in there. Since no one has come to visit for quite some
time (my son surprised me last June), the room has become a repository for
things that don’t have a permanent place so I put things away in their forever
home. And while I was at it, I tossed a bunch of stuff and filled a couple
boxes for the Salvation Army.
And I finished doing my taxes. I am
relieved that it’s over for another year. I do my own (I love TurboTax) and I
like to do them early. No waiting until April 15 for me.
Doing my taxes so early frees up my
time for more important things…like writing. That’s not to say that I write
fast. I don’t. I write in the mornings, before the world is awake (from 4:45 to
6am) and I average between 300 and 500 words in that space of time (which, to
some, I’m sure, is not a lot, but it is steady and I do it most weekday
mornings before the day job).
Sometimes I struggle. A lot. Sometimes
the blank page and blinking cursor are intimidating, but I always come back to
“you can’t edit a blank page” so I persevere, even if it’s not good (yes, I
have given myself permission to write absolute crap). Dialogue is definitely
not my strong suit, and yet, when I’m writing a new scene, it’s always the
dialogue that goes in first. Not sure why that is. Once the dialogue is in, I
go back and put in my tags and descriptions. I’m sure others don’t do it this
way and probably think I’m nuts, but it works for me.
The other thing I do, particularly
if I’m struggling in the current scene, is jump ahead. I know! I’m definitely
not a linear writer. I think if I was forced to go from Chapter One to the
epilogue without jumping ahead, it would stifle me. For those who are linear
writers, I envy you. I really do. I don’t think I have ever completed a story
that way. It’s always been Chapter One, Chapter 10, Chapter 6, Epilogue,
Chapter 2 until eventually all the chapters are in place.
Ah, the timer just went off on my
oven…dinner is ready.
Stay well! Stay safe! And remember
to spread kindness wherever you go!
Marie
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