Words! On Paper!

 For the first time in a long time, I sat down last night with my red pen (found one!) and my notebook (that's been sitting by my chair untouched since I started a day-job) and...

I wrote words!

It wasn't a huge amount of words, but I filled a page with genuine fiction.

You see, I had a funny little germ of an idea the night before (also something that hasn't happened in a while) and I thought I'd noodle around with it. I sat my butt in my comfy recliner and started to write.  By the bottom of the page, my hand was pretty tired... damned atrophy... but I have the beginnings of a story.  Yay.

It's weird.  It's entirely possible no one will ever read it.  Then again, it might be good and if it is, I might know of a place who may be interested in it.  If they're not, it'll be a short story to sell on Amazon.  

But that's a long ways off.  The important thing is I WROTE WORDS!

YAY!

Oh, and something else that hasn't happened in a long time... I lay in bed last night thinking about the story and what to write next. I should've gotten up and written in down because it's most likely in tatters of memory now.  :shrug:  No matter.  I was thinking about stories and writing.  Also YAY.

I can't wait to see what happens next.

Where to Begin?

I've been trying to decide how to start the journey back to writing.  One thought I had was to just grab my notebook and red pen*, and free write.  Let the ideas flow out of my fingers and onto the page where only I can see them and they can just BE.  In the past, I've done this whenever I'm stuck.  I write until I find a way through the mess in my head.  Basically transferring the mess from my head onto a page.  It works for me.  And if not writing for two years isn't stuck, I don't know what is.

The other thought I had was to pick an unfinished story and just start writing on it again.  But without getting down on myself for mistakes.  This would be a full-on 'give yourself permission to suck' - which is another way I've gotten myself out of an inability to write.  There have been numerous times in the past where I've been so focused on writing a story that would SELL that I couldn't write anything.  Time to suck with wild abandon and not care who knows it.  Suck away, my friend.

I may do a combination of both.  We'll see how it goes.  Either way may break something free.  Fingers crossed.  I will write again.  First, though, I should probably see if any of my red pens still have ink in them.  ;o)

What do you do when you're stuck?

* I always write in my notebooks with red ink.  I started doing it years ago to get rid of the fear of someone marking my writing up, pointing out all the mistakes, in red.  And I got to where I just like it.  

Sunday Update 6/2/24

It's been a while since I did one of these.  Don't expect me to catch up. LOL

Almost two years ago, I went and got me one of those payin' job things.  Last Tuesday, I gave my two-weeks notice - which basically amounted to nine days worth of work.  Friday the 7th is my last day. Think of it as me retiring again.  Think of it as me shrugging, if you're so inclined.  In reality, it's just time for me to come home and get back to being me again - writer, fisherman, gardener, kitty mommy, housewife - without day-job distractions.  (I was going to say without any outside distractions, but the world being what it is means plenty of outside distractions.  Blerg.)

The first thing I need to do, which I'm already starting to do, is get back into a writerly mindset.  This means taking care of the business side of writing, refilling the well by reading, and then actually sitting my ass down in this chair and writing.  For the business side, I delisted all my books from Draft 2 Digital and am taking them back to Kindle Select so I can drum up some page reads.  As single novels or series are marked as delisted, I'm enrolling them in KDP.  I did this a while ago with Song of Storm and Shroud.  Last week, I did it for Blink of an I and for the SCIU series.  I'll be doing some marketing for those in the coming days/weeks, as time and money allow. 

I've also been reading.  I finally set a Goodreads goal for 2024 - 35 books.  I think I can do that in the next seven months.  I've already read 4, so I'm off to a good start.  

The actual sitting down and writing will come.  I'll make it happen starting later this month.  The plan is to start small.  In the beginning, I'll be in my chair with a pen and my notebook, jotting down ideas and writing little sentences and paragraphs about nothing in particular.  I'd like to do some kind of JulNoWriMo - July Novel Writing Month - wherein I set myself a goal and write toward that end on a single novel.  I don't think I'll be able to do 50K in a month yet, so I'm not even going to try.  Maybe 30K.  Maybe only 15K.  The point will be to write every day so that the atrophied writing muscles get back into shape.  I'll talk more about that as the time approaches.

In non-writing, I have 6 tomato plants I'll be nurturing and all of my gardens need care after two years of neglect, I have a lake full of fish waiting to ignore my worm, and Sawyer needs a motherly influence to curb his less-than-stellar behavior.  

I'm ready to begin.  5 more days of the day-job to weather through and then I'm home.  I feel good.  I feel strong.  I'm ready to pass out lollipop, kick ass, and write books... and I'm ALL out of lollipops.  ;o)

How are things in your world lately?  

The Long Trek Back

:tap tap tap: Is anyone still out there?

So, anyway I did a thing.  Last week, I delisted Song of Storm and Shroud from everywhere but Amazon.  Last night I checked to make sure it was delisted everywhere and I put SSS back into Kindle Select.  For the first time, people can now read it with Kindle Unlimited.  If you have a KU subscription, you can read it for free.  I hope you'll give it a whirl.  

It's not much, but it's a start.  Regardless of the day job, I need to start doing writerly things and feeling like a writer again.  It's been too long.  There has to be more to life than work, eat, sleep, repeat.  Basically, I need to claw my way back to writing again.  I don't have the time, but I'll make the time.  

In the course of taking care of SSS on Amazon, I remembered that Silver had told me I needed to go into all my listings and let Amazon know that my books weren't created using AI.  So I did that.  34 times - 17 ebooks and 17 paperbacks worth.  

There's a bunch of writerly stuff I've let slide.  I'm not going to get it all done expeditiously.  It'll take time.  I'll probably slack off.  Some days the day job will be too much for me to even think about the writerly things.  :shrug:  

We'll see how it goes.  

How are things going with you?

Happy New Year!

Well, the end of another year went by.  2023 wasn't necessarily bad.  It wasn't necessarily good either.  In the end it all balanced out.  2023... the Year of Meh.

I used to use a post like this to talk about my book sales.  Suffice it to say, there's no joy in that particular section of Mudville.  I sold 27 books last year and made about $28.  Wrote nothing, published nothing.  But I got a nice letter the other day from a reader, squeeing about my djinn books, so that was good.

The beginning of '23 saw a thing, which I am not at liberty to discuss.  The end of '23 saw us completely out of debt.  

I'm still working.  Being out of debt doesn't mean I can afford to stop.  Not unless I want to get right back into the mess that prompted me to start working after 18 years.  (Thanks for the sucky economy, you know who you are.)  On the upside, I'm pretty good at my job and I'm improving all the time, so yay.

2023 saw us head over to the pet rescue for a kitten and bring home two.  They're both a year old now.  Finn is still a cuddle-bug.  Sawyer is still a tornado.  But Sawyer is getting better.  And we've all adapted to each other quite nicely.  At a year old, Sawyer is 15 pounds and Finn is 11.75 pounds.  

This past year, Hubs and I both traveled to see our mothers.  They were separate vacations, but that's okay.  I think we both needed to do that - have one on one time with the Moms.  They aren't getting any younger, ya know.  

I started 2023 at 165.2 pounds and started 2024 at 161.0.  At one point I got down to 158, but that didn't last long, and for the remainder of the year I've been hovering between 160 and 162.  It wasn't a super active year.  I did start walking on my lunch this fall and managed to get myself up to 19 miles walked in 2023.

I didn't go fishing even once last year.  As such, I never even bought a fishing license.  =o(

One definite upside to 2023 is we didn't lose any loved ones.  The Moms are still going strong.  The sibs have their issues but are, for the most part, healthy.  Owl is out there in the world, doing her own thing.  Hubs and I are alive and well.  Another year older, another year wiser perhaps.  Still in love.  This year, we'll celebrate our 20 year anniversary.  Yay.

And that's about it for the yearly wrap-up.  I hope 2023 was better than, and certainly not worse than, MEH for you all.  Here's hoping 2024 is a better year, no matter how your 2023 went.  

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Thursday This n That

I don't have a lot of time this morning, but here I am.

Customer service is a lost art these days.  I was thinking about it this morning and about my customers.  Yes, I reached a point a while back where all these people are mine, and that's important, but we'll circle back to that.  I've been working on a project where I'm building a sort of list of customers, what we do for each one, addresses, email addys, etc.  It's for sales & marketing, but it's something more.  It's given me an opportunity most people don't get.  I have at least SEEN the names of every customer we have, because I typed them into the list.  I didn't generate it using a report function.  I Typed It In.  So when Lorna Doone calls, even if I've never spoken to her or met her, she doesn't have to tell me she's a customer.  I can greet her like I know her.  "Hello, Ms. Doone.  How are you today?"  Good god, I can't remember the last time I was greeted like a person when I called customer service anywhere.  And when I do what I do, I can hear the delight and sometimes shock in the customer's voice that I remembered them or knew them or even just didn't act like they were a number.  It's kind of awesome.  Circling back to that other point, I think reaching a point where the customers are YOURS means you take better care of them.  You want to provide them with better customer service because they're yours.  Jus' sayin'.  

I don't know if I told you this, but when we first got the kittens, we would shut them in the office at night so we could sleep.  Okay, when we FIRST got them... like the first week... they were free range kitties, which is why we started shutting them up at night.  Mama needs her sleep.  Anyway, a few weeks ago, we decided to let them free again.  Those first few nights were not gentle slumbers, but eventually they're getting the idea that we sleep at night and they're settling into bed with us.  Sawyer likes to wake up at 3am and play, but I just scoot him into the office and go back to bed those nights.  For the most part, they're both becoming good cats.  Yay.

Since I starting working again, my typing speed has accelerated.  I'm not sure how fast it is now, but man... whoosh.  Taking notes over the phone really sped the old fingers up.  When/If I start writing again, look out.  LOL

Okay, it's about the time to ponder whether I need a shower, and if I'm gonna take one, then I need to get 'er done.  Some days, I just can't muster the will or the energy to shower.  I'm thinking this'll be a 'wash my hair and call it good' day.  

Well, whatever you decide and whatever your day brings, have a good one.  

Thursday This n That

Dragged, kicking and screaming, into this decade, I am finally allowing Windows 10 into my home.  I'm kinda forced to, and believe me, I wouldn't be doing it if they* weren't forcing us to.  But nothing seems to be updating for Windows 7 anymore.  Bastards.  You see, Hubs needs a new computer because his laptop is like 13 years old and we're on tenterhooks wondering whether today is the day it's going to die.  We stopped closing it years ago because the monitor/lid hinge was getting to where it was close to popping off the next time we opened it.  Anyway, I hit Newegg and ordered it up last night - 'puter, monitor, keyboard, mouse.  All for under $200.  Yay.  Yeah, they're refurbs, but I've been working on a refurb for 3 years.   Once Hubs' is in and we're sure it works and junk, we'll order me up a new 'puter, too.  Just the machine - I have a monitor, etc.  Maybe afterwards, we'll be able to load stuff faster than the speed of snail.  Freakin' browser with it's 'we won't update your software anymore you dinosaur' messages.

I know you haven't heard from me in a while.  Work takes pretty much all my brain space these days.  I wish I could talk about it, but there are eyes everywhere.  :waves:  

The kittens are 11 months old now.  Sawyer is my chonky boi, but Finn's no itty-bitty kitty himself.  They're the same length stem to stern.  Sawyer's a bit wider and Finn is smidgen taller.  We'll weigh them at a year.  

Sorry, I had to stop there for a while because Hubs wanted to go over the budget.  End of year, trying to figure out where the money went... Weeee.  We're definitely better off this year than we were last year, and last year was way better than the year before.  Hell, we're out of debt now.  Woohoo.  Say what you will about work, it does the trick, eh?

Speaking of which, I should probably stop here and start moving in a general workly direction.  Have a great day wherever you are.  

Peace out.

*The assholes who make computer software.