ROW 80 Round 1 2012/1998 Journey

Hello, followers.  I apologize for the lack of postings.  I'm adjusting to my new schedule with my children starting school, mandatory overtime, and other daily activities.  I have managed, recently, to figure out how to create a new page, so I can post my ROW 80 updates on a separate part of this blog.  To view my goals for this year, please click here. 

I think I would like to take this time to explain my blogging plans a bit better.  The year 2012 seems to stir strong reactions in everyone.  Some believe the end of the world approaches, while others are looking forward to a year of great leaps of faith and consciousness.  What I have decided to do on this blog for the next twelve months is to share my personal spiritual experiences in great depth with my readers and ask them to share theirs. in return  Each person's spiritual journey is unique and beautiful, even the ones who have horrible experiences, but find the light.  And each journey of personal awareness and growth is unique and beautiful as well. 

My journey began in 1998.  I was raised in a Baptist church all my life, but still felt unsatisfied and empty.  After taking a few practice jumps in my beliefs, I took an enormous jump on March 13th, 1998 (It also was a Friday).  I packed my car up with as much as I could bring, mailed a note to my family, and began my journey west across country to people I thought I knew and trusted, but never met before except in a webchat site.

My car began to leak oil very early on my journey and I didn't have much cash or credit because I gave myself no time to plan for this leap.  After all, a leap of faith is done without much planning.  Every 200 miles, I had to stop to get gas, put oil in the car (typically a quart, sometimes two), and prayed I would make it to my destination:  Florence, Oregon.  Little did I know at the time I was traveling 16 hours a day for the next three days, that when I arrived, more challenges faced me. 

When you don't live in an area and know people, your ability to get a decent job isn't going to be easy.  You'll have to take what you get and I finally landed a job as a hotel flunky.  It was a small inn with only ten rooms and I had to learn a lot of new skills.  The owner wanted hospital bed corners when making the beds.  I had to learn how to run a credit card through the old swiping machines and calling in the numbers.  Money got harder to come by and the bills got out of hand while scraping by cleaning rooms, doing laundry, taking reservations, and making coffee.

To be honest, I was very young.  I did what I had to do to survive my choice.  I learned a lot because I made a lot of mistakes and bad choices.  I missed my family, but I was too proud to admit it and felt ashamed for feeling that way after all the trouble I went through to make the leap I did.

And, that is how my life path changed.  My personal destiny and legend changed to meet the new and unusual circumstances and even my spiritual journey took off.  Sometimes it takes relocating yourself into unfamiliar area to begin opening your eyes to the world and what it has to offer.

Happy Reading!

Screaming Sunday + ROW 80 Update

Keeping to the theme, and in honor of the previous posts, I am dubbing this Screaming Sunday (being the Sunday before Halloween).   And like screams, I'll try to keep it short and...well, just short.

I'm just going to dedicate this post to all the different kinds of screams.

At the fair, I scream in delight with my kids as we twirl in circles and get pushed by the gravitation within the Tilt-A-Whirl ride against our seats.

In my books, my characters scream in the throes of passion.

My grandmother screams in fear when she sees a spider.  My girls scream at the cats when trying to get into their room and at bugs in general.  I scream at scorpions and I'm glad Michigan doesn't have them.

I also have been known to scream in frustration when something is getting out of hand at home.  Well, it's more like a growl, really, but I think it could apply.

Now for the reader's turn:  What makes you scream?  Is it a positive or negative event that causes it?  Or both?  I want to know. 

Now for my ROW 80 Update:

Reading:  Finished Sookie #7 and #8, as well as Lord of Rage by Jill Monroe;
WIP:  Added 1,741 new words to my novel;
Exercise:  None :(
Halloween preparations with kids:  Finished carving pumpkins and got the "Ruby Slippers" for my little Dorothy.  Too bad my little Minnie Mouse is too sick to go Trick-or-Treating tomorrow.  Rotten stomach virus.

Happy Reading!

ROW 80 Updated for 10/23/11

I actually accomplished a goal that I didn't put on my list.  I took the girls outside - it was a beautiful day of sixty odd degrees and sunny - and had them help me dump some pots that were on the front deck.  I had one little girl go gun-ho and tried to rake a little, although the wind helped a great deal with that last week.  I even moved my raised bed box to the back of the house.  I feel so accomplished today.

Now for the ROW 80 Update.  Below are a list of accomplishments:




Reading:  Finished Sookie Stackhouse book #6; Finished Heart of Darkness anthology;
WIP:  Made some necessary cuts during editing and added 1,828 words;

On a side note, the book is really coming along now.  I have my villain's plot planned out.  I was making it way too complicated at first, hence the need to edit and hack out unnecessary parts to make the motive more simple.  Now I am developing minor characters and their roles in the villain's plan.  There is another villain - a minor one - that will be necessary for a change of location for another set of characters, but right now, I'm working with the villain who first challenges the heroine.  This first villain is less complicated as he tends to work in political and religious circles.  The minor villain will be a bigger challenge for me as he will be more barbaric.  It's a big strange even to me how I just classified them and their difficulty rating.  I would have suspected the one manipulating things behind the scenes would be harder to write, but he isn't.  It's the one where I need to create battle scenes for that will be more difficult.  

Happy Reading!

ROW 80 - Update on 10/19/11

List of accomplishments this week so far:

Finished Sookie Stackhouse book #5;
On Monday, added 397 new words to WIP;
On Wednesday (today), added 899 new words to WIP;
Read with my girls;
Put the girls to bed early (on-time, really);
Got the girls to school on time every day so far this week.

List of things still behind:
Exercise;
Housework

Overall, I'm not entirely disappointed.  Life just has to be more adjustable.  I appreciate my readers for checking in on me even though it has to be boring reading blogs that just talk about one thing anymore.  I wish I had the time to devote to having other blog posts, but just getting my WIP done in a day is a working miracle. 

In the mean time....Happy Reading!

ROW 80 - Update on 10/17/11 for 10/16/11

Ok, here I am again, late for my update.  I hope this doesn't become a constant.  Wait until you hear the worse news:  I didn't make my goals for this past week.  Instead of 1000 words, I only got in 564 words and not even a half hour of editing.  Looks like its time to re-evaluate my goals.

Using my Daily Planner Pad, I have filled out my weekly goals, then tried to put them into the days I intend to fulfill those goals, so it looks a bit like this:

Girls
Bath
School
Reading
Wed (Bring "P" item)
Tues Pink/Purple Day
Donut money

WIP
1000 words
1 hour edit
1 hour edit
1 hour edit

Household
Dinner/Dishes
Kitchen
Bathrooms
Laundry
Garbage
Vaccuming/Dusting
Girls Room (org.)
Shopping

Exercise
30 minutes (3x)

Reading
Sookie #5

Then for each day:

Monday
Update ROW 80
WIP
Dishes/dinner
Laundry (towels)

Tuesday
Girls Pink/Purple Day
WIP
Girls Room (org.)
Read w/Girls
Donut Monday due
Laundry (whites)

Wednesday
Girl's "P" Item Day
King's Kids

Thursday
Read w/girls

Friday
Girls Room (org.)
30 minutes exercise
Read w/girls
WIP

Saturday
30 minutes exercise
Gull Meadow Farms
Read w/girls

Sunday
30 minutes exercise
Shopping
WIP

There's a lot to squeeze into your schedule when you already are working for 8-10 hours each day from Monday through Friday.  Some nights I come home and barely have any time to read with the girls and get to know how their day was before its time to get them into bed.  Often I am going to bed at midnight and waking up at 5:30am through the week as well.

I get gun-ho about my intentions with this project, but I am glad that I have the flexibility depending on how much I can put in or want to put in.  I have a Meijer recycle bag full of books to be read, hence the addition of reading the Sookie Stackhouse series in my weekly goals.  I get little else done when I get too involved in a book and this is an amazing series.

And, I have to admit, I was invited to a friend's house where there was a small group of people gathering for a Hunter's Party, which I wasn't figuring into my plans and goals.  Essentially, this is when Native American's get together to cook up stores packed away from last year (from the freezer) and have friends and family consume it so there is room in the freezer again for this year's kill.  This reminded me of all my stuff left in the freezer being forgotten and passed over again and again, so I did a lot more cooking this weekend that I originally intended.

Now, excuse me while I try to add more scenes and words to my WIP.  Thanks for stopping by and....

Happy Reading!

ROW80 - Wednesday 10/12/11 Update

I found out that when given an hour of uninterrupted time to myself, I can easily get 1000 words into my novel.  While motherhood makes that nearly impossible, I am going to attempt some writing tonight - just not what I was hoping for.

While my goals aren't getting as far with the WIP, I have been getting other personal goals met.  I have been exercising more, keeping up on the household chores (instead of being buried in them) and having time with my twin daughters who are now in preschool and need the extra attention.  It's not easy for kids to have to wait so long for their turn to be the "special kid" for the day.  There are fifteen children in their class total, so they have to wait fourteen turns before they have a special day.  The Day Planner is really paying off.  Even my kids get excited when I pull it out and start telling them the list for the day.  Sometimes they even help out.

So, there is my Wednesday update.  Happy Reading!

ROW 80 Update - 10/9/11

It's that time of year again.  Fall.  And with the fall, or other seasonal changes that can't remain consistent from day to day, I have my semi-annual headache.  You know the one.  Sinuses feel like they are ready to explode from the pressure; you are vampirically allergic to the light, especially sunlight; and standing up makes you motion sick.  The headache could last a day or a week.  It's throwing all my goals out the door so I can focus on not vomiting every time I move. 

I have put in a single hour of edits a couple of days ago; however, it took me three hours to get to that point.  My laptop is an old refurbished Compaq Evo N620c and it has a tendency to go through bouts of overheating.  I have to constantly unfreeze things by removing the overheated battery and let it cool enough to get things working again.  And, thanks to my cats bad chewing habits, the cord to the cooling pad was chewed through and I'm having a heck of a time replacing it.  If I'm lucky, Black Friday sales will have a reasonably priced laptop I can buy to replace this old one.

I'm going to try to get more edits in today, but it all depends on the headache and laptop.  Wish me luck!

Happy Reading!

ROW 80 Update for 10/05/11

Ok, update for my goals for ROW80.  I've completed my first goal.  Yay!  I just gave myself way too much time to complete it.  Makes me feel wonderful.  All my typed text in Microsoft Word has been transferred over to yWriter5.  Now I need to decide on a project to devote my attention to for the next goal.

Since I am ten chapters and 35,000 + words into Before Atlantis, I am going to work on that one first.  As I have been reading through sections to title them, I realized my deep connection to the story and characters and really want to begin the edits and fill in more of the gaps left in the story.  So, instead of adding so many words for each project, I'm going to try to add 1000 new words to this project each week and spend at least 3 hours a week on edits.

This is really getting me excited.  I'm even able to keep up on basic housework, my children's schedule, and ROW 80.  Now to see if I can get my 30 minutes of exercise in tomorrow.  Maybe since I'm getting a load of laundry done tonight, I can get a little ahead since I didn't schedule laundry until tomorrow. 

If I get time this weekend, I'm hoping to post some book reviews I have drafted and saved.

Almost done reading How to Date a Werewolf by Rose Pressey.

Happy Reading!

First Official ROW 80 Round 4 of 2011 Post

Ok, I'm going to do it.  Here is my first set of goals:


Put the following three projects in my yWriter5 program to assist in outlining and editing:


Project 1:  Paranormal Investigator novel (Liz Lochran, main character)
Project 2:  From Night Into Dawn (working title of historical, Christian romance)
Project 3:  Before Atlantis (working title of Atlantean series, Book 1)


I'm giving myself two weeks to have this done.  Then I will focus on my next set of goals:


Project 1:  Add 1000 new words a week
Project 2:  Add 1000 new words a week
Project 3:  Add 500 new words a week


When I feel like I have finally finished a project, then I will change the goals to reflect edits and rewrites.  Since Project 3 is mainly a rewrite, that is why I decided on a smaller amount of words and this will be harder to track since I will be using previously written text along with new phrasing and scenes - or throwing out entire scenes to be replaced with others.


Maybe the goal seems unrealistic, but considering my need to work on multiple projects at once to keep my brain from getting bored, I thought this would be a good start.  I could always change these goals if I suddenly feel like it is too much.


We shall see.


On top of that, I always am setting some reading goals, just nothing too specific.  I want to finish at least one book a week, but I may have to make it one book every two weeks or more to have the time to blog, read, write, and take care of the multiple projects waiting for me at home (e.g. laundry, dishes, taking the kids to school to name a few).


If anyone has any suggestions for me, I am very willing to listen and eager to learn what has worked for him/her.  


Happy Reading!

Still in the race, just lagging behind

Yes, this was exactly how I felt yesterday.

It was the first day of school yesterday and I was up since 5am that day.  Now I am dragging like I have a huge tortoise shell on my back.  The girls had a blast and I noticed they are the tallest girls in class by a good three inches, maybe more.  Only two boys in their class were as tall as them.  Somehow they came home with someone's clothes in their backpacks, too.

So, that was yesterday, which hasn't explained my lack of blogging all week.  I've been reading diligently.  It has consumed all writing time.  I apologize.  On the up side, my newest fave author and internet acquaintance, Angela Wallace, has introduced me to A Round of Words in 80 Days.  My next post will be this weekend after I have thought out my goals.  I need to be reasonable, since I'll be getting up four days a week at 5:00 am and not getting to bed until after 10:00 pm.  

I also have a Daily Planner Pad to help with my goals, appointments, and other commitments, so I don't forget them and become over-ambitious.

Now back to my goals, writing, bloghopping, yadda, yadda, yadda.

Happy Reading!