A to Z Blogging Challenge: 26 Post Recap

Wow, what a month! 26 posts in 30 days. Sorry, make that 30 posts because each week I also posted a quick recap. Phew!

I honestly had no idea what I was getting myself into. It challenged me to go beyond just those things I knew I wanted to post and to think more creatively about what I wanted to share. As a result, I wrote a series of writing advice articles, expose pieces on my book series, and a number of other things I ordinarily would not have thought of. Oh, and I met some really awesome bloggers along the way. Pretty cool.

That said, I’m not convinced I would do it again. It limited me on what I could post about, and I ended up with a ton of posts I had to push until May (I know I could do several posts per day, but that’s overkill), and it was incredibly time consuming. BUT…I definitely recommend everyone try the challenge at least once. It will challenge the way you organize your thoughts, in a good way!

• A is for Awards and Awesomeness
• B is for Biographies (To Character Bio or Not to Character Bio)
• C is for Cutting Room Floor (And you Thought Your Writing Was Bad)
• D is for Deschanel
• E is for Éowyn and Éomer
• F is for French Quarter
• G is for Garden District
• H is for Helping Other Writers (Guest Author Program)
• I is for Incomplete (You Won NaNoWriMo…Now What?)
• J is for J.R.R. Tolkien Collection
• K is for King James Hepburn (Oh, Wait)
• L is for Location
• M is for My Name
• N is for NaNoWriMo
• O is for Ophelie
• P is for Pinterest (House of Crimson and Clover has a Board!)
• Q is for Quillan
• R is for River Road Plantations
• S is for Sullivan
• T is for Travel
• U is for Using Social Media as an Author
• V is for Versatile, Very Inspiring, and Sunshiny Blogging!
• W is for Writing
• X is for X-Lined Dominant Inheritance
• Y is for Yearly Writing Goals- Check In
• Z is for Zen

S is also for Sad Panda (Not so Bonus Post)

Its pretty unusual for me to make posts like this. I limit this blog to posting about writing adventures, or seeing the world, or my shameless adventures in Tolkienerdom (made a word up. Do something about it). But today I’ve had a pretty awful day. Like “I might have ugly cried over the end of Spartacus, that I actually watched over a week ago,” day.

Nothing specific triggered it exactly. Nothing especially bad happened. But I woke up with my head a little off, and it carried with me through the rest of the day. Every conversation I had felt like a debate session, I almost punted my dog down the stairs (and, in the mood I was in, I’d have literally ROFL’d at her misfortune), my writing has been sloppier and less inspired than usual, my workout only lasted five minutes before I stubbed my toe and cussed at the treadmill (in my defense, it was being a belligerent douchecanoe), and I almost burst into tears at the end of a zombie Chernobyl movie because, goddamnit, clearly this cheesy horror film was actually a political exposition piece on how wrongly treated the victims were! My husband and I went out to dinner, and before we even got to the restaurant he asked me if I needed a Red Hut built in the backyard to go cool off. Yes I do: to put his ass in.

The point is, there’s no reason for me to feel so down in the dumps today, I just do. And I know everyone reading this understands this, but this is just one of the byproducts of being creative. Its how the universe balances things out. We creative types…we FEEL things. WE FEEL ALL THE THINGS. ALL MY FEELS ZOMGGGGGGGGG!!!!!

So if you’re having a bad day, either today or any other day you stumble across this post, just remember: today only sucks because you’re awesome. And being awesome is our cross to bear.

Beautiful Blogger & Very Inspiring Blogger Awards

This week I was honored to have been recognized again, this time by fellow blogger Ramanda, who is an aspiring writer. We’ve had several really fun discussions lately about writing, and she will be joining me for some Camp NaNoWriMo fun this April. Check her blog out…you will appreciate her honest take on life. In fact, if she hadn’t been the one to nominate me for these, she would probably be on the nominee list below.

She has kindly nominated me for two awards: The Beautiful Blogger Award and the Very Inspiring Blogger Award.

I always appreciate getting these…the fact that there are people out there who actually enjoy what I write will always mean something to me.

“The Beginning Is The Most Important Part of the Work.”- Plato

For a very low price of last night’s leftovers, Miss Kitty will endorse your novel efforts too.

Not everyone has photographic evidence of that cardinal moment of their writing career: the moment they started writing their first novel. When I took this picture, I was only trying to capture the behavior of my new cute kitten, Miss Kitty, who would jump into my lap anytime I cracked open the old laptop. It never occurred to me that I was also capturing a moment that would define my entire writing career, and in many ways, my life.

If you look closely, you can see the name of the Word document: January13.doc. Although not reflected in the title, the year was 2001. I often named my writing files after the date started, until I had a working title.

Fooling the Overachiever into Submission Using the Scientific Method

1. State the Problem:

I’ve had pretty severe writer’s block for a couple of months. The timing happens to be ironic, as the past month has found me with more free time than I would normally have, which should translate into more time to write. Time was always my (ever so lame) excuse before, and now that I no longer have that to fall back on, I needed to figure out what the hell was actually wrong with me.

My goal has been to finish the first draft, and ago on to create a second draft, of The Storm and the Darkness before the end of March, but at the rate I’ve been writing, its going to be March 2024 before it gets finished. So….