Friday Five - A Day Late

1- This week has been exciting at our house. My kids have a fascination for natural disasters. And an earthquake and hurricane in one week was enough to send them over the edge in gleefulness. The reasons to the earthquake was to watch some National Geographic type shows on the earth moving. And the hurricanes means a lot more weather shows. We were driving during the earthquake and so we didn't feel it. That's happened to me more than once, but my daughter still counts it. Right now we are watching the trees blow around and waiting for the rain to come. It looks like the storm isn't going to be as bad as predicted in most areas, which is good.

2- The first week of school went well. I don't get why we only had two days of school, but it's fine. My kids are positive about their teachers so far, which makes me happy. And Jacob is excited to start preschool. I'm excited too. The youngest needs lots of attention because he gets lonely without big sister and brother home.

3- One thing I love about the new school year is it's a great opportunity to set specific goals and get into a different routine. I love setting goals for myself, though I tend not to e as realistic in what I can accomplish. So that's one of my goals is to set realistic goals. And I used to consider myself a very disciplined person. In college I took those early morning classes and juggled working a lot of hours between 25-30 while going to school full time. But now it's tougher. I think that it's part of being a mom. I've got other things (people) I'm responsible for that aren't quite so easy to control or to make fit into my perfect schedule. But I'm making my goals and establishing my routine. I can do this!

4- Writing wise I'm so excited to be focusing on Lexy. She's this awesome character. She can totally kick butt, but she's also genuinely nice even if she is confused. I'm kind of balking because in my first draft, I didn't nail Jason, her love interest, the way i wanted to. He's a super tough character to write, because by the end of the book you have to like him even though he is really, really mean. So I have to work extra hard to get the reader to like him from page one. A huge portion of the premise for the novel rides on me nailing it. Really getting it right.

5- I have been thinking about how I want to grow this blog and attract readers. But first I know i need to start posting regular worthwhile content. So that is my goal. But I want to do something that is uniquely me, and not like all of the other (wonderful) writing blogs out there.

Have a great weekend and stay safe!

School Has Started

I have time to write, to shower, to think without screaming and fighting kids. And preschool starts in just one week, and then i will have alone time to write.

Bliss.

That is all. Back to your regularly scheduled day!

Friday Five

1. This has been a week. My car battery died, but with our schedules we couldn't fix it right away, so I didn't have a car for two days. Not a huge deal, until my boys got into a water fight in the house, and took out our electronics. The modem, our phones, our Roku box (how we access any television), our DVD player, our Wii and the PS3. Talk about an ugly evening. Some little boys were in big, big trouble. Then to top it all off my cell phone stopped working. No water involved, and it turns on, just won't call out or accept calls. And this happened on the day that we were cut off from the rest of the world. My kids were besides themselves, and it was this weird sort of twilight to know that we couldn't communicate with the outside world. It was also my most productive day of the week, which makes me wonder if we should unplug a little more often.

2. I am counting down and we have six days until the kids go back to school. SIX DAYS. I can manage six more days without killing them and hopefully they won't kill each other in the meantime. The water fight in the house should indicate the type of summer we are having, and the relief we all feel as we try to go back to school and get on a good schedule. This should involve more time for me to reach my goals. At least that's what I keep telling myself, in SIX MORE DAYS, I won't feel guilty when I write. I won't have to break up fights when I write. Bliss.

3. To illustrate how crazy I've been this summer, I started this post more than ten hours ago, and I only got two items done, and that was with working on it more than two separate times. My writing will improve next week, and I'll have more time to focus on the blog as well.

4. My kids are still up and it's 10:00. The summer has not been structured as well as I'd like for bedtimes. But the truth is if they stay up late, they sleep later, and so do I. Next week is going to be miserable, for all of us. Before I got married i was a morning person. I seriously went to bed most nights around 10:00 (even in college (but not weekends--I did stay out late on weekends)). But Rob is a night owl, and I've adjusted to his sensibility. So now I tend to get a lot done late at night, and that's means some craziness as we try to make it out of the door.

5. After I completely rewrote Isis for the millionth time I came back to Lexi, and decided to start completely over. I've been back and forth about whether or not she should be in first present or first past. And this version is first present, and I'm liking it. The original version which I was more than 20,000 words into was in past tense, but I didn't like the opening. I'd written it over and over. Then when I sat down and decided just to go from the beginning, because I feel like I've improved so much as a writer in the past few months. And I am pretty happy with my beginning. Not that it probably won't change a million more times, but I like it much better.

Happy Writing!

Friday Five

1. It's been so long since I've done a Friday Five that I'm sure this is going to be in more random than usual. I'm currently counting and we are thirteen days away from school starting back up. And I'm anxiously waiting for it. The summer has been hot and the kids and i are driving each other nutty. Once school starts I'll look forward to the days off and the time we spend together again. I just need so mommy alone time.

2. We recently junked a car that we've had for years. We bought it the year after we got married, and it was used. The transmission gave out after 200,000 miles, and it just wasn't worth getting fixed anymore. That doesn't make it easy. We've sold our other cars, but this felt different, as I watched it get towed away. Plus it was the car I brought my babies home in. It was the first car we purchased as a couple. I don't know it's weird how sad I felt as i watched it being towed away.

3. To be completely honest my novel writing has been hit or miss lately. First I paused my Lexy story to totally rewrite Isis again. And to be honest I think I've nailed Isis. She's good to go. I'm going to rework my query again, and send it out. And I started over from scratch on Lexy. Originally I thought, I'd just plow through to the end, since I'll rewrite the entire thing again. But then I thought about it and I realized how much stronger I feel as a writer, and I figured why not nail the best first draft ic an so when i rewrite it will be that much stronger. I changed to present tense, which is a little tricky for me, but it feels right for this story.

4. I've spent a lot of time reading this summer. And I've enjoyed many good books. And I've been disappointed a few times with books that came highly recommended. In fact I've been avoiding books that everyone has been raving about, because I don't want to be disappointed. So I was a little reluctant to pick up Divergent by Veronica Roth. If you follow YA books at all or the writing community, this book has been getting rave reviews all over the place. And I just figured that it couldn't live up to the hype. Well, I'm glad I picked it up, because it totally lived up to they hype. It's an awesome, awesome book, and I've been recommending it left and right ever since. If you haven't read it yet, you really should.

5. I'm really thinking about what I want this blog to be. And where I want my career to go. I work as a freelance writer and it's nice to be home, but with my youngest just a year away from kindergarten, I'm starting to think about the change in dynamics in our home. Right now it doesn't make sense for me to work outside of the home, because the cost of daycare washes out the amount that I'd make at a steady job compared to what I make now. But then there is the instability of working freelance versus a real job. And then there is the fact that i just want to be novelist. My dream job. We'll see what this year brings.

Another Contest

I wanted to share another great contest opportunity with you guys. Rachel at Blackbird in My Window is doing an agent judged contest of your first 500 words of the novel. The agent is Lauren Roth from Bookends. It's a great opportunity and you should check it out.

I've been pretty blog silent for awhile. But the summer is coming to an end, and my kids are going back to school. This should mean some sanity and a chance to get going on the blog again. In the meantime I plan on posting a Friday Five from here on out. In September I'll decide what else I can do to ramp up what I write about.

Keep writing!