I got tangled up in my late mother's hoard, but I have emerged victorious. Sort of. I came out of it with excellent pens, anyway. In a box of my Grandma's possessions, I found a Century Classic and a Parker 51. The Parker needs some work, but it's in good shape for a 1945 model. The Century is my new favorite toy. It inspired me to pick up a mint-condition Quill when I saw one at the antique store today for $7. They both use the same refills (Cross). Love!

     On the writing front, I finished my first edit. I'm now revising, then another self-edit, then off to the actual editor. My launch date, come hell or high water, is set for March 26th. 🎉

I'm hoping to have a cover to show off in January, but you can't rush an artist. We shall see. 🎨

Song of the Week: Famous Last Words by My Chemical Romance 😘🤌🏻

Screenshotted this. I have no clue what I'd use it for, but I want one. 

Song of the week: Ruby ~ Kenny Rogers

Pet peeve:  My girl dog, also Ruby, barking her piercing bark over and over at midnight when I'm trying to sleep. 😭

Son #3 is installed in college for his sophomore year. Son #2 came for the summer and has decided to stay til October. I applied for a supervisor position and didn't get it, but then I applied for a transfer closer to home and DID get it. Instead of commuting over an hour to work every day, I'll be commuting a mere 30 minutes. 🙌🏻

In short, I will have more time to write this fall. I'm not a cozy this-or-that person, but I have access to a cabin with a wood stove  now and I'm going to make the most of it. 🔥

In the meantime, I've accomplished almost no writing over the last month and my self-imposed deadline is approaching. It's time to buckle down, as my parents would say. I really believe I get in my own way more than anyone else does, especially when I'm on the cusp of drawing attention to myself by putting my work "out there". I'm certain it's a weird insecurity thing, and it's annoying. 

In other news, I'm rereading Refuse to Choose by Barbara Sher and following her daybook and project organizational advice. I'm also doing the SHE index card method to get the housework a little more organized and a little less painful.

I've been working on little cross stitch mittens and stockings from kits for the kids for Christmas, since they're all getting money this year (cash for the big gift and some little things for smaller gifts). I'm taking a break from that project for a couple days to make myself a bookmark from scraps. I'm notorious for dog-earing my books, and I'd like to break that habit!

I'm off to reassess my writing goals and set a solid plan to make some baby steps today. Remember: slow & steady wins the race!

Song of the week: Wait for Me by The Northern Pikes 

Possession by A.S. Byatt is in my top 5 favorite books. I've read it over a dozen times, but this is my first time listening to the audio version. It hits very different in that I'm only now noticing that Roland is not the weak bore he thinks he is. I'm not sure why the perspective seems so different in audio, since it's the same story. In all my readings, I took for granted that his reflections were accurate without really questioning it. 

I'm also quite enjoying the poems in audio. I admit I usually skim over them in rereading  because the dual plot is more important to me. After the first few reads, the poetry became almost superfluous. It is beautiful, though, and I'm enjoying it again. 

I have to admire the title. It's a romance, so initially one thinks that Possession refers only to the short, burning relationship between Ash and Christabel, though his description of her shows he did not possess her - not because he didn't want to, but because she couldn't be possessed. Instead, the title encompasses that, all the other relationships, AND two certain inheritances at the end: one acceptable and one denied (no spoilers here!). 

Love it!

As an aside, if you have a library card, I highly recommend getting the Libby app. One caveat: if your library is rural, Libby may not recognize it. Ask your librarian for help. 

Marie xo

Me to myself: I will not overshare. I will not overshare.

Me with a public platform: "I live in HELL, and here's why..." then deletes most of it.

I had a work trip on Thursday night. I stayed in a reasonably decent hotel with my work team (the Drury, so we got 3 free drinks 🍸), then spent Friday in a really stupid meeting aaallllll daaay. I got home at 8 pm and did almost nothing this weekend, so I took today off work and went fishing with my middle son.

My plan is to finish my developmental edit this week, and then work on a rewrite for the next 2 weeks. We'll see how that goes when I have so much day job stuff encroaching on my personal time.

I hate everything this week.

Song of the week: Everything About You ~ Ugly Kid Joe

https://youtu.be/byEGjLU2egA?si=6U7qKyWz_mcFfsPn

Marie xo

I finished my first 90 day segment, so I got to start a new planner on 7/21. I got the idea from The 12 Week Year by Brian P Moran and Michael Lennington, and then got some ideas to apply it to writing from Heart Breathings on YouTube. 

The little comp book 📓 comes in a 3 pack at Dollar Gen (all black & white) or Dollar Tree (multiple colors). The little calendar pages came from Dollar Tree in a pad. 

I used the inside cover to write an index, and then numbered the pages as I went along. Everything else may be self-explanatory, but I used the Notes pages as sort of a diary of my feelings, motivators, and brainstorming through plot points and subplots.

It ended up a little messy and a lot useful, so I'm sticking to this format for a while. I like that I can customize everything, unlike a boughten planner. They're also a good size for a 90 day period of time, with plenty of pages for tracking my progress and keeping notes. These notebooks are also TINY, so no worries about storing a bunch of full-sized ones. Plus the price is unbeatable.

The paper did ok with the Le Pen set I use to color-code everything. No real bleed-through, but I'm not terribly picky about seeing writing through the page a little bit, so I might not be the best judge. 😂

I really like this system so far. It's cheap, easy to use, and small enough for most pockets. I give it 4.5 ⭐.

Marie xo

I meant to do this post yesterday, but all sense of time and priorities have been disrupted by an abandoned newborn kitten my son found last week. Naturally, I dropped everything else for dropper feedings every hour (now we're at every 2-3 hours, thank God - going to work on 4 hours of broken sleep was killing me). 

Poor guy had the worst case of fly strike I'd ever seen, so he needed a bath in Dawn to dissolve the eggs' adhesive. Then, and this is gross, I looked at his baby ears, which were still sealed, and found more fly eggs that had already hatched, so I spent an hour or more picking tiny maggots. This kitten was only a day or two old at most and I had no idea how long he'd been alone and abandoned, so I didn't have high hopes for his survival.

9 days later though, he's still kicking, very spoiled and demanding, and fat as butter. He started opening one eye today, so I think we're out of the danger zone. I've been calling him Pugsley, which my son dislikes, but I do most of the night feedings so I get to pick the name. 😂

I hope to be back to my writing routine next week when we move to 3-4 hour feedings and I'm not so dead inside from lack of sleep. I have 3 books on tap, and I'm in the middle of my first developmental edit of the one I'll be publishing first. It's about a normal 12 year old girl who lives a normal life with her family until a day spent with her uncle throws a dragon in her path. Since dragons are reportedly extinct, killed off by the government decades before, this leads to a lot of problems (and adventure) for our young heroine. 

This is Book 1 of a series. My other two books are stand-alones: one is about a very dangerous heirloom and is set in the early 1900's near my hometown of Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The other is the backstory of a character from a Wilkie Collins novel; I don't think Wilkie treated her fairly, and her story needs to be told in her own words. Both books are still in the drafting stage.

My plan for this blog is to post twice weekly, with an occasional extra post thrown in as needed. I definitely want to use it as a way to hold myself accountable and record my path as an author. Maybe someday it will serve to motivate some other writer, or maybe it'll just serve as a way for me to look back on everything I did, right or wrong, on my way to fulfilling my dreams. Who knows?

And now, on to the most important part of this blog, This Week in Memoriam:

Song of the week: Beautiful Love by The Afters. I'm obsessed!

Pet peeve: Not being able to find more of my favorite pens at the store where I originally discovered them. 

What I accomplished: My second 12 week writing planner is all set up, so I can run with it starting on 7/21. The first one worked beautifully, so I'll be doing a blog post all about it later this week. 

Later!

Marie xo