5 posts tagged “writing”

On Saturday the most difficult month of the year starts for me. I will have to balance home/family, work, and writing a 50,000 word novel while also finding time to sleep and eat. My guy will probably take the time to work overtime because he thinks I won't even notice. I do notice by the way but I'm focused, it's one of the things he loves about me so he can complain too much. He's very supportive though.

I had planned on having my Christmas stuff done by now but I don't. So I guess I will have to find time to do that as well. I do not want to be stuck shopping in December in crowded malls, plus I have to mail a few of our gifts and I don't want them to be late. Cards are easy as least. We can do those fairly quickly then mail them off on Dec. 1st.

Anyway, as supportive as those around me are it's still going to take a lot of balance to deal with everything. You can't avoid bosses, or ignore everyone else around you without making them lose patients with you.

Lately the subject of pen names has been coming up more and more between some writer friends and I. Some of them use one,  others don't see the point, and a few of them not only have one pen name but two or three.

Pen names can be a useful tool in the world of fiction writing, especially if you don't write for just one genre. It helps keep you from being stuck in a hole when it comes to building a fan base. Especially if you're established in one genre. A pen name also helps you keep your professional and personal lives separate.

Once you figure out if you want to use a pen name you face picking one, or two, or three. It's no easy task.

Personally I do use a pen name for my fiction ( I'm trying out a few to see how I like them), and my real name for any freelance work I do. I'm one of the writers who writes in more then one genre so I'll probably end up with more then one, but for right now I'll have to stick with one and make sure I'm 100% happy with it.

My sleeping pattern is way out of whack. Last night I dozed off for like an hour at 6am while working at my laptop. That's all the rest I've had for two days now.  My insomnia hasn't been this bad in years. That's probably why I haven't updated in a few days. I'm not doing anything except reading, editing, and writing. Oh, and watching far too much television again. I'm a sucker for the court shows it seems.

On a brighter note the sleep deprivation is opening up some of my creativity. I was talking to a friend who is also a writer and he says it does the same sorta thing for him too. The only problem is I end up having to go back and edit huge chunks of things that either don't make sense or that run on.

And before this blog post ends up running on I'm going to go.

Besides taking advantage of the fact it's not supposed to rain and finally taking care of the jungle that is my backyard. I'm going to be reworking one of my novel ideas. I have to plot it all out again and then hopefully this time it will flow a little bit better then last time I tired writing it out.

I've never been good at letting my ideas go. They become like my baby that I have to nurture and help grow.  It might sound silly but it's true.

Not to whine but being with my mp3 player is really messing with my flow. I'm used to writing with music on and because of the massive amount of music I've ripped from my C.D collection I don't keep mp3s on my laptop computer. They're all on the desktop which has a much bigger hard drive and is less likely to get messed up by my lack of luck with technology.

I've learned my lesson after too many mishaps and everything is backed up on that thing. Plus my laptop is older and used so I'm prepared for it to die like my other one did. I was not prepared for the loss of my mp3 player though. I'm really hoping that it can be fixed and soon.

In better news I started a new short story and started imputing the details into this story organizing software I have. I'm becoming very fond of this program because it's so helpful in helping you plan out stories. It's called StorYBook and free to download and use.