Dec

20

Thursday Update

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Yeah, I know, a really evocative title for this blog entry.

I was working on the next World of Lisacraft podcast yesterday. The next episode covers creating cultures for your world. It’s a difficult thing to cover. There are so many things that make up a culture, figuring out where to start can be tricky. I’m going to continue to work on my notes over the holidays, or at least try to. You know how best intentions work. :)

Dec

18

Winter Weather

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While I love the look of winter, I absolutely hate the cold. It makes my hands hurt. The only good thing about the cold, in my opinion, is cuddling with people I love, and sitting in front of the fireplace with a nice fire going. Unfortunately, we don’t have a fireplace.

The kids had a snow day yesterday, and that threw my routine for a loop. We got about six inches of snow, and with the really strong winds there were drifts up to two feet high in places.

Dec

14

Having a Routine is Good.

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As promised, I started using the Simple-ology system again this morning, and I feel so much better. Going through the steps of figuring out what I need to do today and getting it into a list has definitely helped. I’ve already done 15 things on my daily target list. Yes, that’s right, 15 things. However, I break every task I need to do down into steps, so dealing with the dishwasher is two steps: empty and put away the clean dishes, then load with dirty dishes and run. It does make for a longer list, but it’s easier for me to do smaller chunks that I can decide when to do. I know it sounds silly, but knowing I can divide the dishwasher stuff into two parts and that I don’t have to do them one right after the other makes it easier for me to accomplish. So, I can empty the dishwasher, go and do something else, then come back and load it – and having the fact I need to load it on the list helps me remember to do it when I get caught up in doing another task.

So, what’s on today’s list of things to do? Gotta do another crit for my writing group, a bunch of things that need to get done around the house, and then 30 minutes to work on The Morgan Affair. This afternoon, once Ariana is at school, I’m going to sit down and start working on the How To Find Your Writing Discipline book I bought yesterday from Holly Lisle. Once I go through it, I’ll do a review.

Okay. Headset is on, glass of water is nearby, let’s get to work!

Dec

13

Slowly Catching Up

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Man, I’m really falling behind on things, especially posting here. This sucks. It all goes back to my stopping using Simple-ology. I wasn’t using it faithfully, or the way it is “designed” to be used, but it did keep me on track and I got stuff done. I have to start using it again or I’m never going reach my goals.

I’m incredibly behind in doing crits for my writing group. Again. I have legitimate reasons why, but I still feel guilty about it. Today’s crits owed count is 2 down, 11 to go. It’s not normally so many, but everyone is trying to get their novels (or big sections of them) done before the year is over.

To help me get back on track for my writing, and so that I don’t have so many problems with my hands, I bought a new headset and mike. It’s much better than the one that came with Dragon NaturallySpeaking. I’m not having nearly the problems I had when I first used the program a couple of years ago. I wonder how much of that was just the sucky mic, or if it was because this time I had it scan through files on my computer to get a getter idea of what I write to flesh out the dictionary.

Oh yeah. Something else I picked up to help with my trying to meet my goals is Holly Lisle’s Holly Lisle’s How To Find Your Writing Discipline. I haven’t read it yet, but I hope I’ll find something useful in it.

Finally, I managed to get Chapter 5 of TMA out the door yesterday to my writing group. It’s not finished. There’s a section in it that’s really just notes about part of the scene that I just couldn’t figure out how to write. I just couldn’t get past it, so I finally said enough and moved on. By the time I get back to it, I’ll hopefully have figured it out.

Dec

10

Where did last week go?

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I’ve got nothing but excuses for the lack of posts last week. Hopefully, this week will be better.