Love my friends

There are times when I'm in the middle of a short story and lose my way. It's normally when the original concept came to me weeks before I've gotten around to writing the story. The story doesn't just come to me. I have to find it. One thing that helps me relocate the story are my male friends. I have one female friend whom I'm really close to and two guys. My 3 besties. My girl helps me with researching, editing, and almost everything involved in my novel. The work we've helped each other with in character development is amazing.

My guys help me with my short stories. I really appreciate them letting me ask them crazy questions so that I am able to get a male perspective on my stories. I'll randomly call them and ask weird questions. They're used to it so they just answer and keep it moving. Lol. But it's really helpful when I'm trying to visualize a scene and can't seem to describe it just right. They'll suggest a slight change in posture and it works with exactly what I was going for. Being able to talk it out when I'm stuck has really helped me get through some of my short stories. This is one that one of my guys helped me with a few weeks ago.

http://www.blerotica.com/Stories/DontHangUp.html

I snuck out of my house and used a spare key to get into a friend's house on Sunday night. I literally wrote for hours. When my friends came home, I got hugs and kisses and then I was left alone to work. I was in heaven! I wrote 3 and a half short stories before packing up and heading home. It was a wonderfully productive night and I felt great!

Solitude and quiet are a writer's best friend.

Deep sigh....

So, I failed to anticipate that my erratic work schedule would interfere with 30/30. I'm already behind and have barely even begun. I can get off work anywhere between 11pm and 3am. As a result, I have horrible sleep habits and no daily schedule that I can plan around.

How can I fix this to get back on track with 30/30? Get out of my house (which is also full of people and distractions) go some place quiet and write. That is my plan for this weekend. I'm hoping to do this Saturday and Sunday so that I will catch up with what I should have written this week and get a jump start on next week.

My quiet place may end up being the library. I thought of going to a friend's house as he and his roommate are rarely home and their house is usually pretty quiet. Changed my mind as he is my bestie and his roommate and I have gotten pretty close. If either one of them comes home, I will get absolutely no work done.

I'll update Sunday night/Monday morning with my weekend results!

30/30

Wow. It's been a long time since I've posted here. I haven't even been keeping up with my natural hair blog like I was before.

What I'm working on right now is a challenge but not a very hard one. Either I do it or I don't. I've planned to write and post 30 short stories in the next 30 days for on THOB. I'm off to a good start. I posted 2 stories tonight and hope to do another before work tomorrow night.

Since these are shorts, I can write them fairly quickly and I've made a list of topics so I don't waste time struggling to come up with concepts. That's pretty good for me b/c planning ahead when I write isn't something I normally do. (yeah, I know that bad but that's just me.) I'm pretty excited about doing this and hope that with this and some marketing, I can bring more readers to my site. Consistent vistors would be great too.

I've just created a Facebook page for THOB which I've already started using to let readers know about 30/30. I'm also going to be posting "status" updates on all social networks I belong to to attract readers that way. And of course, word of mouth so I'll just be telling a lot of pple. Hope this works out well.

Okay, so I completely failed at NaNoWriMo. Aside from the one day I wrote, the only other progression made was writing an outline. That is extremely unusual for me. What I did write was horrible and to be honest, I wasn't even feeling the outline too much.

After some thought and a discussion with MSatch, I was able to figure it out. This story is BORING! There is nothing spectacular and great and page turning and don't want to even put this book down exciting about this story. It needs something to make it great and I don't know what that is yet.

I felt like in the natural progression of my characters that this story should be next in line. All of my characters are connected in some way. I felt that in order for the reader to get to know these people and want to read about their lives that I would need to write their stories in a particular order. But MSatch pointed something out to me, people don't buy books in order! And I'm thinking as long as the connection is clear, the reader won't care about the order.

So, I'm going to get over this obsession with order and focus on the writing. There are plenty of other stories that I've outlined that are ready to be written. Why hold myself up because I wanted this story to be 2nd and it's not ready?

Featured this month

Featured this month at The House of Blerotica is the latest story I've written entitled Arousal.

Check it out and let me know what you think. Visit the "Contact Us" page to sign my guestbook, leave feedback and contact me via email.

NaNoWriMo update

Well....I'm doing well. lol! This was already a novel I was having trouble getting back started on but putting this short time frame to it is the pits.

My main problem is finding the time and motivation to work on it. Today is the first day I've written anything. Sad to say, I'm not impressed by what I've written. It feels really dry and uninteresting. I'm in this weird place of I want to write but don't know what to write. Not like I'm blocked but I just don't know what to say and how this story should go. I didn't think this was going to be difficult to write.

It could be that lack of sleep is keeping me from being able to creatively focus. Last night was the only night I've slept well all week and that's because I slept at my bestie's house instead of my own.

So remedies for this situation: I'm going to write an outline ASAP. I've never needed one so early in a novel. Not sure if that's good or bad but I won't be able to write another word without one.