Life is a highway...

or a train track.

I'm feeling a bit melancholy today. Maybe it's just that I'm tired. Maybe I feel like the only one in the world NOT out shopping and taking advantage of great deals on this Black Friday! I'm here, cuddled up under a blanket at my computer, eating leftovers from Thanksgiving lunch WAY too early in the morning and wanting to write.

I think my musing today is on relationships. How they change you, even if you're only there a short while. Or a LONG while. But you never come out the same.

I learned some things about someone I love yesterday, and for the better part of the evening, I felt so disappointed. I felt I didn't know them as well as I thought. I also felt I understood some other things about them SO much better now, knowing the 'new to me' facts. But a crushing feeling was upon me for awhile, like loving a little beach where I'd go and sit and run my fingers and toes thru the sand and think, what a beautiful beach...only to discover it was only a beach because a huge volcano had erupted years ago and took a wild forest apart, creating this place I now sat. Having no idea there was ever a volcano there in the first place. Was I lied to by the beach because it was so different before? Of course not, the beach didn't owe me any explanations. But it DID help me to understand why the tops of tall pines stuck out where the dunes were supposed to be.

Make sense? Probably not. I guess I'm trying to say that life is ... I prefer to say it's a train ride (because nothing in the world has proven better for me than getting on the train in my little Virginia town and heading to Manhattan, NYC baby! :). We come away a little different after every stop.

Life's about forgiving, forgetting, and learning from our mistakes. Letting ourself sulk a little, be sad about things, then finding a place in our hearts to file it away and get excited about what's down the track, waiting and ready to change us a little bit more.

:)

Finding some sunny...

I've been feeling very overwhelmed lately. I've been writing a little, but feel scatterbrained as to what I'm SUPPOSED to be writing. I think I've lost my confidence a bit. When you want to do it (writing) nothing stops you. I want to feel that sunny feeling on me again, that confidence that I can do this thing, and do it pretty well.

Do I have great stories in my head? Yes. Do I think I can write them and they'll turn out good? Yes, at least I know I'll have a great beginning and ending (my strong points). The middle's what gets me.

I hate starting out so strong, so sure about what the story will be about and how it will be told, only to fizz out by chapter four. Tell me this happens to EVERY author!!!

What keeps me going is that I have finished TWO books. I go back to those and see that I am capable of finishing a novel. It's having the passion for the story and the characters and believing in it wholeheartedly. When we write, it has to take us over. The laundry doesn't get done. There's a lot of take-out (um, that's not really different from my everyday life, but...) and there is nothing on our mind except the story. We walk around in a daze, thinking of what's happening and what happens next. Everything else takes second place.

I haven't gone to that place in a long time. Guess I'm afraid if I take my focus off things in front of me, I'll lose them somehow? That's just fear talking.

I need to go to that special place where the muse lives and spend time in the story. When I get back, what's left is what's supposed to still be here. :)

See? I'm excellent with endings. Now, let me get going on the middle.

Disipline :)

I'm pretty bad with discipline. Especially about myself. Making myself stick to a plan is like making a tomboy wear a dress (thinking of my Liv here; finally I have a beautiful daughter and she dresses like the boys. argh! :)

I've decided to try sticking to a more disciplined thing. Like making myself blog EVERY Monday whether I have something interesting to say or not. And writing.

Writing EVERY day, inspired or not. Stephen King said the muse will show up when you give him/her a place and time to show up TO. So, I'm going to try this. In light of the famous Nanowrimo (National Write-a-novel-in-a-month Month) it's more important than ever to write daily. A LOT, daily. 50,000 words in four weeks. Over 10,000 words a week. Um...

I'm going to do it though. Well, I'm going to try. I have a great Nicolas Sparksy novel in my head. So, what am I doing here TALKING about it?

DISCIPLINE me, please!!