Off to a Great Start!

Well, it's finally happened.  I've crossed over to the other side....

This is Tom and I with Victoria, our new car.  We got it so I'd have my own car to drive around L.A, now that walking 3.5 miles/day at least is starting to tire me out too much in this pregnant body.  I will still walk!  Oh yes!  I refuse to surrender to the LA culture of driving ABSOLUTELY EVERYWHERE when there's nothing but sunshine can clear skies.  But on the flip-side, it's bloody hard to get anywhere in LA without a car.  I've managed to do pretty well for my first two years here, when most Angelinos look at me sideways when I tell them I don't have my own car.  But the thought of being a tad bit isolated with a newborn and the difficulty of getting to doctor appointments or Mommy and Baby meetings etc. helped Tom and I decide it was time.  And for one woman who has always disliked driving, I have to say I LOVE THIS CAR!  It doesn't mean I'm totally comfortable navigating the highways of LA.  It's nuts here people!  But oh, dear Toronto friends, if you could see how far I've come! I'm so, so grateful that Tom and I can afford our beautiful Victoria and that I really do love driving this sweet, smooth girl.  She's helping me get over much of my driver's anxiety and that is a blessing!  Big Gratitude!

In the meantime, while I haven't been driving, doing my other freelance work, or teaching yoga, — and I've been doing a lot more of that lately which is awesome and helping to pay for the aforementioned vehicle — I've been working on this:

I've been slashing, and making notes and looking for places to cut, because this draft is a tad on the long side.  But I'm making huge progress!  Thanks in part to the help of my author aunt.  And in a few months this bad boy will be out of my hands and sent out...Before baby comes I'll be at the next stage with this manuscript - the submission stage!  Oh my goodness, I don't want to think about how many years it's taken me to get here, but the time is nigh, my friends.  Oh yes, it is coming very soon. I feel grateful that I've stuck through it.  Just to get to this stage after being a young early twenty-something girl and dreaming of getting here, I have!  And it's because of the support from my family and my love, it's because of my own perseverance. Even if nothing more comes from this I have to give myself credit for getting this far.  There's a lot of people that don't. 

And while I'm not editing away...Tom and I are working on this:

It's our official "Before Baby Peters" list.  That's right!  We have a list — with only 12 weeks or so to go until baby arrives.  Bah!  I know our lives will be changed forever pretty soon and I've never been more excited, more grateful for a life change (though trust me already-parents, I'm not expecting this to be easy in any way, shape or form).

At 30 weeks I have to say I'm really starting to feel the spirit of this baby inside me.  Not in gender terms but in a whole other way — just a presence that I feel wrapped up in, in awe of and so utterly grateful for.  Every time the baby moves in my belly I'm filled with great laughter. I can't thank God, the Universe, Spirit, enough!

And on a side note...it's my Mom's birthday today.  Happy Birthday Mom!  You all know how important she is to me.  And if you don't, read this. 

  

Making the final check-in

Wait! #ROW80...I'm here.  Out of breath and panting but I'm here to deliver my final check-in.

I've been off the blogging grid for almost three weeks now....first because I had a number of visitors and then because I opted for working on my writing goals instead of blogging about them in the last hours of the first round of #ROW80.

But before this round ends I wanted to just put in how far I made it with my goals, and to send so much gratitude out to Kait Nolan and this writing challenge and as well to the sponsors and every other ROWer who came to encourage and visit my blog.  It was also fun getting to visit some of yours!

So, for a recap of my goals:

Through Kait's advice, I started out by chopping my original goal in half.  I know I can write between 2,000 and 3,000 words when I'm trying, so doing as Kait said, I made my #ROW80 goal to write 1,000/day, five days a week, and have this also translate into 5,000 words/week.

It didn't take me long to realize that this was the best goal I ever set for myself.  Through the first two months of #ROW80 I was meeting or surpassing this goal every week — and sometimes only writing four days instead of five.

It's been SUCH an eye-opener for me.  Before this, I would set these massive goals for myself and I would never accomplish them and there would be a lot of self-hate involved and defeatism.  Then, along came #ROW80 to show me that I can actually set smaller goals for myself (and this was MUCH smaller by my standards) and then...I would actually end up getting MORE done than with any of the big goals I've ever set for myself!

I had to take a week and a bit off in February to go see family in Vancouver, and then I had some visitors, but by the time I came back to write I looked at how much I had done so far for #ROW80 and saw that I had written 35,000 words in 6 weeks!!  Now, add this to the 5,000 words I'd already had before the writing challenge started and that put me at 40k!

I realized then, that if I worked hard, if I played my cards right, I could actually finish this novel!!!

So I upped my goals.  2,000 words/day, five days a week — translating into 10,000 words per week.

Now, this goal, I learned quickly was much harder for me to achieve.  I felt burnt out by the end of the week and if I missed a day it was much harder to make up the extra word count if I fell behind.  Still, I made it to 9,800 words the first week and 9,000 words the second.

Something I also started doing through this challenge is keeping track of my daily word count on an excel file — and I highly recommend this.

Then I reached 60,000 words and I just said $%^$ it...now I've just go to get through these last chapters and get this thing done.  So I've been writing day and night — as much as I can.

I must say I'm also motivated by the fact I'm going to Toronto for two weeks, leaving April 3.  So the deadline I've given myself for finishing this novel is actually April 2 (after ROW).  So I am still writing away...

But where am I on this last day? 72k baby!  And I've got about five or six chapters left to write....in 6 days.  Can I make it?  Maybe?

I'm not putting too much pressure on myself.  I haven't been feeling that great this last week or so, so even though I'm working, it's not as easily as I would like.....but I'm just going to keep going and hope I make it — if I don't, I don't.  I'll be pretty much done anyways and I'll only have a chapter or two to write when I get back if I don't make it.

All I can say now is how grateful I am that I found this challenge.  Kait Nolan, I am so grateful to you for creating a challenge for writers who have a life. Thank you!  I'm grateful for the lesson you taught me that just doing a bit each day can actually bring me further in the end than going after a huge goal.

Thank you ROWers for all your support and for sharing your own writing challenges and goals with me.  In these past three months I've pretty much written a novel and I'm smiling from ear to ear, looking at the writing world a little differently (in a good way) and so excited for how this challenge will shape my productivity in the future.

Alas, I cannot join #ROW80 for the second round....I'll be travelling too much in April and May.

I leave you then, with IMMENSE gratitude, the possibility of knowing that I may join ROW80 again in the future, and an almost-written-novel I shall now return to.

Good luck everyone participating in the second round, and good luck to all writers, everywhere, near and far.

Now that I've got a moment...

Hello!  Long time no blogging! And guess what, no writing either...

As you may have known from my last post from the week before last, I was in Vancouver visiting this beautiful face (my darling niece) all of last week.

And let's face it,

 who can get writing done when she's the distraction?

Then on the day we flew home (by the seat of our pants may I add as we very nearly missed our flight) we drove back to the airport three hours after getting home to go pick up our friends from Toronto who came to visit for the week.  Hence, writing/blogging became further delayed.

This is us waiting to attend a tapping of the Conan O'brien Show.

And me and my dear friend Meghan (we've been friends since we were 13) hanging in Santa Monica

I haven't had a moment to myself these last two weeks and now that I finally do I'm spending today catching up!  If all goes as planned I'll be back to writing tomorrow.  And I seriously can't wait!  I want to try and step up my game for March (minus a week when I have two other sets of friends/family coming to visit).  

You see, I'm above word count for the first part of my ROW80 goals and am now officially half way through my novel!!  In my wildest dreams I will finish this thing by the end of the first round of ROW80 or shortly thereafter.  I'm going to try my best to get there but what I've learned is that I am most productive when I just keep to my word count goals and don't set bigger goals for myself like that....so in other words...stay tuned and we'll all see what happens!

Happy writing to all for the rest of this week!

The space between

One challenge I've always faced writing novels is knowing what to do with the space in between plot points.  For example when you've hit Plot Point A and know you now need to get to Plot Point B but there's no roadmap to get you there.

Sure, sometimes you strike gold and the novel progresses at one certain point to another with relative ease (for me especially if I have an idea of what I want to hit in the middle). But more often than not I go through this elation of reaching a specific place, the joy of writing a scene that's been bubbling in my mind for weeks (or much longer) only to be followed by a "uh...now what?"

I know where I want to go from here but I also know there needs to be some space between.  It's a pacing thing right?  This is where I try to use my instinct. I have a feeling of how much writing needs to pass between A and B.  At the same time, not knowing what this writing will be has before caused me to ramble on and veer down roads that lead me anywhere but where I want to go.

True, sometimes this is where the magic of writing happens, where an unexpected turn helps me figure out things I wasn't sure about or add in an aspect when something had been missing.

On the other hand, if the veering and the rambling doesn't pan out I end up making the space between A and B or B and C (or whatever) much longer than I want it to be and often it's filled with "stuff" that isn't driving the story.

I'm about to approach "a space between" very shortly.  It's making me a tad worried actually because up until now I've been on quite the roll.  So here's my question to you ROWers: How do you manage the space between?  Do you have any tactics?  Any suggestions?

I know we all have different writing process and some of us write such detailed outlines that we don't have "space" to deal with.  Me, on the other hand, I like to write fairly loose outlines because I have better luck getting the story to show itself to me this way (if that makes any sense).  The downside of this of course is that I think it takes me longer to write a novel than it would for authors who know exactly where they're going all the time.  But that's my process *shrugs. And I believe writers need to do things differently.  Different means specific to you and without that you're taking away any hope of originality.  Do you think?

As far as my ROW80 goals go — I'm still on track for this week (kind of).  I need to bang out 2,000 words before the end of the day today, which is shortened by the fact I have visitors coming.

Then on Friday I fly to Vancouver so will definitely be on a writing hiatus — perhaps won't even have time to check-in.  But such is life.

And if there's one thing I feel, it's that you've got to be grateful for it.  Truly, everyday I focus on gratitude I just feel it in my bones more and more.

I thought what I would do today is leave everyone with this video.  I'm a bit into Oprah, so sorry if this ain't your thing.  Also, I couldn't get the video to embed properly because of the size of my blog page, so if you want to see the video in full screen, click here.

I've posted this because, as far as us writers go, I think we're in the business of dreaming big.  So it's on that note, I leave you this:

    

6 Lessons Oprah Learned from the World's Biggest Dreamers

They set their goals high and now live the lives they dreamed about. Find out the greatest lessons Oprah learned from Ted Turner, Laird Hamilton, Pastor Joel Osteen, Iyanla Vanzant, Jennifer Hudson and Paula Deen.

The book I never forgot

When I was about nine or ten I saw this book in a book store and the cover just called to me.  Girl in the ocean with a dolpin jumping over her head.  Sold!  Don't ask me why exactly.  I've always had a thing for marine mammals.  I've always had a thing for girls who look magical.  And even though there's nothing in this photo that screams that, I somehow just got this from the cover.  When I finally read the book I was right about it too.

My first attempt at this novel was a fail.  I was a bit too young, I think, and the prologue explains this deep mythology of the novel in a lot of detail that I couldn't wrap my brain around at that age.

Then I read the whole thing when I was twelve.  Then I read it again.  This means something because I AM NOT good at re-reading books.  I'm the same way with movies.  But this book I absolutely loved.  It had everything I wanted: a strong female protagonist, a new world, a journey to another new world, romance.  Then most of all, the relationship between the main character, Sand, and her dolphin friend, M'ridan.

When I turned thirteen my world changed.  I didn't want to read.  I didn't want to do much of anything except maybe dance (I was dancing at this time in my life) and most of all, hang out with my friends.  I still read the books I had to for school but that was it.

Still, through all that time this book stayed with me.  When I would write in my journal as a teen, play around with short stories or dream one day of writing books, I would always come back to Strandia. It imprinted itself inside me and when I look now it's still there.

The interesting thing is that when I finally read this book as an adult, about seven years ago, I didn't love it like I did before.  I've got my BFA in creative writing/English Lit since, I'd read a lot more, and I guess there were things about the pace of the novel that jarred me.  I felt there was a lot more telling than showing.

I was surprised, but not upset, because this whole experience taught me a valuable lesson about writing stories.  It taught me that a book can still move you if it has all your favourite ingredients, even if it isn't prepared as well as it could have been.

That's not to say that Susan Lynn Reynolds (author) didn't do a lot of things right in this novel where the writing was concerned (the book won the Young Adult Canadian Book Award).  What I'm suggesting is sort of another example of what I talked about in the last blog.

I don't believe in destiny, but I do believe that you attract things to you and certain things will will show up in your life to teach you a lesson when it needs to be learned, to speak to you when you need to listen. You may not learn the lesson until years later, but the universe knows what it's doing.


One thing I've learned, despite how I feel about Strandia now compared to then, is that I'd be a different writer had I not read this book.  I'd have written something else instead of this.

That's the next draft ready to be read.  And maybe it will never be published.  Maybe it will never see more than the few readers I'm giving it to now.  What matters is that I'm not giving up on writing and even if it takes me another ten years to publish something and another ten novels, what I've written here will inform everything else after, just like what I read does.  Strandia included.

I'm off to Hawaii for some work next week and will have some fun pics when I return.  In the meantime, why not think about some of the people, books, art that has informed your life?  Where would you be without it?  And why did the universe choose to show it to you exactly when it did?  I think it's a question we can all ask ourselves about every single thing that appears in our life, a lot more than we do.

Moving on up

I finished my draft a week ago Friday and then about an hour later Tom and I were on our way to Laguna Beach for a writer's gig I had that conveniently coincided with our two years married.  It felt so unbelievably amazing to celebrate the end of this draft on the beach with my love!

After we got back I actually spent the whole week cleaning up the first five chapters of my draft.  There's still a lot I want to change but I'm forcing myself to keep away from it because before I do that, it's time for the thing to be read, by somebody else, all the way through.  

I happen to be one of the luckiest writers on earth because my aunt is also a writer.  And she's not just any writer, but this fabulous, extremely talented, gorgeous writer.  Her latest book, actually about our family, is coming out soon.  She's read some of it to me already and it's going to be fantastic!  Scroll down the link for her full bio.  

So my amazing aunt, and dear friend, has agreed to read my draft.   I know she'll have great feedback that will help me make this book better and so when I tackle this draft the next time I can go in and make changes based not only on what I think needs to change.  My head has been in the draft so long I doubt I have any objectivity left at the moment (if I ever did).  I'm nervous as hell to give it to her, because I look up to her so, but at the same time I wouldn't want this read to be for anyone else.

So what to do now?  There's that thing I said I'd do.  And with six months left, I better get on it.  Except, my instinct is sort of leading me in a different direction....so what I think I'll do next is spend the rest of the week writing something completely different, just for fun.  Then next week I'll get my outlines of Book Two and Three in better shape.  Then...I'm off to Hawaii.  Part Travelweek gig, part writer's gig.  Its my fifth time there and I love it more every time...so stay tuned for pics from that!

Now for my next post....enough of these updates I say!  Who cares where I am now, where I'm going.  You've heard about it enough and frankly, I'm sick of thinking about it.  So next time I'll be writing about something I think about a lot when it comes to writing books.  My take on a long-standing argument that relates to novels such as Fifty Shades of Grey and Twilight (and really every other novel in the universe, if that makes sense).

So thanks folks for bearing with me so far!  Thanks for caring, to those of you who do.  And thanks to my husband for his unwavering faith and encouragement.  If it wasn't for him I would have given up writing this draft two weeks ago (let's just say I had a moment).  The pic above is one of the orchids on the orchid plant he brought home last Tuesday for our anni.  Two of my favourite colours and since last week it's started to bloom like crazy!  Love to you all!  

Half way in

This Sunday will be six months since I started this blog, six months since the day I proclaimed to the web that I will finish drafts of three novels in one year

I'm not going to lie about anything here, I'm not going to avoid owning up to where I am because maybe it's not where I thought I'd be.  Instead am opting for honesty.  It's who am.  It's gotten me in trouble before and I'm sure will again, but I hope right now that maybe it won't.

By the middle of April I was ten chapters away from finishing the third draft of book one in the trilogy. I was whizzing through it and feeling great.  If you've been reading this blog you know what happened next.  I won't spare you with the details.  They were all great things, of course.  Experiences, visits, jobs I am grateful for, but it did take me away from writing.  Between mid-April and the week before last I finished two chapters, which brought me down to eight left.  Then if you read my last blog you know I decided I needed to make a change in the draft that took me back into rewrites of a few chapters already written.  I just finished those rewrites now.

So I've still got eight chapters left, maybe seven.  I'll finish them in a week from now if I'm really lucky.  Otherwise I'll finish them the week after.

That gives me just under six months to write two novels from scratch.  Can I do it? Yes, I can do anything!!  Will I do it?  Time will tell.

The main thing I want to tell you all is that I'm not giving up.  I'm going to do my absolute best to get as much of this trilogy done this year as I possibly can.  But IF, for some reason, I don't make this self-imposed deadline, I am going to be happy with however much I've completed.  No, not happy.  I'll be over-the-moon, insanely proud, elated, rave-dance excited.  Why?  Because I will have given it my absolute all.  I will have lots more done than I ever thought I would get done in those dark, cold moments at the bottom of a pitiful mood.

That's the point isn't it?  Journey, not the destination.  I recall saying something along these lines before: Not just about this year, but all years.... Not just about a year of greatness, a year of love, but a lifetime.  

And then one day I will be finished this trilogy.  And hopefully one day some people will read it and hopefully those people will feel at least some of the love I put in.  Then, even if they do or if they don't, it will be on to the next thing.  That next journey, the next book, the next year.

I'm possible

So I've been writing away and I realize there's a major rewrite I need to do to the ending.  Well, I don't need to do it but I feel it's the right thing.  It's putting pressure on me because I just want to get this draft finished.  But more than that I want it to be the best draft it can be.  Maybe it means I won't make my July 6th deadline, but nothing's impossible.  Just like Audrey Hepburn says:

Getting there

This is what I looked like the minute I got home from Disneyland last Thursday, minus the whiskers.

It was the end of two months of insanity that started in mid-April.  In between then and now I had visitors to LA, covered three travel events, visited two other countries, which included my first visit home, and saw a bajillion people.  Yes, you read that correctly, a BAJILLION!  And all of it culminated last week as I raced down Route 66 at 7:00 a.m without coffee or breakfast, while cars smiled and spoke to me and winked.    

And as you know, I've got eight chapters left to write of this #@#$%# draft.  And boy does it feel like that kind of draft today!  I've spent the last three days just getting my head back into it.  And you know what, this @#^&#*# draft has some coherency, I must admit.  It's terribly over written, but that's fixable, right?

Now I'm giving myself a deadline to get these next eight chapters done (a secret source told me it will really only be seven chapters but we'll see how that goes).

I'm revealing this deadline to the world so someone out there will banish me to the darkest, coldest place beyond The Wall of the Seven Kingdoms (yes, I'm reading Game of Thrones) if I don't make it.  Do you think someone will do that for me?  If so, my deadline is July 6th.

Of course, as usual, I spent a good chunk of my time today beating myself up for dilly-dallying in chapters already written and wondering if the villain in my novel should in fact be a dragon (damn you Game of Thrones!).

BUT even after all that, I have started writing again.  I AM getting there.  And I will get there.  On July 6th.

As for all the other things going Lightening McQueen through my busy mind, like how I'd really enjoy a larger income, how I really want to do a five-day juice cleanse, get some more writing gigs, loose ten pounds and run and do yoga every single day, meditate, decorate my apartment, go to New York with my sisters to see the Newsies on broadway, and visit Thailand, and all of this in 2012 (This is the year, isn't it?).  Well, I'll just have to put that all aside for now and do the only thing I can do, what I've been telling myself over and over and so will again here and now:  Trust the process of life, be grateful for it.

Now this is what I'm talking about...

I'm sure you all have seen this video before.  I went on a sharing spree with it about a year ago but I thought this was a great time to share it once more.  Imagine we all woke up every morning and did this?

I'm really yearning to get back into my novel, but I've been rushing around trying to get all my New Zealand stories done and dealing with a bit of jet lag....but I will be getting back in at least for one chapter before I'm off to see my family in Toronto next Friday!!!  *jumps for joy*  I am so excited to see everyone!

Then when I get back they'll be just eight chapters of this draft left to do!!  In the words of dear Jessica in the above video "I can do anything good!"

Happy Friday!

I'm back baby!

I'm back!  And oh how I do apologize for leaving you without a post for so long, dear readers.  I was writing away, trying to get this #@$%%$ draft finished (as my aunt who also happens to be a writer, Carolyn Abraham, and I like to call our works in progress).  But my writing came to a complete stop when last Wednesday my sister-in-law and brother in-law came to visit.  They brought someone with them too.

That's my niece.  She's almost one!  And her name takes special precedence on this blog because it is, after all, Story.

The visit was too short and together we had great fun doing things like this:

After seeing the orangutans at the San Diego Zoo they are now my new favourite animal.  I got to get right down in front of one, like my darling Story here, and look into its eyes and I just felt so connected to it, to life, to the whole.  Now in my spare time I'm dreaming of going to Borneo...

Okay, okay now this is all off topic.  This is a writing blog, after all.  Isn't it?  And I am excited to tell you that I am only ten chapters away from finishing this draft, or #$#%$% draft, or !!!!! draft (the name must correspond with how I'm feeling you see).

My deadline was to be done before the end of April.  This of course means that the secret deadline I wouldn't mention before is not a deadline anymore and the bad news is I didn't reach it.  But I REFUSE to get down on myself for it.  I came pretty close to reaching this deadline.  I wrote/revised 18 chapters in two months and some people might think that's not too shabby.  I'm fairly confident I can still pull off what I said I would by the end of the year.

I would be finishing this draft at least by the beginning of May if it wasn't for the real world stepping in. (Yes folks, I do work occasionally ;)

I'm covering a travel show in Los Angeles for the magazine I worked for in Toronto, which I now work for on a freelance basis.  After that I'm covering another travel show for them but that one takes place here:

In case you don't recognize this picture, it's Queenstown, New Zealand.  I'll be discovering this destination for the first time from April 30th to May 11.  So this is also a warning that blogging may continue to be sporadic from about now until I return.

For now, I just want to say (as I always do...) how grateful I am for the way this year is shaping up.  I'm getting to travel, spend time with those I love, even when most of the time we live so far away from each other, and most importantly, I am putting writing first, as I've intended to do my whole life but just couldn't find my way there.  Four months into 2012 I'd say things are looking, in the words of Larry David, pretty, pretty, good.

What about you?  How is this year turning out?  Is it one of love?  Is it one of greatness?  It's not too late to make this year the year, you know - this year and every one after! xoxoxoxox

Cozy feet make me happy

This is going to be another one of those short posts, where I give thanks for something and hope you give thanks for something too — be it on this blog, or in your head or by yelling out the window.

My short, non-writing blog posts as of late are due to the whole whack of novel writing I'm trying to get done by a deadline I've given myself which I will not share with you here.  Why? Because this deadline seems almost impossible to reach at the moment and putting the deadline out there in the world will only put more pressure on me to get it done.  I don't need more pressure.  I just need to get it done.  And I will.  I will!  (I hope).  Soon I'll tell you why I've given myself this deadline and hopefully when I do it will be because I've made it!

In the meantime, it's Friday, and though I feel grateful everyday, Friday is my favourite day to say thanks. This Friday, I'm saying thanks for a gift one of my best friend's got me a few years ago that I still wear almost every day.  That's these:

They were handmade by an Ojibwe woman living on a reserve somewhere in Ontario (I think Thunder Bay but I'm not sure).  The cuff is fox fur, the inside is sheep skin (I believe) and the outer part of the moccasins are made from hide that was stretched over a fire.  When I first got them they smelled like camp fire and this made them 100 times cooler.  All that beading is hand-stiched too.  I pretty much can't be inside my house without them.  They also remind me of the dear friend who gave them to me and there's nothing like a pair of shoes that keep your feet warm and your heart warm at the same time.

Grateful!

Oh Chapter 9, you just want all the attention...

Remember when I dove into my rewrites?  Well now that's me, below there, swimming through Chapter 9.

I'll let you know when I get somewhere.

Mistakes are opportunities dressed up like Freddy Krueger

The read-through is done!

This may not look like lots of pages 

but just to let you know they were double-sided.

I can’t believe how long it took me to get through this though.  I’ve read my drafts before in one day but it took me six days of work, including a full Saturday and one Sunday morning, to get through everything because of all the notes I was making.

The good news? I don’t hate the thing.

The great news? I think I know how to make it better.

Still, despite the good and the great, the best part is that I feel REALLY EXCITED about getting back to work on revisions for the next draft.

None of the changes I’m making are to the story really – not at this point.  Sure there are a few aspects I’ve decided to tell differently but most of all I’m making structural changes and one other big change – which I’ll let you know about in another post.

What have I learned about my writing process after reading this draft? 

Mistakes are the best thing that can happen to you.

Really.

I had to do things wrong to learn how to make them right.

One of my favorite authors, Kristin Cashore, mentioned something about this recently on her blog (bullet point two).   

Mistakes aren’t things to forget.  They’re not things to be embarrassed about.  Mistakes are all you’ve got to grow from. 

They can be your greatest gifts if you let them. 

What’s the best mistake you ever made?  

p.s. Yes I'm so freaking grateful for my writing mistakes (maybe not right away) but this post isn't my new weekly gratitude post.  That one's coming so stay tuned!

Thank you for the days I can waste because If I want to I can

So I may have lied in my last blog post but what you need to know is that I didn't mean to. It's just that, I may have been a little overambitious.  I read for 14 hours last Wednesday and I only got half way through reading my first draft (Bah!).

No, this isn't because I'm a slow reader (which I am) it's because I was making so many notes that it was just taking me a lot longer than expected to get through each page.  Also, life got in the way a bit the rest of the week, as it tends to do, which means it's Monday and I'm still not finished reading.  I will finish this week though. I promise!!!  And then I'll have more to say later.

What I have more to say on now, is two words:  Thank you.  Yes, thank you (and yes I'm a bit italic happy today as you can tell). But really and truly, thank you for reading this blog.  I know it's just the beginning and it's boring and I haven't yet turned to a completely regular blog schedule (though I will!) but my stats are better than 0 and that's pretty darn good.

The other thing I have to say about these two words today (you know, Thank and You) is that what they mean is really important to me.  Gratitude is so important to me in fact that without it I would probably be considering suicide (well not really because I'm scared of dying but you know what I mean).

Gratitude is really what gets us out of bed everyday, happy for the experiences we've had and eager for what's coming next.  If you're grateful for nothing then you may as well be dead.  (Hence the suicide mention).

Seriously though, EVERYONE can be grateful for something, whether it's the obvious things like your health, your breath, the ice cream you had last night for desert (or not so grateful if you're lactose intolerant), your family, or that really friendly gal at the cheese shop who chatted you up for no reason and reminded you that some people really are just nice.  If you can put one foot in front of the other then you have something to be grateful for.

What I'm saying here, albeit kind of randomly, is that I like to think about and talk about the things I'm grateful for and I like to hear what other people are grateful for too.  So I'm going to make this a regular blog thing.  One day a week.  You'll hear about one thing I'm grateful for.  It could have to do with writing. It could have to do with yummy food, or new curtains, or the love in my life, yoga, sunshine, rain, getting an awesome new hair cut, picking out a new sofa or picking my nose (cause let's just face it people, sometimes you gotta do it, you just gotta).

Hopefully, with all these thank yous I'll be blogging, you'll want to comment on what you're grateful for too.  You could have one thing you're grateful for that you'd like to share.  Or heck, if you've got more than one then by gosh darn golly, you just go ahead and share those too. (And if that last statement made you think I live in Texas now instead of LA, I don't.  That's just the way that sentence needed to come out and I'm not even quite sure if that's how a proper Texans would speak anyway).

Now, back to now.  What am I grateful for?  A song, by my new favourite band Foster the People.  The song is called Waste and the reason I'm grateful for it is because whenever I'm feeling like I'm not getting enough done, or I'm a bit unmotivated, this song reminds me that I have the power to waste the day.  Sure there's consequences, there always are, but that doesn't mean I don't have the choice.

OR....I have the power to take today and do with it what I need to so I can be the change I want to see in my world (and by the way that's me ripping off Ghandi, not the song).

So, in other words, I've got a lot of freedom and regardless of where you work or what your life looks like if you live in the West, you probably have a lot of freedom too.

Ain't that something to be grateful for?????

Now go on, what is it you feel like saying thanks for right now?

This is the edelweiss

Since we’re about half way through January I thought I better get this out before it’s too late.

You know that thing I said I'd do?  Yeah, well, I just wanted to let you know that even though it sounds like a big fat shining New Year’s resolution, it isn’t one.  Not really.

I know, I know.  You’re thinking, “What the heck is she talking about?  Her blog is called This is the year.  Her first blog entry is about how this year she’s made a pact to finish writing a trilogy.  And she published her first blog post on New Year's Day.  It's a resolution in neon lights!” 

Okay, so you're right.  But I didn’t plan it like that.

What I planned was to begin a blog when we moved to LA.  I knew making my writing journey somewhat public would bring another level of accountability to finishing my writing projects, and when we moved I knew I would be putting writing first.  Something about not having a full time job anymore and being so ridiculously far away from most people I know kind of sealed that deal.  Plus, aspiring authors/authors need to be on the Internet these days anyway.  Don't take my word for it, take his. 

But it wasn’t until I was getting ready to leave for India in November that I decided to call this blog This is the year.  I wanted to call it that not only because this is the year I would be putting writing first, but because I hope that every year, from now on, I’ll be blogging about writing (and hopefully a writing career!) as mine makes like edelweiss, blooming and growing, blooming and growing.  

Then, it wasn't until I got to India, and I was on that roof, that I thought if I'm going to be putting writing first, if I'm going to be dedicating so much time, then I better step up my game.

So in other words, what I'm really trying to say here is that this year, it’s not going to be the only one.  Because this blog isn't just about one year, one resolution.  It’s about evolution.  On Jan 17th, 2012, I’m just letting you know where in that evolution I am.

Next up is this. 

I’ll be reading it for the first time straight through tomorrow. 

I’ll be sure to let you know how that goes…

And finally, Happy Birthday Mom!  Love you!!!!