Tag Archives: Writing

The light at the end of the tunnel

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After four weeks of illness, I think (touch wood) that I might finally be starting to feel better. I’m running on 80% at the moment, but that is way better than I was.

I have to say that I managed a walk yesterday, and while the wind was cold, and it made me cough, it was nice to get out and about. The previous week, I couldn’t wait to get home, so that’s a win for me.

I have also finished editing Compromising Positions. It just needs a final grammar / spelling check and then it is off to my editor. I’m excited about this story, but also a little nervous. I hope that I managed to get a decent romance coming through. I love the story and the dance of the three main characters and how they interact.

I’m hoping that I will get back into writing next week and I can knock out the last bit of Faith’s story in Racing Harts. I’ll also get to start on my first edit of Finding Sam Healey, which is in my Finding Yourself series.

So how was your week?

Advantages of being SICK

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Last week, Mum sent me home because she had covid, and on Monday, I tested positive for it. It was probably a coincidence that she had it, then I got it, because my son also tested positive, albeit weakly.

Monday and Tuesday I felt pretty blocked up with sinuses and felt pretty yuck, but not any different than having a cold.

By Wednesday, I was desperate to do something, because I don’t do well being confined to home. So, I cleaned. I tidied up my craft desk, my writing desk, I dusted the entire house, and I deep vacuumed the floors (like the skirtings, the corners, any cobwebs, EVERYTHING!)

And I even wrote. And instead of writing for fifteen minutes and getting 300+ words, I wrote for however long I wanted, and often finished entire chapters.

I watched series 3 of Bridgerton (Colin and Penelope, *sigh*) and watched movies, and caught up with ‘My Life is Murder’.

My mental health has taken a hit, because of the deaths I’ve experienced lately, but I’m processing. I’ve cried a lot in the last few weeks, but that’s good, it’s normal to cry and let out the sadness and move through the grieving process, and we all grieve differently. Some of us keep it all inside until we go to bed at night, then allow ourselves the opportunity to cry. Some cry and get it all out and move forward. Just know that grieving looks different for everyone.

Back to the grind this week, provided the weather plays ball.

Hope everything has gone well with you this week.

Peace and Quiet

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It was all go until 31 May, now it is quiet. And tomorrow is King’s Birthday weekend, so a long weekend to relax.

I’ve finished my assignments and handed them all in.

Second-Hand Daughter has launched.

And I have so many things I could be doing, and I really don’t feel like doing much. I’ve spent time in the garden weeding, planting and trimming, and napping.

I haven’t written much or edited. I’m just enjoying having some quiet time after a busy few months. It doesn’t mean I’ve given up on writing, or crafting, it just means that I’m having a week holiday. I will back into editing this week, with Compromised Positions being the next up, and that will be released later this year! So excited about that.

But in the meantime, I’m relaxing and taking some me-time.

Scrambled Brains

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I’ve just got back from a trip over to Wineborough to see my Mum, Stepmum and Dad. My Stepmum isn’t very well at the moment, so I took the opportunity to go over and catch up with them all.

My stepmum is very special to me, and her illness is very serious, and it’s been playing on my mind for a couple of weeks. To the point that my brain has become like scrambled eggs. I think it is a combination of stress and tiredness, but I notice it when I’m mentally stressed mostly, and that is, that words just don’t always come to me. The most common objects, I can look at it, and it will take me a while to figure out what it is. Case in point, I used the last of my floss the other day on my teeth and couldn’t remember for the life of me what it was called. Of course, the packaging didn’t help, it just called it floss, so I wrote it down on my shopping list as mouth floss. It took me 5 (FIVE) days to remember it was called Dental Floss!

And this sort of thing is a problem when you’re writing regularly. Sometimes you know a word, but it won’t come into your head when you need it, so you use other words that mean it, but it’s not what you want to use, and of course, when the time comes to edit, I will read it and think, what the hell am I talking about!

Do you have scrambled brain problems too? Hopefully you had a good week.

Take care out there.

Catherine

Finding Me Time

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It’s that time of the year, where I am meeting myself coming backwards at the moment. I work fulltime as a gardener, and then from late February / March I work in three evenings a week packing apples from 5 until 9pm. It is to help out a local orchard.

Then during the school term, I have pole classes on a Thursday. By the time I get to the weekend, I am busy catching up on household chores that I don’t get done during the week because I don’t have time.

And then, because I like to complicate things so much, I am also studying my final paper in my organic’s course – Composting. Which isn’t as easy as you think. We’ve had to look at how soil develops, from chemical and physical weathering of rocks. To say it is exciting is an extremely overcomplicated process. Basically it creates sand. That’s it. Not dirt, but sand.

In the mornings i squeeze in a few minutes of writing from the time my partner and son leave the house until I need to leave the house. Which sometimes is only ten minutes, but it’s better than nothing.

On Friday night, rather than sitting and staring at a screen, I decided to get out my Queen 1000 piece puzzle. And I remembered why I had put it away in the first place. It’s rather complicated, and I spent a good hour just trying to find pieces of one of the parts of the puzzle.

But you know what. I relaxed. I breathed deep and I spent some quality time doing something that I actually enjoy doing. Because you often need to find time to do the things that you enjoy doing, just to give yourself a break from other stuff going on inside your head.

What did you do this week that you did for yourself?

Take care out there

Catherine

Travels and Writing

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When I go away anywhere, I take my laptop with me, because I might just get some time to write. Often it’s not a lot of time, but sometimes, I might get a bit of time writing. We’ve just been travelling to watch my partner’s two children graduate, one from University and one from School of Tourism. Both have done extremely well in their educational endeavours and made their parents very proud.

I took my laptop away with us, and managed to squeeze in some writing, here and there, and then yesterday I got in a few good minutes while my partner watched his son playing Rugby. I don’t do rugby, I don’t enjoy standing on the sidelines in the freezing cold, watching a sport I don’t understand, so neither of them were upset with me staying in the car and writing.

I got to write for a whole hour in the car, without interruptions, or music, or people talking, and it’s amazing how much writing you can get done in that time. I’m now a third of the way through my Racing Harts novel, which is really exciting.

Normally I write for a few minutes in the morning before I head to work. the house is quiet, and I have time to myself, but I only get fifteen to twenty minutes of writing done in that time. But it’s good to write in short periods as well, it means that I have an idea for where I want to go the next day when I get to writing again.

At the moment, an hour of writing is about all I can handle, but I hope to build that up over time, and also being aware that I don’t need to write all in one hour, I can go away and come back to do more writing, if I want to. It’s nice to have options.

So how was your week?

Take care

Catherine

Feeling Fatigued

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What a week. I’ve worked two jobs from Monday to Wednesday, one job on Thursday and Friday, been to Pole class, working on study, cooked, cleaned and done edits and continued writing on my Racing Harts series. No wonder I am tired!

On Saturday, I slept in until 7am, because Lunar doesn’t believe in having lie in’s. I got up, fed her and crawled back into bed, and proceeded to watch a couple of Youtube videos until I fell asleep again about 7:30am, and woke up at 10am! And I still felt tired. I had an afternoon nap and finally felt like I’d caught up on sleep, so all up, on Saturday, I slept approximately 12 hours.

That’s some serious sleeping time on a day off. That’s half of Saturday that I slept! But Saturday morning, once I got up, I cooked some tomatoes for tea, made some lemon quencher and reset some heat packs, and on Saturday afternoon / evening, I finished all the edits on Second-Hand Daughter, so now I only have a couple of small tweaks to do, and then I have to format the story and have it all ready to be released on 31 May 2024. And I might also have some print books available by then too.

I only have four more weeks of apple packing to go after this week, but the extra money is handy, and I can’t wait to get my teeth sorted out and have that 100 watt smile back.

Some you Win, Some you Lose.

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Sometimes things don’t work out as you expect. I’ve been participating in a 100 day writing challenge, which has been great. I love updating my status to confirm that I have actually been doing the work required, and I’ve only had two flex days, days where I haven’t done any writing at all.

I’m happy with that. But in the last week, I noticed that I was writing less and less on my Dragon Lore story. The reason? I was pantsing the story. I was making it up as I went along, which is okay, except I’m a plotter. I like to know where my story is going how it reaches its conclusion. With Dragon Lore, I wrote myself into a corner, and I couldn’t see any way out.

So, what do I do when I get in a situation like that? I stop writing. That’s right. I stop writing, because what is the point in writing a story that doesn’t make any sense and keeps going around and around.

But I haven’t stopped writing completely. While I have stopped on Dragon’s Lore, I started on my Contemporary Romance, Racing Harts sister, Faith. I even plotted it out on a Romancing the Beat Sheet, which was an interesting experience. While most of the time I plot I have an idea of where the story is going, Romancing the Beat is about the romance and the ‘beats’ are the parts of the story that make it a romance. While I like it, it isn’t totally how I plot, but I can see how it can be added into my usual plotting methods.

And I haven’t completely given up on Dragon’s Lore. I just feel that I need to step away from it for a bit, and then come back with fresh eyes to understand where I want the story to go and how to get it back into shape.

Have you had problems you’ve had to face this week? How have you resolved them?

Take care

Catherine

Another Season Apple Packing

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Yes, that time has come again, Apple Packing Season. I’m looking forward to it this year, as I know what to expect. 4 hours of listening to podcasts, and I’ve been saving up my favourites to listen to.

And yes, this money is going towards me getting a plate to replace the teeth that I had removed, and I am super excited about that. It’s taken a long time to come about, but things are ticking along. I have one more session with the dentist to fix repair three teeth (replace the fillings) and then an xray / scan of my head to get ready for the plate.

I have a lot more confidence now than I did before I had my teeth removed, even though I have a gappy smile. But I know that it is a work in progress, and things are moving forward.

Speaking of things moving forward – Autumn has arrived, not that you will know right now. I have also started my last paper in the organic’s course I started last year. Probably not the best idea to start it about the same time I’m packing but it’s only ten weeks (the packing). Worse comes to worse, I can redo the paper in July 2024, but I want to finish it so I can focus on writing and editing for the rest of year.

So how are you doing this week? Hope everything is going good for you.

Kia kaha

Catherine.

Cracking on with the Writing

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I’ve been participating in 100 days of Writing, and in the first month of writing I managed to add 20,647 words to my Dragon’s Lore manuscript. Whether it is any good or not is a different story. But there are words down, and done on a regular basis.

There have been days when I haven’t felt like writing, but I have done it anyway. I have actually been getting up early – 5:30am, fed the cat, let her out, then sit down and write, and its been good to get it done then. Then at 6am when the alarm goes off, I start my day, and it feels great knowing that I have written something.

And on the days when I don’t feel like doing much, I’ll write for ten minutes, and I’ll achieve at least 250 words, which, while it doesn’t seem like a lot, those little amounts add up, and as I said earlier, 31 days is over 20,000 words.

It just goes to show that even when you don’t feel like doing something, just a little bit helps to add to the total count.

What little thing can you do today to help you add towards your goals?

Take care

Catherine