Anne Lamott
How To Keep Going
The writer Anne Lamott really nailed it on the head with this sentiment. I certainly get up and walk and I also fall down…fortunately not the physical type, but definitely the emotional type of falling down, but do I keep dancing through my days regardless?
I can’t say that I do.
Mind you, I always recover because after 70 years on this earth, I have proven to be quite resilient and although the recovery period takes longer than I would want, somehow or other I have survived every horrible day or event I have encountered in my life. In my birthday post, I mentioned the living milestones one encounters after 70 years which also included the number of breaths to my name as of my birthdate: 434,350,000, and the breaths keep adding up! But that’s not enough for me; what else can I do?
I can stop letting the stresses of life get in the way of my dancing.
I may not dance in the literal sense, but I can decide to shake off the intricacies of the world around me so that my health and well-being aren’t adversely affected. That does not mean that I don’t care about those intricacies – trust me, I lose considerable sleep over the caring that I harbor – but I will be a better participant in this life if I let my spirit and psyche dance a bit more than not.
And if doing so rubs off on others? All the better, so I will dance, dance, dance.
Second novel … completed!
Yes, it’s true, I finished my second novel at approximately 3:30 pm PST November 25th, 2015. I wrote a 60,201 word novel (10,201 words above the required minimum word count) in 25 days as a participant in the National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) event.
Is the novel ready for publication? Hell no. Now begins the editing, fleshing out, adding and subtracting of content, and fact-checking drudgery required of a book fit for representation and publication.
But I did it! I averaged 2,408 words per day; yesterday alone I wrote 3,879 words in five and a half hours.
It’s all in the preparation, Bay-bee, at least for me it was. For the first time, I used a novel-planning software called Snowflake Pro developed by Randy Ingermanson. This software isn’t writing software per-se, rather, it’s planning software that helps you craft all the necessary elements for your novel.
The greatest realized benefits occurred in Step Three (wherein you create a list of characters and flesh out their storyline) and Step Seven (where you’re forced to answer forty-seven questions about each of your characters.) These questions are quite thorough, from stating the height and weight of your character, to best and worst childhood memory, to religion and political leanings, to how the character sees herself and how others see the character, and much more.
Armed with these character profiles, the writing came easy for me. Of course I changed some of the initial answers as I completed one chapter after another. As is usually the case when drafting a novel, I found as I got to know the character better, I needed to redesign its destiny, but without a preliminary resume of sorts, I would have found myself floundering – not a comfortable position to be in when you’re on deadline. Yep, I’m certain I would not have experienced the same outcome without the software’s guidance. Read the rest of this entry »
Living: the ultimate team sport 