Category Archives: Writing

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My Comfy Writing Spot

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Not sure what to write about, but I’m in my little comfy spot in the kitchen. In the corner next to the window, surrounded by shelves and with Piper puppy sleeping peacefully in her crate at my feet. And hot coffee at the ready, of course.

The exciting point of my day may be when the mail is delivered, but probably not. I already received what I was waiting for, which is the Spec-Tran approval I blogged about last night.

When I’m bored like this it’s nice to goof around on Facebook. A friend announced she found the best granola, so of course that sparked a lengthy comment thread. The food posts always do.

This has been a wonderfully uneventful week so far, which I much appreciate after last week. Last week was brutal. All the sickness and the cold. Kids home for the better part of the week, which I should love, but.. I was (am) feeling pretty fatigued. And throw a four-month old puppy into the mix? Just a little more than I can handle. And now hubby sounds like he is developing what we all had. That was inevitable, I suppose.

So when life has slowed down what do I do? I nap, first and foremost, but then when I feel mostly rested I clean. Dishes, laundry, floors, etc. It’s all never-ending. Meaning you are never “done” with laundry or dishes or cleaning floors. These are things that are constantly in progress.  Once I realized that fully, I stopped putting them on my to-do-list. It seemed silly to keep crossing them off only to put them back on again. So now my to-do list consists of more irregular things like paying bills and clipping my toenails.

I would really like to get back to writing that book. The process (which honestly hadn’t really begun) got halted when we all fell ill. And now I need to get back at it. To be honest, I feel extremely inadequate at this whole book-writing-thing. Am I even doing it right? I’m just writing, hoping it turns into something I can have published so that people can read it. But publishing, well that’s a road I have not traveled and have no clue how to find. Yet. Let’s write the book first. And this corner spot in my kitchen is the perfect place for it.  As long as Piper complies, I could make this a daily ritual. Sitting here, sipping my coffee, tapping away at the keys. That sounds like a Happy Place if you ask me.

Now, enough rambling for me. I will let you go. I have words to write!

Writing

I promise the book won’t be this boring

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“1/22/14: Housecleaning. So I did the dishes today, which mainly consisted of filling up the washer and running it. Then I wiped down all the counters. Then I took the stovetop apart and scrubbed it down. I didn’t find the missing rubber pad, but I did find some areas that needed more scrubbing. I used the green scrubby and the crumbs came right off. Then I wiped everything down again with the spray and paper towel. All nice and shiny. I may have missed some spots, but it’s much better than it was.”

Wow. I’m reading back through my journals from a year ago, in an effort to get inspiration and ideas for structuring the book I’m writing.

It’s not going so well.

There is a lot of mundane tedium mixed in, so filtering out the good stuff is proving more challenging than I had hoped. But once I get through reading everything I think I’ll be ready to form a thorough framework or outline for the book, and then I can just start writing. I hope, anyway. This is all very new to me. It’s very daunting, and I have numerous doubts that I can do this. But why not? Why not me? I’ve loved writing for as long as I can remember. This past year and a half life has thrown some major curveballs, and I’ve learned a great deal through all of it. So now I have something to write about. Something hopefully others will want to read. I just have to get the words out. One. Day. At. A. Time.

No, wait. You know what? Maybe I’m getting hung up on all this preparation – structure – outline crap. What if I just started writing? It’s worth a shot, right? Only this time I’ll leave out all the house cleaning details 😉

Writing

Baby steps to a book.

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I posted the following message on my Facebook wall the day after Christmas. Just six days ago.

“Today I have officially started writing my book. Thank you, Staci, for passing that ‘rumor’ along to our buddy Lyle. Your confidence in me was motivation to get this girl’s butt in gear.”

Of course, not much has happened since then. Which frustrates me to my core. Because I am an unrealistic overachiever, and I set ridiculous standards for myself, not having thought them through. Of course writing a book is an enormous task. I don’t even really know where to start, but that’s mostly irrelevant at this point because –

Hello? Who has time to write a book with two kids home for Christmas break and a new puppy to housetrain??

Okay. Now that we have that cleared up. A book is in process. Baby steps. Or maybe very tiny itty-bitty steps until kids go back to school. Either way, there will be steps.