Raven's View

I was a latecomer to serious writing, starting my first book in 2010. But I did 'bloom', in  the sense that I published it, and my second one, and wrote another five novels, as well as many Flash Fiction stories. I have slowed down, but maybe it's like a garden. The planning and planting is fun, but then the editing starts, the weeding, the moving around of plants as some look better than others, then some additions, some culling of a few.  I really don't like weeding or editing. The good news is that if I procrastinate editing, things don't keep growing. 

Well, as often happens, I'm late with my check-in. But my excuse is that yesterday was my birthday. It was #72, and with no regrets, no "If only I had" thoughts. It is what it is. My girlfriend is up from Toronto, and we met my son, his wife, and two young kids at a nearby park. There's a small wading pool so all had a good time. Cake and pizza and pop. My girlfriend and I stopped in at my local for a drink, then to spend the evening on my back porch, drinking beer and cider, checking out the stars and planets (a beautiful clear and cool night), talk about Trump vs Putin, and then muse on the scale of the planets, and our galaxy, and the universe. Just to put it all in perspective. This was helpful - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=buqtdpuZxvk

One of the many writerly things I do is follow a number of sites related to writing/editing/publishing. I use Feedly to collect them in one spot, and can follow them via my desktop, laptop, or smartphone. Between them they generate 3-4 posts a day - not a lot but I still keep getting behind. 

The sites are:

• Writer Unboxed
• Fiction University
• The Write Practice
• Writing Articles -Writer's Digest
• Chuck Wendig: Terribleminds
• Janet Reid, Literary Agent

The last two are my favourites, but there is some overlap in the others. Fiction University is interesting, but it also the only one to publish just an excerpt in the RSS feed, so I usually just see an announcement of an article, and a bio about the author, and a link to the web page. Dropped it today. 

So, an update: I met my 2hr/day every day so far. This post, plus dealing with all them blogs. And strategizing on choosing the next story to edit and send out.  

Now it's back to chores. Soccer is done - great final game, in spite of some questionable calls. 

Ok, so I need to re-think my approach here. Several years ago I was in here with a great set of SMART objectives, most of them focused on writing. And I met many of them. Lately - not so much. The last round I think I did the initial starting post and that was that. 

I was at my local, and one of my fans/customers was raving to people about me being a published author. Which was nice. I talked about the books I had published, the drafts I had done for others, the many Flash Fiction stories I had done, but when it came time for questions about what I was working on now, and when my next book was coming out - I was embarrassed. I have had a lot of interesting careers in my past, but I am reluctant to move writer and published author to the past tense. I do manage to find several hours a day to live-stream video games or rant on Facebook or chat with friends in my local so it's not for lack of hours in the life of the retired. 

So my objective, is that every day, 10 am to 12, I do something writerly. My choice, be it reading writer blogs, working on a short story, promoting my book, editing my various drafts, finding a publisher, whatever. 10 am means I can't stay up late streaming my truck driving game, and will work even with my gfriend here, as she usually sleeps to almost noon. We'll see how it goes.