It's been a long time since I posted. Okay, a month and a half is a really, really long time. My first term at school ended at the end of October, and my mind is still trying to catch up. It's sad to say, I haven't done much lately with my writing, although I should continue to work on and flesh out my project. I think I'm just so beat and I need to veg to be productive at all. Well, I did revise my short short and submit it to a contest. I also have two chapters of another book written (I had to have something for workshop next residency). I haven't even done any critiques for Critters. Bad writer, bad, bad writer. Hopefully realizing that it's December now will get my ass in gear and I'll be productive. Three weeks and I get almost a whole two weeks of (of course the craziness of X-mas will get in the way of being productive then). I'm rambling. Hmm... So, there's my new post. Oh, and The Wheel of Time series by Robert Jordan is starting to annoy me. I don't know, but sometimes his writing just seems off. maybe it's all the head jumping he does - very disconcerting. I'm done now. If anyone has any ideas to encourage me to get out of my after term slump, please feel free to e-mail me. I like e-mails... Happy writing!

Okay, I'm wearing down quickly. Sometimes I wonder if it will ever end. I can't work full-time and write full-time for the rest of my life. My body may only be able to take it for a few more years. But of course everything is circular. To get more time to work on my writing, to be able to submit things and get things published, I need to not have another full-time job. Yet to be able to get away with not having a full-time job, I need to be making some sort of income from my writing. I'm going to scream - Ahhhhhhhhh!

Now that I got that out, damn I still don't feel better. It's a dreary, miserable day outside, my back hurts, and I am so not looking forward to the winter when I seem to be affected by SADs and get super depressed and have absolutely no energy. I need to move to a warmer climate. Wisconsin sucks! How am I going to encourage myself to keep plugging away, to keep up the writing during winter, when that has always been my most unproductive time of the year? Maybe being in the program at Seton Hill will help, I hope. Maybe I need to have my husband stand over me with a whip and make me work (and no matter what some people would think, no that would not be pleasurable for me, I can't speak for my husband though - hehe).

I think I have to get myself in the habit of writing everyday too, and even at short periods (currently I prefer a nice 2 hour chunk to write). I tend to write in spurts, and write a lot in those spurts, and of course that doesn't get me in a pattern, but then again I sometimes hate patterns. Last thing I want is to feel like my husband, who feels like he's stuck in a rut. See, I contradict myself - I can't do both things at once!

Maybe, in a happy, ideal future, this new job my husband got will be lucrative, and then I can actually stay home and write, and not work another full-time job, maybe only have to work part-time. Ideal future - my bad luck dictates that this will not be so anytime soon, until I've brokem my back and possibly my spirit (but I'll tell you, even though I'm pessimistic, it's damn hard to totally snuff out my spirit - I am a Leo after all). Urk.

Okay, I've babbled enough, and I should probably get back to work. :P Happy writing all!

More than a week, but not too much more. :) I've been sick, so there's my excuse for the day.

Recently, I've had to change my project that I'm working on for school from present tense to past tense - it was more than just encouraged by my mentor. Reluctantly, I submitted, but I know it will be worth the pain.

So, I was just looking at some of my old writing that I have on my website, and low and behold, most of it is in past tense. When the hell did I get addicted to present tense? In an effort to discover when I was "led astray" I went through everything I had on my website. It didn't give me answers - at all. I think it might have been a slow progression into latching onto present tense.

Mostly, whenever I was writing in first person, like with my first really crappy novel, Death of the Dragon, I was writing in present tense. Currently, what's posted for that though, I have the flashback in past tense (the rough draft was all present tense, and the first Entry is the only one that was converted). And I also know a couple things I started in past tense, I then decided to switch to present tense. Maybe my style for writing in first person started to leak over into my third person writing style?

Who knows. No one will ever be able to figure out the workings of my mind, including myself (much to the chagrin of my husband). One thing I learned from looking at my old works - I can write in past tense and it won't kill me. Hell, even though most of my older writing is crap, it still actually sounds good in past tense.

So, I think whenever I start something new, I need to give it a bit more thought on whether it should be past or present tense. Although, no one's going to pull me away from first person present tense - ever. ;)