Proud Of My Daughter's Latest Accomplishment

My daughter Mieke won first place for June in Writing.com's monthly "What a Character" contest. She enters this contest regularly because it is the premier contest on that site. It is a challenge and the competition is always excellent. She previously finished second in this same contest on two other occasions. This is her first win.

This month's prompt was: Write a story about a character whose best friend is something other than another human being. It can be a pet, robot, inanimate object, imaginary friend, or anything else you can come up with!

Her is the link to her winning entry: http://p15.writing.com/main/view_item/item_id/2086966-Rhakanirs-Raven . It is restricted to writing.com members.

As a writer and her father, I'm especially proud of her writing accomplishments. She is hoping to catch on at some point with one of the bigger more prestigious publishing houses. I think she has the talent and the work ethic to achieve that someday.

Congratulations Mieke!

Writing Taking a Backseat

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I'm sure this is already obvious to my readers, but it is worth an explanation at this point. This year has since January already, amped up pressure on the family finances. I'm spending a great deal of time trying to get things on a solid footing. Every time I think we've made progress something else happens to make it worse again. I want to write a lot but too much of my focus is on other issues.

Will it get better? I'm not even sure. So much is up in the air at this point. I'm hoping that my hours at work increase back up to sustainable levels or a workable alternative can be found. If there was a stable nearby alternative I'd be after it in a heartbeat.

Something else has come up which will also eat into my writing time. Apparently there is a nearby house that is going to be demolished to make way for a new one. I may be given access to all the materials from the old house. That would be awesome but a lot of work and I'm not sure I have the tools to make it all happen. This would give me everything I need to build a real wood shop. It would also allow me to make extensive additions/renovations to our existing abode. There might even be material for a few other things. We came to New Brunswick to start a woodworking business before being derailed and if everything goes right this might put us close to back on track. I'd have a hard time passing that opportunity up even if it cost me a lot of writing time.

I've once again shifted my writing focus as well. I'm more interested in working on writing that will potentially give me some kind of financial return. I am working on preparing “Rat in the Shadows” for the next step. I made significant progress during the week and expect to continue that work.

I hope to break through all these distractions before the end of June. Something has to give. What I'm dealing with right now can't last. This status quo is not sustainable.

Back On Track

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My writing efforts had a rough month in April. I've decided to work at it with a different approach. There were aspects of the task that were getting shunted aside – like editing. What was getting me stuck the worst though was my at times one track mind. I got my mind on things that were not appropriate to share publicly and had trouble shifting to something else.

Without going into detail, I've established a private daily journal where I will not only write things that I don't feel I can safely share but also track my progress. There are other things like review work and editing that I've made part of my schedule. In theory the world may hear less from me on a daily basis but I will be accomplishing more. I'll still be doing blog posts and articles but it will be different. Busy at work already.

Several of my sites are approaching milestones. Pico's Cycling – Tales of the Road recently surpassed 19,000 views all time. Not sure when I can get that restarted. At least I have a new chain for the bike and will soon be riding again. Close to one hundred entries on my writing practice blog and close to 5,000 views there. Looking forward to seeing those going past those marks.

The Current Plan

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My article/blogpost/story per day came crashing to an end about two and half three weeks ago. Part of me feels bad about it, but another part of me realizes that the approach was imperfect.  I've spent quite a bit of time rethinking how I want to proceed from here. Kudos to me for keeping it up for three straight months.

Reasons that it wasn't working are fairly straightforward. I have a one track mind and there were a few thing dominating my thoughts that I couldn't publicly write about. Generally I don't discuss employment problems or confidential issues with the whole world. I'll leave it at that because I don't want to give any additions clues as to what I'm referring to.

New plan isn't fully developed yet. I want to base it on a minimum daily word count but it can't just that without dooming it all to failure. There will be days when circumstances will not allow me to write at all. Something along the lines of 4000 words per week with an understood minimum of five hundred words per day. Getting ahead on the count would allow me the occasional missed day. To overcome the one track mind, I intend to establish a private journal where I have the freedom to write some of those things. Should have a workable plan within the week.

In the meantime, I haven't been just spinning my wheels doing nothing the past couple weeks. I have learned how to create publishable ebooks from scratch without spending a dime.  I will be adding that skill to my freelancing website. I have access to additional tools for that purpose so I'm still learning. I do have the capability right now to load a professional looking ebook onto the Amazon site. We'll see where that leads me.

Quickie Update

Just writing something quick before starting my shift at work today. Whole family is feeling under the weather including your's truly. Brandon wanted to come to work even though he isn't sure he'll make it through his shift. I don't know if I feel better or worse than he does. If he hadn't decided to try and tough it out, I'm not sure I would have come in myself.

Twitter campaign has been paused because I debate its effectiveness. I think the strategy needs some tweaks. My intention is to make some improvements, set things up so the family can send the tweets even when I'm doing other things. The work load is too much for me for what I'm getting back out of it. It'll be back better than ever.

I'm having a tough month with writing.  Still at minus one for the month but on the plus side for the year. Things are better than they were and there is hope that I'll be on the plus side for the month again.

Hopefully in a few days everyone will be healthy again and I'll be feeling more positive. Nicer weather would sure make a difference. It's been really cold or really wet or both.

Inspiration will come again and then I'll have dozens of stories and articles to work on.