Organizing my time

I’ve made the decision to make March the month I finish writing the Prenup from Hell. To do that, I’ve taken myself off the active list for my editing job. It’s hard for me to shift from editing brain to writing brain, and since I never know when I’m going to get an editing assignment, this seemed like the most logical choice.

My goal’s to add another 15 to 20K words to the manuscript, and since I know how it ends, why Des and Nick are being put through the wringer, and who’s pulling their strings, I’ve really got no excuse not to finish it.

Can I do that in a month? Hell yeah. I’ve done NANOWRIMO several times. I’ll pound out the new stuff, and then before it goes up on my Patreon, I’ll edit/clean it up.

I can do this.

I have to do this.

Feeling rather blue

In case you didn’t know, I lost my mom 10 days before Christmas, and it’s still hitting me hard. This isn’t a case of not realizing how important someone was in my life when they are gone. I know she was important. We talked almost every day on various instant messengers over the years, and we’d call each other while sitting in waiting rooms or parking lots. I’d outgrown her being my anchor, but she was a major part of my foundation.

Our relationship was far from perfect. I loved her flaws and all, and she loved me. There were some dark spots along the way, but I haven’t spent a single moment wishing I’d talked to her about the things that hurt. There was no reason to with her or my father. Neither could change the past and dwelling on slights by people who are dead is no way to live your life. The past is the past. Water under the bridge. Whore at the river…Let it go.

Now I talk a good game about that, but I’m not a very forgiving person. My dad’s been gone 5 years (10 days after Christmas for him), and I was angry with him for years before he was gone and years after. It did neither of us any good. Mom and I vented about some of that along the way, but I finally let go of the mad a year or so ago. I have better things to do with my life.

So I wasn’t mad at my mom. She wasn’t perfect. Gods know I’m not. I loved her. I still do. But every now and then, I wake up in the morning and remember that she’s not going to be the first person I talk to. We always knew where each other was even though I live 1000 miles away. I guess in a way she was still an anchor, after all.

She taught me how to be strong. But I had to learn to be kind on my own. I still need to work on that from time to time, but I’d like to think I’m OK at it.

I miss you Mom.

Does it count?

as failure?

I attempted to migrate the site over to .org because I wanted a custom email address. I fought the panels, the passwords, and the endless pages of ‘tutorials’ that were ‘simple’, and this morning I said, “Fuck this!” I cancelled the new host and getting my money back because it just flat out takes up too much time.

This site is fine. I’m not finished with it, but I will be once I have a couple of days to work on it. Chapter 9 of Prenup needs to be written by Monday. I’m doing an edit that’s eating my brain, and by the time I got the .org to work, I’d hate it.

To be honest, I feel better already.

Hope you’re having a good Tuesday.

Reading, Writing, and Editing

Hope you noticed the Oxford comma in the title. I am a believer in the power of the properly placed comma. I’ve been a contract editor for Dreamspinner Press for almost 7 years now, and it’s been a learning experience. I really love doing it. Helping another writer polish their work might be my true calling. I do wish more people understood the difference between an editor and a proofreader, but that is well beyond my control. Needless to say–it’s not the same thing.

It’s made me a better writer too. Made me very much aware of my own bad habits like repetition and making too many assumptions that my reader knows what the hell I’m talking about. I can blame part of that on my being a research junkie. When I find something that interests me, I dig in. I watch all the documentaries. I read online. I read books. Hell, when I was writing Dead Man’s Hand, I went to the San Diego Maritime Museum to tour the Berkeley, which is the ferry Denver takes from San Francisco to Oakland after the Great San Francisco Earthquake.

But all that editing has made me a much slower and more critical reader. I used to be able to blast through a book a day, which also might be due to all the distractions of our age of technology, but I do think a lot of it is I’m unconsciously picking apart what I’m reading and don’t want to. I really want to just read a book. Slip into someone else’s world and escape, but instead I’m filling my head with what-ifs and how could this have been done better?

 

Over on Patreon

There are 8 chapters of the Prenup from Hell posted on my Patreon. Prenup from Hell is a love/hate story. It’s a cross between Constantine and Mr. & Mrs. Smith–only it’s two misters. One’s a lawyer the other’s a Food Network Star. One’s evil and the other’s a Demon. There’s adventure, violence, vicious villains, intrigue, and family drama with a healthy dose of humor thrown in.

I try to post 2 chapters a month that you can read for $1 a month pledge and other perks if you become a higher level Patron. My goal’s to get enough money to hire an editor and pay for the stock photos…I’ll need for a cover.

I might do my own cover. I’ve done them for other authors, but I will not do my own edit. That would be a horrible mistake!

The first chapter of the Prenup from Hell is free for anyone to read at this LINK.