Adventures In Scouting

I survived the week with my Scout Troop at Canadian Jamboree. That involved living in a tent for seven days, cooking and eating whatever food the jamboree organizers saw fit to provide and keep sixteen scouts in line.

It was not my day job but it also wasn’t a holiday.

The good news is, when we left for home, everybody said they had various amounts of fun and everyone returned mostly intact. No major incidents or injuries with my crew for which I am grateful.

I also returned home with lots of new fodder for stories. Specifically, how kids interact with each other. I will probably start using it when the nightmares stop. 😉

The real positive I took away from an author’s perspective is, my book, Mik Murdoch, Boy Superhero, is a hit. I read a little each night, honing my reading out loud skills, to a captivated audience. Note, I didn’t say captive audience. They actually started asking me if I would read more just before breakfast of any given day (for the evening before bed).

(Just as an aside, I used those skills for my first official library reading the day jamboree ended. I’m told that people enjoyed it. I know I did.)

As I was reading the story, I had the chance to realize just how far my writing has come. I’m not saying the book is poorly written. Far from it. I still think it’s great. I just know that my ability to tell a story has gotten even better since it came out. For someone hoping to be writing and get published for the next several years, that is very good news.

And now I’m on the actual vacation. The one where I’m supposed to relax. In the first two days I’ve written just over 6,000 words on Mik Murdoch and the Power Within. Are they good words? I think so. I could have written twenty thousand bad ones if I hadn’t been paying attention. My goal is to have the first draft done by vacation end. I’m going to keep pushing to hit that goal.