Holiday Brain

All I can say is “Whoops!” With everything that’s been going on I almost forgot my weekly post. “What’s been going on?” you ask. Well, for one, I’m going on two weeks of vacation starting Saturday. That in itself isn’t what is distracting me. It’s all the OTHER things I’m trying to get out of the way before I go. For example, I had Episode 8 of ‘Get Published’ to finish and get into the feed. Then I had a promo to write, record and mix. AND the podcast was nominated for a Parsec Award which means I needed to mix a 10-minute sample episode for the judges. And I’ve still got to record Episode 9 (I’m not expecting to […]

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Using Goals to Move Forward

Have you ever had one of those days/weeks/months when you simply don’t want to do something? Maybe you don’t want to go to work, or mow the lawn or paint the house. Maybe you don’t feel like doing your daily writing. You do? Yeah, me too. This has been one of those weeks for me, specifically in my writing. Actually, I should say in my writing-related activities (of which there are a growing number). Fortunately, I have a secret weapon that keeps me going. Yes, I know I gave away my secret weapon in the title of this post. That weapon, of course, is how I set goals for myself. In case you’re curious about the types of goals I […]

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Challenge Yourself through Contests

As a writer, I am always looking for a new way to improve my writing skills. I have done this by entering events like NanoWriMo and by doing things like my 30-in-30 short story self-challenge and I think I have attained a modicum of success doing them. Still, I need to keep pushing myself or I will fall back into my bad habits of watching television, playing online games and generally wasting time instead of writing. The problem is, I don’t always have the ambition to come up with something new to try on my own. That’s where writing contests come in. I have entered a writing contest in the past, specifically the “Write a First Chapter” contest put on […]

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Don’t just exercise your writing muscles

It became painfully apparent to me this week that I’ve been spending too much time exercising my writing muscles and not enough with the rest. I started playing softball and found that I have no stamina and I was practically crippled from throwing a ball and swinging a bat. That’s the first time that’s happened to me. I’m not sure what I expected. When I got laid off in October of last year I become a bigger computer potato than I was before. When I went back to work I didn’t restart my daily walks and I certainly wasn’t doing that at home. For that I have only myself to blame. Now that I really stop and think about it, […]

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