Welcome back :)

Listening to: Whispers in the dark - Skillet

Reading: Create a family website

Mood: plotting



Something had been nagging at the back of my mind for the past week.
It wasn't a task that I had to get done asap, like arranging a time for my next driving lesson, or trying to contact our new property agent again, or trying to get through to immigration to get some answers on my pile of questions on how to go about changing my name. It wasn't a small task as such, but it had that same urgency behind it. It was something that I had to do. It had to be done. Needed to be done. There was no two-ways about it. Something important demanded my attention, and it was going to keep persisting like the cold rain we've been having the past few days.

I didn't know what exactly it was. I couldn't pinpoint it. All I knew was that it was going to start driving me stark raving mad if I didn't figure out what was bothering me so much. Was it because I haven't packed my hospital bag yet? Or could it be because we still don't have a name for monkey number three? Is it because I haven't set up a proper place for the baby upstairs? What if it's the idea of spending 3-5 days practically alone in the hospital - whatnot with me wanting to write horror again, I can already see the skinny, pale woman with black eyes and hair and a bloody gown standing in the corner of my hospital room, stretching her arm out toward me...

So I decided, you know what, I need to get to the bottom of whatever is bugging me. Even if I don't figure out what exactly it is, at least I know that writing something - anything - is going to help alleviate this unsettling feeling like there's something I absolutely have to do.

I took my monkey-girl to kindy yesterday - and got lots of praise for my storyboard that I 'quickly' threw out on paper to help her transition from kindy back home. I'd been planning on stomping the town flat to find a place that will lamenate the storyboard for an affordable price, but the people at kindy were kind enough to copy it and lamenate it for me. This saved me some serious time, as you can imagine I'm probably at the 70kg mark by now and I waddle like a penguin more than I actually walk like a human being.

I went to Whitcoulls in the mall, ended up buying a 240 page writing book and a pen (which turns out to be orange!), grabbed some lunch and sat down at the foodcourt. I keep telling myself that these $10 shopping spurts I have will be all worth while when I finish my MS and get some reward for my hard work, because trust me, every page is used to full capacity.

I'd been planning on starting on a 'new' book, a YA paranormal romance novel, which is why I bought the blank book. With 'new', I mean that it occurs in an already existing fictional world with established fictional characters that I've been writing in and with since 1996, so everything is pretty much laid out and has been written in some shape or form before. Aside from sharing some of the stories with my friends when I was still in primary school, I've never again shown this specific 'series' to anyone. I never thought of getting it published until recently, because it is my world and my characters, for my reading and writing pleasure, and mine alone. I'm vague on the details because I'll be blogging about it when I start writing it. And it's not the story I ended up writing either.

Nope, not at all. I discovered that I'd brought another handwritten story with me in my bag. I wrote it from start to finish a very long time ago, and unfortunately lost it all (actually, thinking about it, it might be on one of my floppy disks. But who uses those these days?) Lucky for me, I'd written the prologue by hand. Tried to rewrite the prologue last year. So I thought, hmmm, time to procrastinate!

I opened the book and read the very first draft. Then I moved on to the second. I was barely half-way through it when a door whipped open in my head and a very loud exclamation of '&%#@ thank the gods you finally heard me, I was starting to worry you'd gone deaf!' was made. Or, that's what I'd imagine my muse would have been saying if it had an actual voice.  Before I knew it, I was writing the third draft, and I got two whole pages of it done! This would have been impossible if it wasn't for my mil who had offered to stay at home with my monkey-boy - thank you mom! :) - because I'm a very slow writer. I think a snail could move faster than I write. That detail aside, I got two pages done!

And the best thing of all is that I don't have that nagging feeling anymore.
I've got something better now. The drive to write - and actually finish what I start. Which is why, although I wrote a bit on this other novel of mine yesterday, I'm going to focus my energy on writing this YA paranormal romance that's been brewing for a decade.

All I need now is a writing buddy to motivate me and crit me as I go.
Any takers? :)