Check out my editing blog too!

So, Hi readers! It's been a while, I know... I mean, since I've posted for anything besides IWSG. I am still working on inspiration here, and it's been dry recently. I apologize. I'm eternally hopeful that I will begin posting here more soon.

In the meantime, I wanted to invite you over to my editing blog at http://writingrefinery.blogspot.com. I write there almost as frequently as I do here (lol). But there I share writing tips, my experiences as an editor, and my deep and evergreen love for Harry Potter. If you think you can handle that, I'd love to see you there, too. And I could use some "followers". It feels a little lonely over there.

I'll still be writing here as regularly as ever, but I thought perhaps some of you might like to share with me over there, as well.

So stop by and say hi! I'd love to hear from you.

IWSG: Brainstorming my novel

It's time for Insecure Writer's Support Group, the most amazing bloghop you'll ever participate in as a writer. If you need to air your insecurities and find others who share them with you or have amazing, encouraging advice, then you NEED this group. So hop on over to Alex Cavanaugh's blog to learn more and sign up.

I got stuck. I was working on a project for Camp NaNo in July...one that I had half an outline for...and when I got through to the place where my outline ended, I sputtered to a stop. I'm usually a pantster, so this road-block was unprecedented. I spent a few bewildered days trying to get started again, worrying that I wasn't writing anything...

Then I had an idea. What if I spent a few nights brainstorming my novel? So I grabbed my colored sharpies and some blank paper and started scribbling. I wrote down things I already knew, things I'd already written about, and then found a few of the things I didn't know yet. And those led to things I hadn't written yet, but that I knew I wanted to. It was a GREAT experience...and a good reminder that not all Writing is about word count.

I haven't added any more recently to my manuscript, and probably another brainstorming session is due. But I'm looking forward to that now.

Insecure Writer's Support Group: Only you can know

Hi! It's time for the Insecure Writer's Support Group, created by Alex Cavanaugh. Seems to be the only blog post I can be reliably certain of writing. Well, that's ok. If you're an insecure writer, like me, and you're dying to find a group that will boost your spirits, this is your lucky day! Hop on over to Alex's blog and sign up, then start posting! We're happy to include you.

Feedback. Reassurance. That's what this group is all about.

Positive feedback is awesome. So is the reassurance that you're good at this... that someone wants to hear your story. That someone else cares the way you do about your characters.

But a lot of times you don't get that kind of encouragement until you're near the end of the project. So what do you do while you're in the middle? In the throes of stress and anxiety, wondering whether you're just a hack who can't even cobble together a basic paragraph...?

Me, I do a lot of avoiding, of hiding from my work and finding anything else to do to make me feel successful, confident, better about myself. On the one hand, that works, because I don't have to feel those horrible crushing feelings that the fear of failure causes in me. But on the other hand... there's still this novel sitting there... waiting to be written. Waiting for me to return to it.

At some point you have to make a decision. You can do this. It's your story. You have to tell it. Is it worth it in the end to go through the pain of self-doubt, to struggle with the fear of inadequacy? Only you can know. Only you can say. Your characters, your story... it's yours. And even if you find that the feedback is less than positive and the reassurance is thin at best, you're the only one who can tell it.

Working stuff out

I've been quiet for a while, I know. I'd offer a better excuse, but really the only reason is that I haven't taken time to sit down here and write anything. That includes creatively as well as blog-related. I hope that I will get back on the wagon, soon. Very soon.

In the meantime, I've been spending lots of time hunting my monsters in different ways... like this one: I ran Bay to Breakers yesterday!

Bay Bridge, Morning, San Francisco.

Don't know who this Jack was, but he was excited. I'm on the right.
Next to the bunny...

Friends! Getting ready to run!

I never thought I was a runner... never thought that one day I would run more than 7 miles and still have any energy at the end of it... Apparently that's only mental! Because after working toward it, training and making myself get out there, even when I was nervous and less than confident in myself, I succeeded!

No I wasn't the best. I didn't WIN the race, but I ran it. I finished it. I finished well. I'm hoping to translate some of the lessons I'm learning through running about myself and my will power to the other areas of my life that I love and care about (like my art and my writing).

I'll go into more detail on some of those lessons later... they'll be worth unpacking here, I think.

What do you challenge yourself to do? What puts you out of your comfort zone and teaches you something about yourself?