Have Pen; Have Paper–Have Words!

Warm muggy days make me want to stay inside…  especially now that we have the air conditioners set up in the house.  I find this slightly ironic, given that my main story world (Acaria) is on a watery moon that more closely resembles the archipelagos of the Pacific than my own continental Upstate New York existence.

Some might say that I’m missing out on the glories of summer.  For me, the glory of summer is the nights…  I love being able to get up at any hour and feel comfortable enough to go out on the deck and gaze at the stars.  The cats usually come to visit when I do; the fireflies are more often than not flickering away in the yard, and the songs of the crickets and peepers…

That is heaven on earth, IMHO.

Another thing that tends to happen in the summer and, despite all my suspicions to the contrary, has yet again this year is that I stop using my computer as much as usual.  I tend to hermitize or something similar, focusing less on the wonderful people out in the ethers of online life. and more on the wonderful people next to me or just a phone call away…  and especially those wonderful people swimming around in my head.

I tend to get a lot of actual writing done in the summer.  The desire to not run a computer (and add to the heat in the house that the AC must fight) makes me rely more and more on my pens and notebooks.  And there is something delightfully lazy about being away from my desk chair, sprawled out on a bed with a fan…  No music except birds and the thrumb, thrumb of the motors.

I’m having a great time writing, but I am not having a great time being online…  in fact I’m getting worse and worse at it.

This too will change as the seasons do.

But, that’s the state of things here for my newest ROW80 check-in.  I’m writing (both a fanfic for my favorite 80’s cartoon Jayce and the Wheeled Warriors and a piece for my regular writing).  I’ve been reading (am not doing as well with my Bookmark Break Challenge books…instead of finishing older books, I keep picking up and starting new ones).  And I have been having a real trial of a time with my laptop when it comes to commenting on people’s blog posts.  So it is likely I did look at your blogs last Thursday (I did not look at many of the Sunday posts, sorry) and never commented.  I can’t seem to even get my “Likes” to be recognized lately…at least not on the laptop.

I’ll keep working on it as I may, but not for a few days.  Until Monday I’m completely off the web for family coming over.  Yes, I could fit the time in, but I would rather not.  This is special both for my son and his cousins as they come to spend some time with us… so, I bid you all adieu.

I hope you are all enjoying your summer too!  Have the best opening theme song for a cartoon ever (imho):

Opening Credits: Jayce and the Wheeled Warriors

Photo credits:

• Fireflies in the woods near Nuremberg, Germany, exposure time 30 seconds (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
• den (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Nine Weeks and More

Ever feel like time was running away from you?

Welcome to my summer.

Running, running…  always running.  At least the headlong flight seems to have stopped.

Time never runs on me–well, not the crazed flight of a mouse with cat in tow.  For me, Time does that taunting dance of the cat as it tries to lead you to the food dish, but twists back just in time to twine under your feet and make you land solidly the butt.

Wish there was a chair there…  I’d be halfway to BICHOK.

I have actually been doing the BICHOK thing  all along (though with less keyboard and more pen and paper).   I haven’t been online much lately.  Intentionally.  After the two WriMos that I pulled out of June, I needed to take a break and reassess (and rediscover the rest of my house and computer).  I also needed to come to terms with some of the discoveries I made during that time about my writing and my own needs.

And the truth is, while I need to maintain my social networks, I need to also ditch my social networks even further.

Does that make any sense?

It’s not rocket science.  I simply need to refocus my energies less on the next cute image on Facebook or Twitter or Youtube video or…  I need to reward myself with those social media treats.

And I need to find a way to do that without having 163 notifications in my Facebook.  Why do all you people out there have to be so interesting and so much fun?

To quote the meme… “Damn you, Internet!”

The virtue of all of this stuff at my fingertips?  My ADHD has met its match.  While the whole “plug me in” concept that some have embraced of using technology to augment humanity, I do confess to a desire to “see more, do more, discover more, etc.” than my “Meat Existence” (what some call Real Life, a place that often seems to be no more or less real than the virtual worlds that I write about in my fiction) will ever allow.  And yet,  the essence of Me that exists in the body I use to interact with the world around me (even the virtual worlds of the computer and social networks) is too vain and self-important to simply become a Provider and start using quatloos for the remainder of my existence.

And so, I need to actually restrain myself here, so that I can fully immerse myself into the “oh so very important work” of making more virtual worlds to escape into.  😉

Which, of course, leads into the title and the ROW80 which is it based off of….

This is Round 3 of 2012, and I am late.  Not just a day late, or even a few days late…  Round 3 (or ROWnd 3 as some ROWers like to say) actually started on July 3.  Notice the date of this post however….

Not even close.

I didn’t even write up a list of goals for this ROWnd yet.

And you know what?  I’m perfectly happy with that.  I needed to take some “Me Time” (even if, in our house “Me Time” is really more “Us Time”) where I could assess my longer term goals and progress with everything I’ve learned in the last two ROWnds.  I needed a break too; the 10 day pause between ROWnds seems never long enough to actually feel like a break, especially this last time.  Maybe it was the impeding holiday…  Maybe it was catching up after the WriMos…  But I needed a bit more time off than the normal break and took it.

And as a result of all of this, now I know my goals need to be more “manageable” for a time.  I have a lot going on this ROWnd that isn’t writing related, and a lot of it has fallen toward a back burner so far because I wanted to bask in the glow of the success I felt at the end of the first ROWnd.

ROWnd 3 Goals:

• write every day — test mile of 300 words
• finish beta reads in progress
• WriMo “novels” — finish working on them
• READ!!!  I have three reading challenges to work on
• (maybe) participate on the August CampNaNoWriMo

And for my progress?  I’m short today on my test mile, but there is time to finish it.  I also need to gather my notes for one of my beta reads, but haven’t started the other.  I did read today.  I have not done much with either WriMo piece since June ended, but I did open the first one a bit yesterday.

It’s not much, but it’s a start.  And I can work with that.