Hello World

"Hello World.  How've you been?  Good to see you my old friend."

Last night was one stop on Lady Antebellum's We Own the Night tour with Darius Rucker and Thompson Square and I must say that it was one of the best concerts that I have been to.  Music has always been a great outlet for me...just like writing.  That's why I write best by putting my iTunes library on shuffle and spending the night writing and listening to music.  Last night though was so amazing.  I love Thompson Square and it was great getting to see them, and Darius Rucker just blew me away (especially with his song, Southern State of Mind and his rendition of Hank Jr.'s "Family Tradition").  But the energy that Lady A had on stage was just incredible and lit up the entire sold-out arena.  And their song, "Hello World" was so inspiring to hear live.  

The weird thing was that I wasn't even going to the concert.  My friend and I had tried to buy tickets a month ago and we couldn't get seats.  This past week, I was listening to the radio at work, and they were giving away tickets to the 24th caller and you had to name the 6 hottest songs that they had just played and the artist who sang them.  I figured, what did I have to lose by calling in?  The first two times it was busy, but the third time, there was a pause, and then a ring, and then someone picked up on the other end.  After a lot of freaking out and jumping around the office, I named off the six songs and won a pair of tickets to the sold-out concert.  I've called countless times before for various concerts and had never won that it almost stopped me from calling this time, but I'm so glad I did.

There was a reason I was at the concert last night, a reason why I got to feel the energy from the stage through the whole crowd.  It's left me feeling motivated and inspired and alive.

"Hello World."

Thought for the Day

"I learned that you should feel when writing, not like Lord Byron on a mountain top, but like a child stringing beads in kindergarten--happy, absorbed and quietly putting one bead on after another."  Brenda Ueland

This is not specific to writing.  This quote can be applied to any job or career, and really, to any area of life.  I really don't have much to add to this.  I think it speaks for itself.  I will end with these few thoughts though:

Do what makes you happy.

Live your life doing things that you love.

I love writing.  There are times, yes, where it gets tedious and I just don't want to do it.  There are other times though, when I sit down at my computer and get so wrapped up in the story, so involved with the lives of my characters, I feel like I never want to leave their world, my world, the world that I created.

That's the great thing about being a writer.  Writers hold the power in their hand to make whole worlds and nothing can hold us back except the limits of our own imaginations.  We hold the power to take readers to new and exciting places and meet exotic characters that they just can't help but fall in love with.

I love the feeling I get when I become lost in a book that I'm reading...but when that book is the one that I'm writing, I have this hope that maybe someone else will feel the same way I do when they read it.  They'll fall right into it, right into every scene with my characters, living their story with them, as if it was their own.

So, maybe I did have more to say on this than I thought, but the main point I'm trying to make is be happy, and do things that keep you happy.  And if you're doing something you love, and you're just not happy with it, take a break.  Get away.  Take a road trip for a day and go up to that mountain top, or go stick your feet in the ocean.  Clear your head.  And then, just sit down and write.  Maybe it's not what you're supposed to be working on and maybe that deadline is looming awfully close.  But write for you.  Get lost in your writing all over again.  Remember why it used to make you happy.

Find your spark.  Lose yourself in your writing and find your happiness inside.

Megg

Thought for the Day

"I love deadlines.  I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by."  Douglas Adams

This one's for you.

You know who you are.

Mid-Year Check In

So it is now June in the glorious year of 2012.  This also happens to be my first post of the year...I get the feeling that I'm doing something wrong here...

The good news is I have been diligently writing, even though I haven't been keeping up with my posts on here.  The trick now is to merge my 27 documents (or so) into one.  Hopefully, once this happens and I help all these individual scenes fit into the my manuscript, my thoughts will be much more organized and I'll be able to clearly map out where I go from there (not that I'll follow it, but at least I'll have a guideline to throw out the window).

So here's to a fabulous 2012 (well the rest of it...the first half has been pretty fabulous already though), and I know the one thing that would make this year absolutely fantastic would be to finish my manuscript.  And I intend to do just that.

Megg

Thought for the Day

"Anyone can do any amount of work provided it isn't the work he is supposed to be doing at the moment."  Robert Benchley

No quote seemed to fit more perfectly than this one, seeing as how I am supposed to be working on my writing right now and not scouring the internet for quotes.  So, hopefully I will use this as motivation to get to work (as soon as I post this).  But Benchley is right: every task seems much easier as long as you're trying to get (in my case) twenty other things done at the time.  For example, today at work, I had all these great ideas for scenes in my book and couldn't wait to get home to start working.  Now that I'm in front of my computer though, I find myself procrastinating by surfing the internet...and watching tv...and checking twitter...and talking to my sister...you get the point.

Eventually though, there comes a time when we must finally get down to the work we are supposed to be doing, and that time for me is now.  And hopefully, it won't be another seven months before I update.

Megg

Thought for the Day

"Writing became such a process of discovery that I couldn't wait to get to work in the morning:  I wanted to know what I was going to say."  Sharon O'Brien

I spend hours brainstorming and mapping out what happens in each scene and chapter.  Sometimes though, I like to just sit down at my computer and type, not knowing what was going to happen, but just seeing where my characters end up going.  And most of the time, I find it easier to write those scenes, where I don't have a clear view of what direction I'm headed.  And sometimes when you do have everything mapped out, it doesn't always work out that way, but if you're not following any type of plan, you can't go wrong.  You can just lose yourself in the writing and see where it takes you.

Deadline is Soon!!

June will be here before I know it and I am diligently writing to meet my deadline.  I realize I have not been keeping up with posting my progress, but I have been in the zone and writing all I can.  I did stumble on a problem while writing, one that I'm still trying to work through.

There is a love triangle in my story, and when I first started writing and sketching out the ideas for the book, I was certain which character the leading lady would end up with in the end.  But now, as I delve deeper into the storyline, I'm no longer sure that that is the ending I want for her.

I discussed this with a friend of mine (the same one who is making sure I don't find a way to weasel out of my June deadline) and he had a simple solution--a coin toss.  I started to tell him that there was no way I was going to leave the ending of my book and the of my characters in the hands of a coin toss, but he told me that I wouldn't get my answer by seeing whether the coin landed on heads or tails.  I'd know my answer once I assigned heads and tails to the two leading men and flipped the coin, and while in the air, I would be hoping that it landed on heads (or tails...whichever one my heart truly wanted).  And I realized that as crazy as it was, it was also very smart.

So thanks to this wise piece of advice, I was able to figure out which direction I wanted to take my characters, and my writer's block quickly vanished.  So if you're trying to decide between two options, toss a coin into the air.  If you're not hoping that one side will land over the other, then see if you're disappointed with the result.  Hopefully you can find your answer as easily as I did.