My thanks. :)

So after having a pretty horrible day today, I checked my WordPress to catch up with some of the posts that I’ve missed in the past…month? Yeah, about that long and I saw that I had a comment on my blog nominating me for the “Very Inspiring Blogger” award from this blog: Awards/Nominations. I honestly had no idea that people actually read my blog on a regular basis and genuinely look forward to my posts. Which, in hindsight, makes me feel really bad because it’s been so long since I’ve updated. Unfortunately, circumstances are getting in the way that make it difficult for me to update on a regular basis. But I guess that’s enough of the pity party. This blog says I have to post 7 things about myself, so I guess I’ll start there. I guess this will also end up being a review of what you missed this month.

1. I found out in February that my fiancee and I are expecting another baby. I’m 12 weeks along today.
2. My fiancee proposed to me on March 13.
3. I started school early in March. It actually started on February 27, but school was on Winter Break, so I didn’t have to start classes until early on in March.
4. One thing that my readers probably already know is that I’m 24 years old and I have a 5 year old daughter.
5. I’m writing a book where I retell stories of common “Myths” and Gods. Although I haven’t worked on it all month due to circumstances.6. I’m nearly finished with the Winter semester of school. I’ll be attending the summer semester, but I’ll be taking Fall and Winter of 2015 off to take care of my baby. Maybe Summer 2015 as well, but I’m still not sure on that.
7. My fiancee and I are currently saving to move into our own apartment.

Next the rules say I have to nominate bloggers who inspire me, but that is actually hard for me to do. You see, although I follow a lot of bloggers, the only ones I read on a regular basis are:

1. Opinionated Man at http://www.http://aopinionatedman.com/ and
2. Kelz Belz at http://kelzbelzphotography.wordpress.com/

Honestly, I wish I could nominate more, but I don’t really do a lot of reading on here. I mostly spend my time posting when I am on WordPress.

Hurray circumstances!

Actually, not really hurray. My roommate is refusing to let my daughter use her computer (even though she never even bothers to use her computer)  anymore. So until I can get my daughter into daycare or something, I have to hand my computer over to my daughter to keep her occupied. My roommate turned off her cable so cartoons are out of the question unless I use YouTube or something. So book updates and blog posts are going to end up becoming few and far between.

Do I need another new project? No. But I’ll deal with it.

So on a website I go to, I found a Paying Market advertisement for the Indie Book Awards. This is something that I found out about in January, and the 2014 awards were ending February 13, 2014. I decided that there was no way I could come up with an entry for it with just over a month left in the contest, so I decided to wait it out until the website posted their updated information for 2015. I checked the website today and they finally have their 2015 information up. As I was going through it, I noticed that the contest requires you to pay a $75 fee while calling themselves not-for-profit, so I’m iffy about whether or not I’m actually going to enter. I’ve been doing my research and I still haven’t found anything that tells me whether or not the contest is legitimate. I’m not likely going to actually enter the contest and pay the fee until I know for sure that it’s a legitimate risk. But I still plan on writing the book for it just in case. So we’ll see I guess.

Book Update!

I met my chapter goal for the month today. It was exhausting and took me 8+ hours, but I did it. I’m up to the mid-point in my book where I just don’t even want to look at the thing anymore, so I’m going to scrap my 5 character goal. I think I’ll leave the character chart for my break between the first draft and the second. I’m still trying to decide how long that break should be, though, to be honest. What do you guys suggest for the downtime between drafts?

Taking a break for a few days.

I’ll be taking a break from my book for a few days. I finished Chapter 5 yesterday and I have 11 days to get Chapter 6 done, which shouldn’t be too difficult. I think I can afford a few days off.

Made an update! And some reader interaction, please!

I mostly played Sims today. I thought I was ready to start my book, but I really wasn’t. I did sit my butt down though earlier and I was determined to get SOMETHING written up. I felt my story was moving too slowly, so I made the decision to add an excerpt that I had written out previously to my Chapter 5 file. I’m still not sure if it’s a good idea to add it right now, but since it’s only draft 1, I don’t see it as too big of a deal. But chapter 5 is finally finished with 5,505 words in the file. Which means I only need to write one more chapter to meet my goal fro February. I can probably safely take things slower from now on, but I’m not sure on that. I’m only 4,025 words away from meeting my goal of 30,000 words for the month and chances are I’ll be doing more than just that, especially if I finish chapter 6 in time to write the bonus chapter for the month.

Now I am, however, having a big problem with the book. I have to age my main character up over the course of 4 years in this book and obviously I’m not going to be able to write day-by-day events unless they’re important to the story overall. The problem is, so much can happen over the course of one year, not to mention 4. But I can’t even think of one major thing to write about. I’ve already done a move, a family death, making friends, I’ve had a few school scenes, but my dreamscapes won’t be coming in for 2 years from where I’m at now. How do I fill n two years? If you have any ideas, I would greatly appreciate them! My main character starts out as 5 in the book, and is 9 by the end. My dreamscapes don’t come up until she’s 7, and I kind of know where I’m going from there, but it’s the filling in of those two years that I’m kind of stuck on.

A late update.

I really had to think hard about whether or not I was going to post an update today because there was really nothing for me to say unless I wanted to go into personal details and I really didn’t. But in a nutshell, my horrible day from yesterday carried over into today. I have never had such a horrible Valentine’s Day in my entire life and it affected me more than I thought. To the point where not even writing would help me escape how I was feeling. So once again I didn’t get anything done with my book. I’m feeling a little bit better now though so hopefully I can get something done tomorrow.

Long story short.

I didn’t get anything done in regard to my story at all today. I spent the day reinstalling sims to my computer and moping around because my boyfriend was gone all day. :p

Afternoon Update

I finished chapter 4 last night at 5,077 words. This morning when I woke up, I started chapter 5 and I’m 620 words into it, but I had to take a break to do some things. I’m glad things are finally moving forward. My goal for the end of February is 6 chapters and I’m pushing forward!

I haven’t posted anything? *gasp*

No, really though. My day started out pretty rotten and just kind of got worse as it went on. It wasn’t until a few hours ago that I finally got enough peace to sit down and stare at my word document for chapter 4 and try not to bash my head against my laptop. But once I started typing, it just kind of flowed. So that was a relief because I haven’t made any progress in Chapter 4 since I started it a couple of days ago. Now I’m just 339 words away from finishing my goal of 5,000 words per chapter. There might be hop for me to finish 6 chapters this month after all. As for my Character Chart…that’s still on the fence, unfortunately. I would love to be able to work out my character chart before finishing my first draft, but frankly, I just don’t think it’s going to work out like that if I want to finish this thing in a timely manner. I started it in may last year; it should already be done by now. But you know how it goes: life gets in the way and such. It’s actually very upsetting to me. Especially since I have such high hopes for this book. So off I go, attempting to catch up on 9 months of work. Here goes everything, I guess.