The Tortured Quill

My time has been full of a lot going on, looking at the future and trying to figure out where it should go, and believing that I've found a lot of answers.

Some things are looking good, some are threatening to come crashing down around me.

Parents are hanging on, although not great at times.
Son situation has not changed, and judging from someone who still has contact with him, neither has he.
Our granddaughter is about to arrive any day.
Of course, hubby's trying to get sick.
It's snowing again...and I need to walk in it this morning, so I pray it's not slick also.
Business wise, there's forward movement in various areas.

But one area threatens to come crashing down.  And I'm sitting here saying "oh, XXit, not again."  If it does...I don't know what I'll do. 

But I'm going to concentrate my areas on the areas not threatened at the moment and hope for better things elsewhere.  Pray for others.  Cause it seems that the world's gone nuts with disaster, freak accidents, and serious illnesses right now.  For a small church our prayer ministry has been quite busy lately.

I am thankful I became involved in Second Life.  Turning out to be a wonderful experience and I've opened my own gallery in it, besides moving my studio and library onto Eder Gira.  Maybe I can't have a wonderful writing location where I am now, but at least I can get it through association with my avatar in SL.

And if LJ keeps up with these pop up ads, which I absolutely hate.  I'm leaving LJ.  How rude...

How to train your man. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PJWnBxbN1dg


See the 8 newest stallions arrive at the Spanish Riding School in Vienna

http://www.upc.at/upclive/news/videonews/?entryId=5820323

Son has broken himself away from us for good now.  We, of course, stood by all the things we did over the past 14 months to help him without apologizing and told him that he's welcome to reestablish the family connection anytime he's ready.  And that we'll continue to pray for him.

In the meantime, we're letting him deal with whatever he needs to and getting on with our lives. 

Beyond knowing that our granddaughter, Sonya, will be born within the next few weeks, we're pretty much lost.  We have tentatively planned for me to go home around April/May to access the family situation there.

Even though I'm in the start up process of a publishing situation with 8 other writers, I'm also way behind with other things.  Trying to fight the life 'blahs' and dealing with the headaches with other issues again are proving a bit overwhelming to me.

I have reconnected with my old gaming buddies in Second Life again.  They've built wonderful Uru/Myst sims to keep the community alive with.  Inanna's taken up a house next to mine on Eder Gira so we get to have our fireside chats once again.  Dances are ongoing three to four times a week in the cavern where I get to see people I haven't seen since the deep D'ni cavern closed.

I've gotten as far as learning how to have the bookcase open to allow a visitor to grab a notecard.  So far, I have a story and poem in my house for people to grab.  I want to do a Uru Memory gallery.  Anxious to set that up,but that involves renting land and I'm only allowing myself a meager expense of my affiliate sales.  Have to wait until the first to start that.

I also joined a virtual writers group in SL.  They meet various times a week for writing sprints and moments.  I hope to get into some of those soon too.  SL is good for me, it's helping me deal with real life situations better, but it's also bad.  It's so inspiring to see the creations that I get new story ideas whenever I visit.  More than I can write!  LOL

Along with the weather, there's issues I don't mention online - or to many of my friends - that I'm dealing with.  It's caused serious delays in my work, online and offline.  Nothing I can't get past. 

Copywriting is still slow...because of marketing and business closings and start up clients postponing their plans due to their own personal reasons.  I'm beginning to market it to a few areas I've chosen.  And I'm going to join a mentoring program later in the month that sounds geared towards what I need...with advanced copywriters that I've been following for about four years now.  A golden opportunity for me.

Hubby and I need change to happen this year.  We need to move out of this house within the next few months, a new car, pay taxes (probably, sigh), and make drastic improvements to our lives.  It's crucial now.  To accomplish the things we need to do, I need to go into full time income with my copywriting.  It means filling up more slots than I made available for copywriting jobs, and working to complete my guide series before April.  After that, I'll only have time for the specials and updates for that website.  I thought I'd take time off from it, but interest has increased.  Better to finish it and let it work than let it go at this point.

The weather has killed my enthusiasm, but I'm slowly regaining it.  I dropped off from all social sites, except for a few, and haven't participated as I should.  That's changing now.  I also became more involved in Second Life.  Got an apartment there that I set up as a work room now.  When I can't get the direct geographic inspiration I need, it works for me to take an avvie into a game and sit it in a place that pleases me.  I get secondary geographical inspiration that way.  It works.  And I'm gaining momentum ever since I set it up.

Today, the sun came out.  Even though the drastic cold is supposed to stay, if the sunshine remains and does its job, I'll be able to keep the car an afternoon or two in the week and gain momentum by actually getting out again.  Might be awhile before I can get back to my daily walks, but I'll gladly take what little bit I can get!

Need to write my son.  I haven't visited for over a week and haven't written him.  Got into a foul mood of wanting to chew him out.  Still going to do it, but I think I'm finally to a place where I can manage to do so in a more dignified manner.  Just fed up with the whole situation and wish he'd wise up before his life really is ruined.  He doesn't have the luxury of being stupid for awhile longer.

I can't say I've made much progress in the last week.  Not that it was expected because of Christmas...but still.

Considering we're in the 2009 Christmas Blizzard area and were snowed in for four days, I should have loads of stuff to report.  Sadly, motivation was hard to come by.  We got to see our daughter's family for Christmas Eve and then it was just hubby, me and the cat for the rest of the time.  What I did accomplish was organizing the house a bit to promote a more active lifestyle.

So, I have been sketching more.  Mainly quick sketches to get my eyes, brain and hands working together again.  And to get into people again.  It's been many years since I've sketched people.  I've done a few horse sketches and one profile of Aneya - an important secondary character in the South Reach series.  I want to paint this weekend too so I hope to have that area set up and ready to go this week.  

This whole process involves more rearranging than I expected.  Because the granddaughter is now a toddler who's into everything, so the areas either have to be away from her or set up so they are toddler safe.  Most of my sketching storage is up high, but the sketching is easily done in the family area.  The painting area will be upstairs where she doesn't go.

We survived being snowed in, with only a small amount of cabin fever.  My father is doing better, thank God.  Everyone seems to have been safe this season.  There was one tragedy - a church friend's father died on Christmas Eve.  That touched home.

We haven't had a visit with son this week yet.  I plan on going tomorrow.  But the furnace is causing me to have severe sinus headaches and I'm still not sure it's not turning into a head cold.  I won't go if it does.  A friend of his is on standby to go with me if I do.  Hubby was way too exhausted after dealing with everything the power outage from the storm left at work on Monday to go see him.  Not sure the roads to him were that great yet anyways. 

And since last posting, we did find out that while the one county is done, it's not over.   We found out there's more coming from that one.  County Attorney wants books cleaned up so they need to find someone to pin crap on...at least that's what it sounds like - and what's normal. 

Writing is on going, although not as well as it should.  I did end up with a whole new storyline to work on though.  Completely planned out from start to finish. 

The copywriting is slow.  Some spots were filled and then opened up for this next year.  I see more of that happening, so I'm pushing the marketing to fill as many spots as I can.  This Christmas season will cause many business owners to close their doors.  Many already have made the announcements...hence the dropped jobs. 

Magazines are going...preparing official notices and schedule plans for the website and emailing the contributors.  There will be improvements through 2010...including taking them into virtual world and into new media.  Exciting.  And I still have a lot to learn between now and March when I want to start this.

I'm trying to organize an end of the year message to ring in the new year.  An account of things done, things lost, things gained and reasons to still be thankful.  Plus a Merry Christmas message to my website subscribers.

But first, I thought I'd catch up here on this week...

Last week ended with mixed feelings...one step in son's situation was settled, and the granddaughter turned one.  Hubby's work week was one of the worse...mine was okay, but still not as fulfilled as I needed.  And I found out that my father's not doing well.

Then this week started off with a loud Ka-boom!!  Hubby's work week stress continued yesterday.  I had to put my Sable down.  And we find out there's more to the son situation...sure that it'll continue for another six months at least.  And we find out that we're probably weathered in for most of this week, due to incredible weather conditions on top of what we already have.  But my father's shown a little improvement.

And to top it off, this weekend, I met with a friend.  Briefly.  Said friend's reaction/action bothers me and I'm worried.  Worried about friend...worried about the friendship situation.  It's something that I cannot explore further until at least next week due to holiday time circumstances.  Praying my friend is all right.  

Of course, it doesn't help that this weather is encouraging a cold virus to settle in on us.  I've supplied us with green tea, apple juice and cranberry juice to last through the oncoming storm.  It's not here yet, but it's sure getting dreary outside.  We're in a blizzard watch and the statement says "as expected, the final blast of winter for 2009 will bring ice..snow...high winds...and extremely dangerous winter weather"... Yay!

Pray for those traveling, that they get out before it starts and that if they cannot, they are safe. 

Pray for my son's situation. 

Pray for my father.

I miss my doggie...

I’m sitting here watching Ghost Hunters, with the cat, Diva, on top of the chair. Her front paw is resting on my shoulder, her back paw resting on the other shoulder, and she’s snoring away in my ear. She’s actually pretty noisy. With the snoring cat and chainsawing husband, it’s no wonder I’ve started snoring. I’ve been trained to snore without even knowing it.

Snoring has made me think of a few things to add to my list of items often forgotten about in fiction. I don’t have people snoring very often. In fact, I don’t often have someone awake while others are sleeping. I did in my rpg novel last year a few times, I think. Never referred to snoring, but the steady breathing instead. I have never put into the fiction about the cat, or any animal, snoring. That’s something I’m going to start thinking about. In particular, I think Diva will appear in my fiction as a snoring cat. She may inspire me to have the big guardian cat in PFS sleep and snore at one point.

Working this next week on fiction more. So far this month my days have been full of snow, cold, shopping, marketing, more marketing, more snow, and more cold. We have limited funds for the shopping this year, but the sales are so good that the gift buying is going well. Our tree is loaded with gifts under the tree. My daughter shakes her head at me because all but four of them are for the granddaughter. And I warned her that I may not be done yet. LOL I’ve met and exceeded my quota for December for submissions out. I might add a few more before the month is out.

We’ve also got our self-publishing group site up at http://www.sidhepress.com It’s not a publisher, rather a portal for self-published works. Sharon’s got her section started with a great anthology and a novella - both of which I’ve read. Excellent stories. My favorite is The Piper. I highly recommend it for Christmas gifts.

I’ve got a bunch of poems and stories that I’ve retired. I’m going to present them as an anthology at Sidhe Press, along with a novella, and my reports/guides between now and February. We invite others to contact us if they have self published works. The author takes care of all sales and sales sites. Sidhe Press just directs people to the sales pages.  Sidhe Press is really more of a group for self-publishers...

And yes, I’m still working on the edits for TKQ so I can send it out next month. Still have to decide where though. The publisher I chose to try is owned by Harlequin…and since Harlequin published books are being excluded by many organizations, I need to find another.

www.sidhepress.com

We're getting that snow. 7-16 inches between last night and tonight. Heavy snow and blowing snow both. Hubby went to work with friend in their truck. Betting they'll quit for the day at lunch. Hopefully before the wind kicks in to cut visibility further. That's the real problem here. Where we are is so flat and open, there's nothing that stops the blowing snow. I did read yesterday that out west of us had 15 snow drifts.

I'm going to use part of my day looking at wordpress designs. I think I should start one for TKQ and rest of the South Reach series. I like to keep this one "a little bit of everything" blog, so I need a more targeted one for the upcoming website.

Also, trying to determine what I need to charge some people. I offer my services to creative professionals, but I'm getting some hobby writers talking to me. These are people who write something for personal reasons only and not to be professional. Like a book of poems and stories for family gifts, book of memoir stories for sharing with family and friends only, compiling a book just to have a copy for themselves, etc.

One I'm working on now is a poem/picture book for a friend. She's down on her luck and wants this as Christmas gifts to her children. She recently helped me out on something, so I'm not charging her anything. I will get to use her as reference though. But a few others have said something to me too and it presents a problem for me to figure out.

I'd compile and prepare the manuscript for printing, and I give them consultation on how and where to have their books done. Even can see where I'd set it up for them on Lulu.com because some talking to me are very computer illiterate.

I can't charge professional manuscript preparation rates to these individuals because of the nature of situation, and that's not what they're buying. What they're buying is more along the lines of desktop marketing. Gotta sit down with the amount of worktime a project takes and prices in desktop marketing area to see what I'd have to charge.

We're in the system that's moving through the Great Plains this week. Yesterday and last night, we got around 2-3 inches, and we're in a rest period. In a few hours the next storm's supposed to hit. Hard and nasty. Hard is the amount of snowfall with the major cold. Nasty is the up to 40 mph winds that will accompany it, and how it's supposed to last over 24 hours. And followed by more extreme cold.

So, yes, we're snowed in. Means days off tomorrow for school folk and some working people. Not me. When it snows, the words continue. Unless power gets cut, internet is working and I continue the marketing online.

But that's all right because I love what I do.

Today, I did some great things:

• I compiled helpful materials for a writer stuck on where to go with his novel.
• I started working on a new headline and lead for a nutritional sales letter.
• I figured out a scene where the character needed more attention drawn to him and his goals.
• And I've collected 8 more leads.
• Oh, and can't forget that I've added posts to four blogs, along with social site work.

In the midst of holiday mayhem, I'm doing a revision pass to TKQ to humanize my villain more. It was scheduled for December and I'm right on schedule. Yay!

Also, I've scheduled two submissions for this month. Looks like we're snowed in. I may get more than the two done.

Blogging and promotion is today's topic at #writechat on Twitter. I have a six week plan for my business that starts Monday. Blogging is part of that plan. Have to really determine what the true purpose of all my blogs are. I've been way too lazy in them.

This one will stay loose and personal. If anyone wants to listen to me, great. If not, that's fine too. Thinking about starting one for TKQ or at least the area of South Reach, like I did Murial's Story. Update it regularly with what happens and what I find that can help others.