Beautiful, Lovely Warmth!!!

The weather is finally super nice. Winter dragged on forever, and then it was spring for about three days before winter snuck back up. We still had SNOW at the end of APRIL. Granted, it didn't stick to anything besides the grass for a day, but still! Then it was Spring-like again, but still chilly with some high powered winds.

This past week, though. This week was fantastic. Well, for me. Hubby is already dying because 80-degrees is way too hot for him. It's just about perfect for me. I am seriously starting to think I'm actually cold blooded....

The warmth and light breezes are perfect "open the windows" weather. It's also great motivation weather. The sunlight, the warmth, the breeze; it just wakes me up and gets me excited to be productive. This is super awesome, except for what the weather was motivating me to do: clean.

Don't get me wrong, my place is in DESPERATE need to be organized. I have baskets of laundry, a sink of dishes, snacks stationed everywhere instead of confined to the kitchen, and paperwork for balancing the checkbook scattered across just about every surface...

So, I was super productive this week in cleaning. The problem there, though, is that I haven't really taken the time to WRITE this week. I keep meaning to, but then I get the drive to fold laundry or wash dishes. So I run with those...

The extent of my writing this week consisted of:

• Finally transferring the last of Please, Let Me Explain from Ronoxym's version to our shared one
• Checking in with Writers’ Huddle forum
• Listening to a 2-part seminar Ali Luke posted

Noooot. Really. Much.

I didn't really edit much on PLME; it was just a straight up transfer so we have the one file to work with. Instead of our former 3 or 4 we keep snagging things from and/or adding to.
Writers' Huddle was pretty quiet this week - as was X-Future yet again - but I did get a bit more advice on my problem coming up with titles. Still not sure what to call the X-Future reboot, but at least people are trying to help.

The real gem from WH this week was that Ali posted an audio seminar - about half-hour total if you listen to both parts - about finding time to write. Granted, I failed at listening to her advice this week, but that doesn't mean I didn't take it to heart. I'm going to try harder this upcoming week. We'll see how successful it will be.

I did have to chuckle that once again Ali seemed to have had her crystal ball aimed at me. She posted the seminar on Sunday, I believe, and she managed to touch upon something another friend of mine JUST introduced me to. This past Friday AngelBlood666 had posted about "Don't Break the Chain" on the Struggling Writers' Society FB page. It is a concept that the comedian Jerry Seinfeld uses - and one that Ali talked about in the seminar - where you buy a calendar that has the entire year on one page, so you can see January 1 all the way to December 31 all at once. Then, when you accomplish whatever goal you have - writing, filming, exercising, cleaning, painting, etc - you mark the calendar. The next day you accomplish the same goal you also mark the calendar. Soon you will have a line - or chain - of days where you completed the task. Now your motivation is to keep going; even if it's something small and simple that takes five minutes. You're going to want to do anything you can to continue that chain. And if you break it, you're motivated to make the next chain even longer and longer still, until you eventually get a full year without a broken chain.

It's essentially the same idea as the No Zero Days as well.

I'm a bit ashamed that I failed at keeping my resolution of having no more than 3 Zero Days in any given week, but I still have over half the year to make up for it. I just need to use this nice weather for motivation on more than just cleaning. In fact, maybe once the place IS clean I can keep it that way easier and be able to focus more on writing,

Ali also commented in her seminar that she finds she tends to get cranky and irritated easier when she hasn't written in a while. I have to say that I'm the same way. Don't know if it's true of all writers, but I find that a fun parallel.

It's like a Snickers commercial, but instead it's:

"Go write!"
"Why?"
"Because you're a cranky, whiny, irritable dingbat when you don't."
*Comes back after writing a few pages.*
"Better?"
"Better!"
Writing, because you're not you when you haven't.

To finish up, I'm going to talk more about Ron's writing progress. Because, apparently this blog is partially his too instead of him updating his own.

This past Sunday while talking to him I noticed that I had recently received an email. He had sent me a new Devon story he was working on based on what amnesiac Devon is currently doing on the forums. It's barely a page, and Ron claims he wasn't quite at the point of having me look at it - hence him not informing me of the story while we were talking. I still call shenanigans since he could have waited until he was done before sharing it with me. I think he DID want me to read it a bit early.

Anyway, this is kind of big. First, Hubby got him writing as Devon again last week. Then it inspired him enough that he decided to do some side prose using Devon. A few more steps and he might complete PLME. However, I'm sure he's going to finish his current story first. Don't worry! I don't have any characters in this one, so I won't be hijacking it from him. He'll actually be able to complete the story this time!

So, some on, people! Let's encourage him along! While you folks do that, I'll be over here and try to actually do some writing this time.