My Writing Journey March 2018

I am so happy to share my journey with you. I hope you have as much fun reading about my challenge adventures as I do reaching for the goals. (3/2/2018)

This past week flew by in a whirlwind! So many activities clamored for my time and in the end, I still wasn't able to post every day last week. But it's a new week now and the month stretches before me, filled with the promise of challenges completed.

Bad news came in early today. Facebook has taken over Instagram. (And slightly related, here's an article that helps break down the [very few] differences between the story features of Snapchat and IG. And here's an article on some new social media tools that might ease the pain of this new algorithm business on IG.) Apparently, the PTB (powers that be) of Facebook are being just as awful with drop-of-the-hat changes in algorithms in IG as they have been at Facebook. They are changing how Instagrammers can view posts. It's death for me. I can count on one hand how many comments I've received on any one photo I've posted there which include more than three words. It seems the PTB have decided any comment which consists of only emojis, or includes three words or less doesn't meet their expectations of actual interaction. This will reduce your visibility on the site. As will posting the same hashtags in consecutive posts, posting more than five hashtags, and more. I'm also going to have to start sharing stories if I want to gain more visibility. I hate how I look and sound on camera. And I hate that I'm practically being forced to not care about all that. <sigh> Inhale....exhale....inhale....exhale...and... (3/5/2018)

My mind was so busy yesterday (3/6/2018), I completely forgot about blogging. I suppose if I was up with the times, I'd be writing posts in advance and sharing them automatically. But really, how organic is that? And what if I change my mind in the interim? Because that's highly likely. And not only that, I often don't know what I'm going to post for the challenges until right before I post them. (3/7/2018)

Lately, if I start to think how busy I've been over the last few weeks and how crazy life has been over the last three months, I start feeling panicky. So I stuff it down and keep going. But I'm eventually going to have to take a day to just rest. Do you ever feel like you can't do that? Like if you rest the whole thing you're trying to build will fall apart? (3/9/2018)

It's been a bit hard for me to sit down at my computer lately. There are so many distractions that don't all qualify as actual distractions. I'm pretty sure that's confusing to some of you, at least, so I'll explain.

I'm in two active writing groups and both serve different purposes for me. The one on facebook is full of excellent encouragement and support about writing in general. The other group is on Discord and is focused on character creation, storyline, history, backstory, and that kind of thing. The second group is a great driving force for keeping me going on filling out my character bios for Surge. But that's super time consuming for me. I get so deep into that, I hardly have time for anything else. And the time I have to chat about writing or help someone out with their writing (though to be honest, I only know  a little compared to many others I'm working with) is cut short.

So the time when my internet works well is limited. My blog is often shoved to the end of the day, when the signal is worse, which can be tricky. Sometimes the photos I want to use won't upload. So if there comes another time when I don't post here on my blog, you'll have an idea of why that may be. I really enjoy doing this, though. And I'll keep working hard to stay on track. (3/12/2018)

I don't have as much time to today as I was hoping I'd get. We have new kitten that will be living inside with us. She's still very young and I was cat-sitting most of the night. (3/14/2018)

I finally found the words again and chapter 30 is posted. It seems like it's taking longer to tackle these last few chapters. There were some glaringly obvious things that needed to be changed and it affects every successive chapter. So please bear with me as I continue to work on this. You can get there by clicking on the link below. (3/14/2018)

The more I'm doing these challenges, the harder time I'm having. Oh, wait! That's how it's supposed to be! Bring it.

Chapter 31 of Ripples is finally posted. I worked on it most of the afternoon since it needed some more work -- more than the usual revisions. I'm not sure if it's too much, or too little or what, so I'm craving your kind and helpful comments on this one. You can click on the box below to start reading. I'd elaborate more but it might spoil things. <sigh> Hope you all have a wonderful evening! (3/15/2018)

Tackling challenges has been hard this month because of time. I seem to have less and less time to complete them. Before I know it, the day is coming to a close and I haven't posted anything! But yesterday, I was tagged by a fellow IG writer to participate in the Five Word Story challenge. It had to be phrased as a question which added a double whammy to the strict word count, but I managed. I mean, a challenge is a challenge, right? It's also an opportunity to learn and grow. Bonus Challenge: #FiveWordStory - If I was editing this story, I'd change 'now' to 'yet'. Even in single sentences, there is a need for editing. (3/16/2018)

Sinus drips are terrible. Sunday night, I only got a couple of hours of sleep leaving me less than useful yesterday. Thank goodness for Aleve D! (No, they did not pay me to say that.) I got a better night's sleep last night and though I'm still a bit draggy today, I can at least function well enough to write. (3/20/2018)

I revised chapter 32 today and posted it on Wattpad. I'm not super happy with it so if you read it, please leave some feedback. I'd really appreciate it. Maybe it's my fuzzy, congested sinuses but it just seems...off... I don't know. Anyway, you can read it at the link below. And as a bonus, I thought I'd share what I was listening to while I worked today. I /wish/ our library sounded like this. (3/20/2018)

My monitor went out before I had a chance to blog the challenges for day 22. The next day, my husband discovered that the cord wasn't connected well at the back of the screen. :/ I checked the other end of the cord and never thought to check where it connected at the back of the screen. (3/26/2018)

Just a note - All day 27 photos are incorrectly labled as day 26. I made so much progress yesterday and felt so accomplished. And while I was preparing to share my last challenge of the day, I noticed the discrepancy. If that's the only mistake I made over the course of the day, it would still be minor. LOL (It's not the only mistake I made, though. XD)

I'm going to finish uploading the final chapters of Ripples this week. I could really use some feedback on it. If you've been reading along, or if you think you might enjoy starting to read it, you can keep up by clicking the link below. It's up to Chapter 36 now and I hope to add 37 tonight before bed.
I know it's been a slow process. Sometimes I get really disheartened thinking of how much longer it will be before I can actually send it to an editor, before I can begin the real refining process, before I can snag those ISBNs and publish it everywhere. But at least by the end of this week, it will all be posted on Wattpad.
(I'm sure you can tell I'm getting tired by the somewhat questionable grammar of this post. My apologies.) (3/28/2018)

I got behind on blogging yesterday, as well as having to stop revisions on Ripples once again. Our family has come in for the Easter holiday and yesterday was spent cleaning and shopping to prepare.

I decided to try to tackle one challenge for April and use it to encourage me to keep going on my Camp Nano project. So next time, I'll introduce you to the challenge and share the posts for yesterday and today. I hope you'll join me! (3/30/2018)

I realize this is a longer post than I usually write. Again, my apologies. I'm having to create mishmash posts so I can avoid have posts on every day. This seemed the more efficient way to transfer the articles. I hope you'll enjoy this diary-ish type of article. It's certainly been interesting for me to read back through these. (7/12/2018)