I can’t write in Courier New font anymore. It stifles my creativity. I’ll sit and stare at the words….and nothing. Can’t type a single sentence. Switch to Times New Roman and my fingers start tapping the keyboard again.

Weird.  It’s just a font, right?  Well, apparently, Courier New is too ugly for my creative brain, and since I like to keep the muse happy, looks like I’ll be writing in Times New Roman from now on.

Does this happen to anyone else? Or am I the only freak out there?

I’ve been sorely absent from the blog lately. Writing, stressing, dealing with ‘life’, stressing, volunteering at the boys’ school, stressing….well, you get the picture.

But, now, it’s officially summer vacation–oh, and snowing, by the way. Snow. Ing. In case you didn’t catch that the first time. We went from almost 90 degrees down to 50.

I’m freezing! And moving to Hawaii…

Look at me! I made bread! Trust me when I say that this is a momentous occasion. I once tried to make pizza crust and it turned out cracker thin, and another time I attempted bread and ended up with a rock. But then I moved into my new house and finally have a beautiful kitchen that is sorely underused–and yes, I realize that I’ve lived in said house for about a year now. I had to warm up to the idea first.

So feeling adventurous the other day, I snagged Suzanne’s recipe for Grandmother bread (psst, snag her recipe here.) I mixed, I kneaded, I waited….and then I baked:

And look! It worked! Now, granted it doesn’t look exactly like Suzanne’s. I’m still quite the bread newbie, you know, and I don’t think I shaped the loaves as well as I should have or divided the dough exactly in half (because one loaf seemed to rise more than the other loaf).  But, Success! It tasted wonderful and it is SO yummy as sandwich bread. And best of all…

I’m not afraid of yeast anymore! LOL!

I look up to see Cam lounging in the doorway. In typical Cam fashion he’s dressed in faded jeans, a god-awful Hawaiian print button-down shirt and black boots. His brown hair is mussed from the wind and he studies me from steely gray eyes.

He nods to my laptop. “Now that you’re done shining up your blog, you gonna get back to my story?”

My cheeks heat. A little procrastination never hurt anyone. Much.

I shrug. “I’m working on it.”

He lets out a long suffering sigh, punctuated with a groan. “Do I really have to bail that uppity scientist out of jail?”

I can’t keep the grin off my face. “Afraid so. Audra needs you.”

He scowls. “Couldn’t I just save the day and get the hell out?”

I level him a look over my laptop screen. “That wouldn’t be much of a story, now, would it?”

He grumbles something that sounds suspiciously like a curse.

“What was that?” I ask, brows raised.

He points his finger at me. “Fine. I’ll do it your way. But, remember, you owe me.”

“Sure. What do you want?”

“You’re the writer, you think of something.” He taps the door frame as he prepares to leave. “Be creative. And it better be good.”

Creative. Huh. My mind whirls with possibilities, all of them deliciously torturous for Cam, but I give him my most serious, most contemplative look. “I’ll try to think of something.”

He nods, satisfied, and leaves. A couple seconds later his head pops back in the open doorway. “Oh, and if it involves Audra, all the better.”

He gives me a long slow wink and then walks away. I stifle the urge to let out a villainous cackle. I rub my hands together. Audra and Cam have no idea what’s in store for them.

I find it interesting that I seem to fall into the “pit” at the same time with each manuscript. I call it the black hole of Chapter 3. It doesn’t matter what kind of book I’m writing, Chapter 3 seems to give me all sorts of problems with pacing and general believability. It’s like my characters throw up a roadblock and derail me. I guess it’s better than getting to the end of the book and realizing that the entire plot needs to be tossed, huh? But, I still hate it. It makes me doubt myself too much.

I think I see the light at the end of the tunnel on this one, although my pacing still feels a bit off to me, but I’m looking forward to getting past it and torturing my characters some more.

Which chapters are your pitfalls?

Yes, this statement should come with a warning. Next week my boys will be home from school. All. Week. Long.

Don’t get me wrong, I love having them around, but I do have to wonder what this will do to my writing productivity. Hopefully the week won’t end up a total wash.

And while they’re home for the entire week, I have to whine and pine about how I wish we could have taken a mini-vacation somewhere. Anywhere. Poor, poor me. Let’s hope the weather holds out for next week. If it snows, I’m going to jump off my second story deck.

For now, I’m wracking my brain for fun things to do so the boys won’t drive me nutso with their daily litany of “I’m bored!”.

My husband and I were watching a news show the other day where they were discussing the Paparazzi…and how one good picture of Britney Spears can net them one million dollars.

One million dollars???!?!?

Heck, I’m in the wrong business!

Anyone know of any good Paparazzi jobs available in their area?

(Psst….look at my progress meter! It keeps going up! :cheer:)

Is anyone else sick of this crazy weather we’ve been having? One day it’s sunny and in the 60s the next it is gray skies and wind with a bit of flurries added to the mix. I wish it would just hurry up and decide on Spring!

It’s day five of the 70 Days of Sweat challenge, and so I’ll happily direct you to my sidebar to check out my progress meter.

If I can keep up this pace (and I’m pretty sure I can), I should have a first draft done by the end of the 70 days!

Here’s to sunny skies and fingers flying furiously over the keyboard!

70 Days of Sweat officially begins today! Good luck everyone!

I plan to keep track of my progress here on the blog, so check out the progress meter in my sidebar. I managed 5 1/2 new pages today….not too shabby. We’ll see how I do tomorrow.

It’s a beautiful day here. So, far now, I’m putting my laptop away and going outside to enjoy the fresh air and sunshine. I’ll take that as my reward for a job well done.

I’ve taken the plunge and signed up for 70 Days of Sweat. Eeek! I’m committed to making some serious tracks on Cam’s story, although I’m a bit worried about writing to meet page goals when I’m not exactly sure where the story is going. I’ve got a vague outline and a couple of turning points mapped out, but usually I take much more time to stew over each scene and where it is going. I don’t want to end up writing 70 days of garbage that has to be deleted as that will defeat the purpose of working my tail off in the first place.

For those of you who have participated in this type of thing before, how do you keep yourself on track plot-wise?

And, you know, one of my favorite things is gathering tunes to use as a soundtrack for my ms. I’ve compiled a great playlist in my mp3 player; songs that have called out to me for either my hero or my heroine. One of my favorites so far is Feel by Chicago, because one verse fits my hero, one verse fits the heroine and the chorus fits them both:

Verse 1 [hero’s outlook]:

So everybody’s pulling you in all directions
You don’t know how much longer to take it
So you’ve learned how to fake it

That smile on the outside’s fading fast
Like the things that you thought for sure would last
But they didn’t
You know something’s missing
Is it your life you’re not living?

Verse 2 [heroine’s outlook]:

You can’t tell if you’re happy or sad
Can’t tell the good from bad
It’s senseless
To waste your senses
Maybe stop thinking with your head
Start using your heart instead
Just try it
You just might like it
Aren’t you dying to start livin’?

And the Chorus:

Your heart is cold, your soul is numb
You don’t like who you’ve become
You played the game and paid the cost for long enough
So grab the reins, yeah, take the wheel
Lose what’s not and keep what’s real
It’s not too late,
Just close your eyes and feel, feel