Wednesday, February 16, 2011

One of Those Days


Every once in awhile I find myself having "one of those days." It's not that anything went terribly wrong; I'm just not satisfied with . . . anything in particular. I actually managed to write 2489 words today, had minimal phone calls, and my husband fixed dinner. Still the flowers on the dining room table are dead and need to be thrown out, the sheets on the downstairs bed need to be changed, there are cobwebs on the entry hall chandelier, the kitchen floor needs to be mopped, and the wind has been howling like a banshee. I know, some days are just like that.

Sometimes writers have some of those days too in their professional life. The words are drivel, there's no way to get an uninterrupted block of time, there are too many other demands on our time, and we'd rather play on Facebook than write.

An occasional such day can be chalked up to "that's just the way it is." Or it might be a hint someone has been pushing too hard and needs to take a break. Sometimes the same remedies we use to deal with writer's block work for overcoming a cranky, blah, nothing-suits-me day. Sometimes sitting down to the computer and getting lost in the WIP before us does the trick. Other times a good run, a chocolate bar, or vigorously scrubbing the kitchen floor will do the trick. And sometimes we just have to hope to wake up in a better mood the next day.

I've already told you this isn't one of my better days. It isn't a day when I can come up with a blog topic either, but I can tell you a few things that have crossed my mind to share but won't fill an entire blog. First, I've been invited to speak at a book club. There's nothing unusual about that, but this club is comprised of Latino ladies, and I don't speak Spanish. Should be fun. Funny thing is I've longed to have my books translated for Spanish readers for a long time without any success, but I feel flattered that women who struggle with English still read my books and want to meet me.

I received the smallest royalty check of my life since I started writing fiction this week. It's fun to get the big checks, but I'm okay with this one. I chose to spend time with my sister before she died instead of writing and I have no regrets.

The temple is closed for regularly scheduled cleaning this week and next. It's good to have the time off, but it leaves me feeling a little disoriented and confused as to which day today is.

My sales of Run Away Home on Kindle are going pretty well and I like their system that allows authors to track sales. I'll post Journey Home on Kindle too as soon as I finish my long overdue pair of western Historicals I've been working on for a couple of years. And speaking of Kindles, I think the only way I can keep up with finding the called for scriptures in Sunday School is to look up all the scriptures listed in the study guide for each week and book mark them. The Kindle works well for reading, but I find it dreadfully slow for trying to locate specific scriptures. I'm not sure I retain what I read on my e-reader as well as what I read on a printed page, but that may improve as I grow more accustomed to using it.

I've got eight new books to read and consider for reviews on my shelf and four Whitney finalists. I can't read them all, so I guess it's the Whitney finalists that won't get read. I've finished everything in four categories and there are only a few in the other categories that interest me anyway. It just saddens me a little that I won't be able to vote for the overall top book.

Every other week it is my turn to post a blog on the V-Formation and I usually post it here too.  Whether you comment here or on the V-Formation, I count it toward the Wish List contest.  If you comment on both, but the comments are different, I'll count them both. Sometimes I post a link to Facebook too, but comments there don't count toward the contest (too hard to keep track of), but I still love to get them.

Well, that's all I can think of, so I think I'll quit and go watch the Jazz game. Wait that just might move me from feeling blah to depressed.

5 comments:

Austin Stevenson Owens said...

Awh!! I really don't like those blah days! And... my husband and I are BOTH of us impressed with your word count. Like he said, "that means she averaged 100 words per hour!" :) I'm guessing you wrote all of that in a shorter time frame than 24 hours!!

Christie said...

Like your post, very relatable. I was shooting hoops with my super poke pet when I decided to do something more constructive like reading something on writing. Which is not to say I'm not busy, I surf between connected calls for an outbound call center.
Christine L.

Karey said...

Boy, can I relate to this posting. And you're right, the Jazz game made the day worse. In fact, just the look on poor Coach Corbin's face toward the end of the game took a blustery, stormy, blah day and made me really sad.

Hope tomorrow is better in every way!

Lisa said...

I'm sad that you had a slow day, but just consider it catch-up. It amazes me that the month with the fewest days always seems the longest. Most of my days have been slump days but I was really productive yesterday, I took on the challenge of creating a blog button and creating new business cards.

Elizabeth Morgan said...

Those days can be bad. We just need to remember the the things in life that make us happy.