Monthly Archives: October 2013

My partner BlackLion and I are collaborating on a novel for NaNoWriMo – our first! Sure, I’m a published author, but I’m feeling like such a newbie. My usual writings are non-fiction, mostly about spirituality, and fiction is a whole other animal. Yet at the same time, the work we’re planning is infused with our own flavor of spirituality, creativity, and general whimsical weirdness. It’s going to be a modern faerie tale.

We’ve been doing some brainstorming and planning, and this week we both signed up on the official NaNo page. I’m excited about getting started in less than a week!

I worked on my book promotion goal this week, too. I found some roadblocks, but I’m not letting them slow me down. First, the Amazon giveaways my friend has so much success with seems to only be available if you sign up for their “select” (read, exclusive) option. So, I decided I’d use GoodReads to do a giveaway, which I’d done with my first book. Nope. They only do them for books with hard copies, not e-books.

After a bit of frustration, I decided that these were just indicators pointing me to better options. I’m going to design and implement my own book giveaway, and promote it through my network of friends and acquaintances on social media. That will be my next task, along with continuing to promote the book through Facebook and Twitter status updates. I’m trying to be as creative, friendly, and non-salesy as possible, and so far it seems to be working well. It’s on a small scale right now, but I can see the potential.

My yoga practice is going well, as is my journal-keeping. I haven’t done as much dancing and drumming as I’d like this week, but I’m fine with that. I’m still easing back into regular blogging. My energy has been really depleted over the past couple of months, and I’m starting to take steps to rest, heal, and replenish. So overall, I’d say I’m on track.

I don’t have much of an update, but I’m going to post here anyway, to keep the flow going and to try and approximate some normalcy of scheduling. My desire is to get back into my creative work more fully. Yet it seems like I’m still spinning my wheels a bit.

Yeah, I know, grieving takes time, be patient, be easy on myself…  I can do that, most of the time. But tonight I’m feeling a bit frustrated. I have some time free this evening but I’m just so tired and unmotivated.  My list of things to do (not all of which relates to my goals, but much of it does) is only getting longer. But….meh.

This weekend was admittedly rather full. Friday night I had a gig with Dark Follies that went really well. Then a friend came for a visit and we hung out with him, and made a big batch (over 2 gallons) of fresh salsa. Saturday was spent getting ready for a gathering here at our place, a ceremony for my friend who passed away. We had her official memorial service a couple weeks ago, but this was a Full Moon gathering of her Pagan community. It went really well. I had lots of help with the ritual itself and with getting our home and yard ready, and everything looked lovely. I’m very pleased with the gathering, and the help I received, yet I still put a lot of energy into it, and then stayed up late visiting with friends by the fireside. Then today I got up and went to rehearsal, came home and made scalloped potatoes, then took them to the monthly family potluck next door at my Aunt’s house.

Writing all that, I guess it makes sense that I’m kind of worn out!

Other things that have been going well: my yoga practice is a blessing, I’ve been writing in my journal regularly, and I’ve gotten some lovely time outdoors this weekend. Writing and promotion? Not so much. Though I did write about yoga on my blog.

I’m trying to be patient. I’m actually not worried about the creative flow, so much as the time to open up to it. It seems like I’m slogging through all this other stuff – gatherings, daily life, planning – and I just plain run out of time for the things that are usually a priority.

My plan was to get back to writing my Starcat’s Favorites this weekend – it’s a feature on my blog where I share links folks might be interested in – but I don’t think I’m gonna get to it this time. I feel sort of vaguely guilty about all the things I could be doing to further my writing career. But not (yet) inspired to do them. Bleah.

I’ve had a pretty good week. My grief still causes my emotions to be up and down, and my motivation to ebb and flow, but I’ve gotten some things done, and enjoyed them. Today I had a wonderful polarity therapy session (I highly recommend it), which helped me put some things into perspective, in a really good way.

As far as blogging, I wrote a sort of re-entry post this week on Starcat’s Corner, and here I am showing up today on this blog, which I wasn’t sure I’d get to until about 5 minutes ago. So I’ll count that as a success.

What else have I been up to? Well, some research and some brainstorming for NaNoWriMo. BlackLion and I have been jotting down ideas and over the weekend we’ll start creating lists of scenes (we’re collaborating on a cool idea we have for our first novel). I’m thankful for Kristen’s blog and for Kim’s awesome planning page for helping me with my NaNo preparations.

I also started looking into some promotional techniques for getting the word out about Cultivating Self-Love. More about that as I delve further into it.

My huge success for the week has been my yoga practice. I’m back to it, and it really helps with all the strong feelings I’ve been having. I’m on the third week now, and did yoga four times each of the previous weeks, so I’m actually exceeding the goal as written. Yay me!

Thanks to everyone for the well wishes and expressions of sympathy. I deeply appreciate it.

So, I guess I’m back now, and hopefully getting ready to dive into a new round. That sounds really tentative, I know. For those who read here regularly (and I thank you for that), my friend with terminal cancer who I was helping in hospice passed away on September 24th. I was there, along with her family and other friends, and it was a peaceful passing. Still, the grief is pretty intense.

Along with grieving, perhaps because she was my age, I’m feeling a renewed determination to pursue my callings. Which of course means writing. So I decided not to sit out this round, though the idea of a break was tempting.

I haven’t been writing much of late, but music has been keeping my creativity simmering along. My troupe has a set of important gigs coming up this weekend, so I’ve been drumming a lot, and collaborating on some new numbers, which feels good. I’ve been doing a lot of yoga, which was a goal I hadn’t quite gotten to from last round. And I’ve also been pondering my new set of goals, so without further ado, here they are.

Creating

Successfully participate in my first-ever NaNoWriMo, completing the first draft of a novel. I’ll be doing this in collaboration with my partner BlackLion.

• October: Prepare for NaNoWriMo. Create outlines and capture other useful story ideas, read tips from other writers who’ve done it, and sign up for the challenge.
• November: Write at least 2,000 words per day.
• December: Begin editing and revising the new novel!

Post to my Starcat’s Corner blog at least 3 times per week, and on this blog at least 2 times per week.

Write and edit at least 3 guest blog posts and have them posted.

Learning and Sharing

Invite people to purchase our Feline Dreamers wares and my books. Do it with joy and from a place of feeling positive and confident. As part of this process, learn more about effective, ethical promotion techniques.

Learn to use Amazon’s indie author resources to promote and sell my Cultivating Self Love e-book.

Promote and sell my Starcat’s Corner: Essays on Pagan Living book.

Explore creating a hard-copy version of Cultivating Self-Love.

Practicing Wellness

Continue my daily practice of writing morning pages and affirmations in my journal (4 pages each day).

Do at least 20 minutes each day of dancing.

Practice drumming at least 3 times per week, plus the weekly troupe practice.

Do yoga at least 3 times per week.

Eat well. This means eating healthy vegan foods, avoiding sugar and junk foods, and drinking plenty of water.

Spend more time outdoors. Walk, hike, and meditate. Relax and enjoy the autumn weather.