Tomorrow begins the WORD Challenge. I’m really hoping this bit of motivation will get me through the rest of these 300 pages in a month. Right now, I’m just writing, not revising, but after this chapter, I anticipate being able to use much of what is already there. I’m hoping. Really.

It has been nice to write a bit from scratch. I’ve missed it with all the revising I’ve been doing these last few months.

Halloween was fairly quiet and uneventful this year. Once again dh gathered up our little ones and took them out trick or treating. He also bought the candy and painted faces. My kids, darlings that they are, were totally happy with their non-expensive costumes and were only gone long enough to get 1/3 of their bags full before telling Daddy they were done and wanted to go home. They came back, happy and thrilled, and declared Halloween a success.

I’m fighting a cold and managed a small nap today before dd crawled into bed with me and wanted to play. Despite all of this, I did complete quite a bit in my ms this weekend.

I’m looking forward to tomorrow!

No Need to Click Here - I’m just claiming my feed at Feedster

Don’t forget to roll your clocks back an hour, ladies and gents!!

I’ve begun trying to use my computer mouse with my left hand. My right appears to be suffering from carpal tunnel or something (and I’m certain I misspelled that.) My right wrist has been nagging at me for a week now, today it final revolted and is actually quite painful. Told you all, I’m writing obsessed. But in the Nov. RWR a writer says it took her about a week (I think) for her to get used to, so I’m going to give it a go. Not that I have any other choice, my entire forearm throbs.

I’m still waiting to get to the editing part of my ms. The last two chapters have been completely rewritten. After I finish this next chapter, I should be able to use the skeleton of what’s already there, if I’m lucky. I’m hoping I am.

My low-carb shoppe closes tomorrow at five o’clock. What am I going to do? It’s so sad. I went in there tonight and the shelves are bare, the freezer is bare, the signs were being taken down as they made my Cookie Craziness. A sad day in the life of Sylvia Day.

Ever the procrastinator, I have yet to purchase candy to give out to trick-or-treaters tomorrow. I’ll have to run out and do that. With the clocks rolling back, it will get darker earlier and the kids will descend on my corner of suburbia en masse. *sigh* Can’t decide if I want to be the one to take the kids out or let hubby do it and I’ll stay home with the candy.

Puppy got his twelve weeks shots today. Handled it like a trooper.

The last couple of days and the past few conversations I’ve had, have lead me to think about motivation. In particular, a writer’s motivation to write.

I think it’s important as we head into the WORD Challenge to think of the reason you became a writer in the first place. We all had a reason, a goal, a plan when we first sat down to write. Do you remember yours?

Mine was the sheer joy of writing the magic of romance.

I can’t possibly convey to you how much I love to write. It’s not a chore or a job, but a necessity like breathing or an addict’s fix. Because really, there is such a rush when the correct combination of letters on the page create a perfect moment of magic. That time when the hero and the heroine come to life, when you can see them, feel their angst and flinch at their trials, when you care for them and their happiness–when they become real. That feeling of rightness, that mild hit of endorphines, that dizzying feeling of “damn, that’s good!” is the reason I write.

Thanks to the fabulous Alison Kent, we have participant buttons up on the message board for those of you participating in the Write OR Die Challenge in November. They’re fabulous and there are six to choose from. I’m sure you’ll find one you like!!

Also in the works is the Winner’s Button, for those of you who meet your WORD goals. I haven’t seen it yet, but I’m told it features a frantic woman working like mad on a computer who looks a bit demented. I’m fairly certain some of us will be looking like that when we’re done!! Get ready ladies!!! November is rapidly approaching…

UPDATE
I just saw the winner’s button, ladies. Designed by my web hostess, Barb at Romance and Friends, it’s to die for cute I’m debating whether or not to show it off to you all, since the NaNoWriMo site doesn’t show their winner’s button.

hmmmm….

In other news, my goodie bag arrived today, the one I won in ML Rhodes‘ contest a couple of months ago. It was worth the wait! Inside were two paperback editions of her e-books. One had two books I’ve read before and enjoyed, so I’m glad to have them in paperback, and one LARGE paperback of hers written under a different name that I haven’t read yet. Also inside were a notepad with a yummy half naked guy on the cover (perfect for my upcoming writer’s retreat), a 2005 pocket appointment book with her name and web address on the cover, and pens and pencils. Very cool.

The scene I’ve been struggling to rewrite the last couple of days fell into place today. There’s something about it that is still striking me as off, but one of my fab cp’s believes she knows what it is and knowing her as I do, I’m certain she’ll help me fix it. But the wonderful chemistry between my H and h is there, so I guess I’ve learned my lesson. They know their story better than I do. Sometimes I just have to trust them to tell it.

I’m contemplating The Great Agent Hunt again. It seems like a good time to do it. I’ve been considering it for a few days and I’ll most likely consider it a few days more. It’s not a pressing urge, obviously, but I think I’ll feel less passive if I get more of my work out there.

And I’m still working on laying out “The Plan”.

First of all, I downloaded Midnight Rose the new e-book from one of my auto-buy authors Shelby Reed (Just so you know, aside from my cp’s, I have only two other auto-buy authors–Lisa Kleypas and Shelby Reed. You can find the link to MR and Shelby’s site in my blog sidebar) I was up until 4 am reading the wonderful story and then woke at 8:30 am to finish it. Sooooo good. I just adore her gorgeous heroes (this one’s a vampire) and her heroines are everyday gals like you and I who manage to snag hereos to-die-for just by virtue of being themselves. Her writing is beautifully descriptive and when it comes to emotion, I think Shelby is the queen.

Second, due to a server error, my site was down all day. Then when it went live again, the databases were skewed so my blog and message board was out of order for about an hour longer. That just plain sucked. And then I was wondering if my blog would be up by tonight in time for me to make my entry for the day and I realized that I’ve gotten into the ritual of writing in my blog everyday. I was going to miss it, if it stayed down. But obviously, it was fixed and I am getting in my blogging fix.

I got past my writer’s stump I suffered through yesterday and got about 10 pages written today, still not much for me, but better than the 1 page of the day before. Unfortunately, my characters took the revision in a way I never thought it would go, changing a key dynamic, I think. Now I will have to see how the change effects the rest of my edits on the story. I’m always startled when characters start acting unexpectedly. I try to talk them into doing what I think they should do and usually they listen, but not today. Stubborn as they are, they insisted on doing it their way. So I’ll go with the flow for now, but if it ends up setting the whole book off whack, I may have to go back and try to reason with them again. *sigh* I’m so not a negotiator.