I read somewhere recently that discipline is like a muscle. Not only that it gets stronger as you exercise it, but that it fatigues over the course of the day. Every time you call upon your self-control to make the right food choice or push through to the end of a mind-numbing task, your discipline
NaNoWriMo is over! And I did it!! Some people wonder why I torture myself, ignore my family, shun the dog, let my house go to hell—well, more than it already is—and s-t-r-e-s-s for 30 days just to get some extra words down. Why? Because the things I learn about myself are priceless. I can actually
After only getting in about 9000 words during the first half of November (way off the 25K needed to stay on track for NaNoWriMo), I decided to reevaluate my writing habits. The check phase of my own personal Plan, Do, Check, Act cycle for continuous improvement. Sure, I have excuses. I scheduled too many things,
There are no prizes for NaNoWriMo winners, so what do writers get out of it? Bragging rights, a 50,000-word novel that may or may not suck eggs, and a month of pulling out our hair, to start. It’s the drill–basic training for published life–because I’m sure NaNo is nothing compared to the pressure of fulfilling
For the last two weeks, I’ve been so focused on moving out of the house in Alabama, moving into the apartment in Virginia, and searching for a new house, that I’ve done very little writing. I have all of my excuses at the ready. How hard it is to focus when crammed into a hotel
I love watching my boys swim. After a two-year hiatus, they started training with a team five days a week in January, and today was their second swim meet. They’ve worked hard and we saw significant improvement over their first meet. The excitement on their faces when they realize that their discipline and hard work
I’ve been playing hooky from serious writing this week. I need to make some plot decisions, but I was also starting to stress out a little too much. Normally, writing is fun. I love it. When it stopped being fun, I decided to take a few days off from my manuscript. I read a couple