Ruth Ann Nordin's Blog, page 68

Just Good Friends is Now Available!

It looks like everything is up where it should be. :D So I’m going to post the links today.

Tiffany Clark recently had her 35th birthday, and she isn’t married, something that worries her parents to no end. To make matters worse, her sister’s wedding is quickly approaching and Tiffany has no date. When her mom threatens to pair her up with someone she doesn’t want, Tiffany takes matters into her own hands and asks her best friend, Tyler Jackson, to pose as her boyfriend.

It’ll only be for the wedding. The lie won’t go any further than that. But in a moment of frustration, Tyler blurts out that he and Tiffany are married. That’s okay, though. Because as soon as they get back to Omaha, Tiffany will tell them the truth. Only, it’s a little hard to do that when her very excited parents are coming to visit “the happy newlyweds”.

iBooks

Amazon

Barnes & Noble

Kobo

Smashwords

Updates on What I’m Doing

Working on the Paperback for A Royal Engagement

I caught some errors in the proof so will have to redo it.  Sometimes I get questions on when paperbacks will be out.  On this one, it’s looking like the end of October.

Meanwhile, the paperbacks for my other books are already available.

This Sunday is the release date for Just Good Friends

This one will be out soon.  I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s another problem somewhere.  We’ll see how things play out.  I’ll let you know if there are any problems.

I already uploaded His Convenient Wife to Smashwords for the pre-order and have the paperback proof ready to look at.

I’m also going to have a release party for this book, but it won’t be until December 1.  Yes, this book comes out on November 16, but I wanted to do a Facebook Party with a couple of my author friends and had to work around everyone’s schedule.  We’re all going to offer one paperback (some might offer ebooks) and wrap them up along with a surprise gift that we’ll mail off to the winner.  I’ve already scheduled it.  I’m letting someone else handle the party details this time.  Otherwise, I wouldn’t be able to focus on getting Love Lessons With the Duke ready.

But the authors I’ve invited to join me are personal friends who also write books featuring romance.  They are Dorothy Paula Freda, Janet Syas Nitsick, Lauralynn Elliott, Rose Gordon and Jael Friese.  I’ll give more details when it’s closer to December 1.

Unfortunately, I am behind in Love Lessons With the Duke.

But…the good news is that I really love this story.  The hero is extremely sweet and naive when it comes to “the ways of the world” (including the bedroom).  These are the type of heroes I tend to love the most.  I still like His Convenient Wife more, but this is another favorite.

I wanted this to be done and in the editing stage at this point, but as it turns out, I am only halfway into the first draft.  The release date on this one is January 3.  I wanted to have it uploaded to Smashwords on November 1.  At this rate, I’ll be uploading on December 1.  Hopefully, that will be enough time for the document to get to Barnes & Noble and Kobo.  *fingers crossed*

But I should have no trouble getting the proof for the paperback done in plenty of time for it to be available on January 3.

Most of my attention has been going to Love Lessons With the Duke, but I have started “The Shy Groom”, my novella in A Groom’s Promise (the second anthology Janet Syas Nitsick and I are doing).

This is the sequel to Bride by Arrangement.   In my novella, I am writing a hero who stutters (haven’t done that one yet but have been wanting to for years).  Because he stutters, he’s usually the butt of other people’s jokes.  Well, he and his brother (whose story Janet is writing) go to Nebraska for a new start.  They agree to be farmhands for an old farmer in exchange for some land.  This old farmer (who was introduced in Bride by Arrangement) happens to have a daughter he’s eager to marry off so she has someone to take care of her after he dies.  So our reluctant hero will somehow find himself marrying this daughter.  I just haven’t figured out how yet.

Books in the first part of 2015

1.  I’m hoping A Groom’s Promise will be out in the early part of 2015, but we’ll see what happens.  

2.  Royal Hearts is already put on pre-order for March.

All I have to do is rewrite it, so at least I already have the whole story fleshed out.  It’s the second book in the Enchanted Galaxy Series.

3.  Ruined by the Earl is going to be Book 3 in the Marriage by Deceit Series

COVER COMING SOON

I am thinking of working on this one when I finish Love Lessons With the Duke, in addition to working on my novella in A Groom’s Promise and Royal Hearts.  I’ve decided after Love Lessons With the Duke, I’ll go back to writing more than one book at a time since I’ll be able to write at a slower pace again.

I was originally going to make The Earl’s Stolen Bride the third book, but as I was writing Love Lessons With the Duke, I got an idea for another book that will come before it.  I’ll mention more of this one in the future.

4.  I hope to start Shane’s Deal and have it out at least by the summer of next year.

This will complete the Montana Collection, so it’s high on my priority of books to do.

I still don’t know what to do with Wagon Trail Bride.

I’ll have Stephannie Beman work on the cover to fit it in a series if a series does evolve from this book.

 I’m thinking I probably should keep some of the beginning to it, but maybe what I should do is change Richard and Amanda’s relationship before they marry.  I currently have them as being good friends with him being in love with someone else.  That part is not going to work.  But they have to know each other somehow, and I need a compelling romantic plot.

 I think I put in the Nebraska Series that they had known each other for years and her parents died so they decided to go to Nebraska with his family.  I need to go back and check.  I’m sure Sally is the one who explained it to Mary in Eye of the Beholder, but until I make sure I’m right, I’m not going to plan anything out.  So I need to go back and see what I did.  From there, I’ll see if I can get something going.

A Post For New Writers: When You Get Stuck

A Post For New Writers

At some point while you’re writing a story, you might get stuck.  You might know what you want to do from point A to point C, but you don’t know what to put in for point B.

For example, let’s say you just finished a really awesome scene you’re excited about.  As an example, we’ll say this is where your hero and heroine have just decided they never want to see each other ever again.  What you know is that they will end up together because it’s a romance.  But how in the world are you going to get these two very unlikely people to fall in love?

As another example, you just put your hero on another planet which is full of cities with dead aliens.  You know the answer is that there was a virus set loose which wiped out the entire planet, and the aliens responsible for this are heading for Earth to do the exact same thing.  But you need to go from point A (where the hero finds all the dead bodies) to point C (where the hero finds out Earth is next on the list).  So you need to 1) establish how the hero finds out about the virus and 2) how the hero discovers Earth is next.

Another example, you started your book and everything is great.  It’s got the perfect creepy feel to it.  The woman is being stalked by a psycho who escaped from an asylum.   But you have no idea how the book ends, much less how to fill up the next 100 pages of the book.

When you get stuck, there are a couple strategies to try to get ideas.

1.  Brainstorm.

Sit down and write out all the possible scenarios.  These are brief snippets of ideas such as…

For the romance:

hero and heroine forced to work on a project together
hero and heroine forced to a remote cabin alone
heroine gets sick and hero has to care for her

For the science fiction novel:

hero finds blood from an alien and tests it in a medical kit
hero finds an alien who isn’t dead who tells him what happened
hero finds enemy alien and forced him to talk

For the thriller:

woman catches stalker watching her when she’s looking into her car rearview mirror
stalker makes a phone call
stalker pretends to be a nice guy and introduces himself

Those are ways to quickly brainstorm various ideas.  When you brainstorm, don’t discard any idea right away.  Even if you don’t use the exact idea, you might modify the idea so it works.

Let’s say I modify the idea that the stalker introduce himself to the woman.  I’ll have the stalker meet up with her mom and have the mother introduce them as the “kind man who helped me fix my car today”.

2.  Take one or two brainstormed ideas that sound the most promising and expand on them.

For example, if you liked two ideas for the romance (the hero and heroine must work on a project together and the hero and heroine are forced to a remote cabin), then take both of those ideas and write (or think through) a brief scenario of how each of those ideas will work in your story.

This process can take an hour to a week to sort through, but some of the best places to allow these ideas to work is when you’re not working on the story itself.  You can work on another story or work on the book cover or maybe even write a post about the book.

3.  It is okay to work on another story during this time.

Let’s say you are truly stumped.  A week didn’t do it, and you can just see that this is going to prevent you from getting anywhere.  Go ahead and work on another story.  When you keep writing, you’re staying creative.  You can work on more than one book at a time.  When you know what to do, return to the story or wait until the time is right to get back to it.

***

As writers, we’re bound to get stuck at some point in something we write, but it is possible to press through it and finish the book.  But…what if you can’t manage to finish anything you write?  I’ll discuss that in the post I plan to publish on Friday (October 10).

Random Thoughts

After careful consideration, I decided to go back to my normal pacing for good. 

I don’t really know how to explain this, except to say that when I sprint, I’m go so fast, that it’s harder for me to connect with the characters.  After all the writing posts I’ve been doing, I remembered what it was like when I started to write romances.  I remembered how exciting it was to go on the journey with my characters.  One of my favorite emotions is the “falling in love” one, which is why I am drawn to romance.  Since I’ve been married for fourteen years, I’ve long since passed that initial stage.  I think love does get better over time because it gets deeper, but there’s no denying there’s a thrill in that initial phase.  And romance allows me to tap into that.

As I was writing the post about the character’s journey, I realized I don’t want to rush the journey.  I want to take time to savor it like I would a favorite piece of chocolate.  Looking back, I don’t think I was able to fully enjoy Patty’s Gamble, The Earl’s Secret Bargain, and Just Good Friends because I sprinted those in order to reach my deadlines.

It’s possible other people can sprint and fully get the enjoyment out of writing their books, but it’s not possible for me to do that.  We’re all different as writers, and we’re all meant to go at our own pace.  My pace is writing one full-length novel in 1.5 to 2 months.  I can do a novella in a shorter period of time, but I don’t write a lot of those.

What this means is that next year, I won’t be publishing as many books as I did this year.  I had a stellar publishing year.  With Just Good Friends due out October 12 and His Convenient Wife due out November 16, I will have published six full-length books.  Usually, I do six full-length books and possibly one novella.

 I’ll Be Putting My Posts for Beginning Writers Into an Ebook

This isn’t going to be coming out this year, but I expect it’ll be out around the beginning of next year.  I will edit and compile the posts I’ve been putting up on this blog and put them into an ebook.  This way it’ll be easy to go back and refer to it at your leisure.

Here is the list of posts I will put in the book:

Starting With An Idea (already posted)

Picking Your Genre (already posted)

The Proper Use of Backstory (already posted)

Point of View (already posted)

Characters Are the Heart of Your Story (already posted)

Your Setting (aka World) – The Character is Always Key (already posted)

There Is No Perfect Time to Write So Write Today (already posted)

If the Scene Doesn’t Add to the Plot, Throw It Out (to be posted)

What To Do When You Get Stuck (to be posted)

What If You Never Finish a Story? (to be posted)

Polishing Your Book For Publication (to be posted)

*I added the last one because someone asked me about doing a post on proofreading.  I don’t plan to go into the stuff on covers, formatting, how to publish, or marketing.  This ebook will be dedicated solely to the process of writing.

If there is a writing-related post I have not addressed in this list that you’d like me to write, please let me know.

A Post For New Writers: Your Setting (aka World) — The Character is Always Key

A Post For New Writers

As I mentioned in another post, your characters are the heart of your story.  It doesn’t matter what neat little plot twist pops up or how fabulous your setting (world) is if your characters aren’t emotionally engaging.

Yes, you want to aim to be authentic, but you don’t want to miss the point of the story, and the point is the character’s journey. 

The world your story takes place in is only wallpaper.  It is the backdrop to which your characters will go through their journey.

1.  Create your world.

Whether the story takes place on Earth in a setting we’re familiar with, in another time period, or on another planet, we do want to do our best to make the world real to the reader.   You should aim to stay true to the place your character will be in.  So research and get a feel for your character’s world.  Research can be done on the Internet, in books (I find children’s books work the best because they break things down so it’s easy to understand), going to visit physical locations, talking to people who specialize in the area you’re writing, and watching TV shows/movies.  The best approach is to take multiple resources instead of only one.

There are some rules you have to follow in being true to your world.  For example, you don’t want a cowboy in 1880 to pull up to his house in a truck talking on a cell phone.  You also can’t have your character go on a planet that has no oxygen without the proper equipment.

And if you don’t get it 100% perfect, learn from your mistakes and do better on your next book.   Unless there is a glaring error in the book, I advise against going back to change something.  You learn best by writing more books, not going back and revising old ones.

I’ll be the first to admit my books haven’t always been 100% historically accurate to the very nitty gritty detail, and I can assure you, if you miss something, it’s okay.  Earth will still keep spinning.  Life will go on.  Aim to be authentic, but don’t get so obsessed with it that you get paralyzed and can’t write your story.

2.  The characters can use elements in the world to enhance their journey.  These elements must either help or hinder the character’s journey.

If the element you want to use doesn’t advance the plot, you need to toss it out.

For example, let’s say your character needs to drive from one state to another, but there’s going to be a roadblock up ahead in the middle of a storm.  What you want to do is key in on the thunderstorm while the character is driving.  Instead of just describing the storm, show the reader what your character is doing, saying, and thinking during this storm.  Let’s say a tree falls right in front of the truck.  What did your character do with the truck?  Did he try to drive before it hit the road?  Did he slam on the brakes and nearly hit it?  Did he say anything?  What was his heart rate doing?  Can he keep going?  How will he overcome this obstacle to reach his destination?

You do not want to tell the reader all about the pretty fields along the way, the kind of barns the character passed, what music the character listened to, what the character ate along the way, etc.  That stuff had nothing to do with the obstacle (the storm which caused the tree to fall which stopped our hero from completing his journey).

3.  The character is always center stage and the world secondary.

This isn’t to say you can’t throw in details and show the reader what your work looks like, especially if it’s a world we don’t live in.  The more foreign your world, the more you have to show.  But the key is to show it.  Don’t dump all the information about this world on the reader right up front, which is a great temptation.  Instead, show the world through the character’s eyes.

In chapter one, don’t spend the chapter (or even half the chapter) talking about the entire world and all the cool little things about it.  You need to introduce your character.  Start building the emotional connection so that the world around the character starts to matter as the story progresses.

Which beginning grabs you more?

1.  The neighborhood was a typical suburban one.  All the houses were two-story homes, though some were split level.  Every house was well cared for, including the lawns.  The people were friendly enough, calling out greetings to others as they passed.  People drove their cars down the quiet streets.  It was the perfect place to live.  Except for one thing.  The neighbor who lived at the very end of Husker Street.

No one could ever recall seeing him.  All anyone knew was that he tended to the cemetery that was, coincidentally, right next to his house.  And worse, the house was in bad shape.  It had a sagging roof, a broken window in the attic, peeling paint, and vines creeping up the sides.  The lawn was in equally bad shape.  Weeds suffocated flowers that tried to grow in the abandoned garden, and the grass hadn’t seen a good mowing all summer.

2.  Alex McConner made his rounds through the quiet neighborhood as he tried to sell popcorn for the seventh grade field trip.  Though all he had to read the sheet with the sales pitch, he still had to take deep breaths so he wouldn’t panic.  No wonder he didn’t have any friends.  Just like Lucas Grover said, he was a loser.  A loser in the seventh grade.  Terrific.  He couldn’t wait for high school when the bullying would really kick in.

He turned down another street, glad this was the last one.  Then he could go home to the safety of his bedroom and his new WiiU game.  His steps slowed as he saw the last house on the block.  It wasn’t like any of the others.  The other houses were well cared for with freshly mowed lawns.  But this last house on–he checked the street sign–Husker Street looked as if it hadn’t seen an owner in ages.  Weeds everywhere.  A sagging roof.  Peeling paint.  Vines creeping up the sides.

Alex shivered.  His gaze went to the hole in the attic window.  His parents recently had a raccoon in the attic, and they didn’t even have a hole like that.  He’d hate to think what creatures were lurking in that house.  After a moment, he recalled the owner’s name.  Ted Wilkens.  Supposedly, Ted lived in the rundown house.  Rumor was, he took care of the cemetery right next to the house.  Ironically, the cemetery was in better shape than the house.

Alex swallowed and quickly turned away from it.  He’d avoid that creepy place at all costs.  He’d stick with the nice houses with the friendly people who lived in them instead.  Even if he hated speaking to strangers, he’d much rather try to sell them popcorn than walk up the broken concrete walkway to Ted Wilkens’ place.

Notice two things happened in the second example.  

One, the focus is on our character, Alex, and how he is thinking and feeling about the world around him.  This also incorporates introducing the reader to him, and hopefully, the reader cares about Alex and will want to know more about his journey.  If the reader cares, the reader will keep reading.

Two, we got a good look at the world through Alex’s eyes instead of the writer’s eyes.  This is key.  In order for the reader to escape into the story, they need to be connected to the character.  The writer’s voice should be nonexistent.

 

Quick Note: A Royal Engagement is Now Up on Kobo

I have a writing post scheduled for tomorrow morning, so I’ll keep this post brief:

The book is now out of pre-order and in the available stage.  Thanks to Smashwords for the help!

Kobo Link

A Royal Engagement is Available (Except on Kobo)

Well, I worried there might be a problem with the pre-order, and it came. But it came in a way I didn’t think it would.  I thought the file wouldn’t be there.  From checking iBooks and Barnes & Noble, I see the sample of the book, and if the sample is there, then the rest of the book is there because I uploaded the entire thing.

The problem is on Kobo.   The book hasn’t gone “live”.  It’s stuck in pre-order status.  I have contacted Smashwords about it, so hopefully the issue will be resolved soon.  I found out pre-orders can be tricky over there.  Last time I did a pre-order, it was only over on iBooks, so this is new territory for me.

I like pre-orders for three reasons: it allows me to better plan out what to do, I can say with certainty when a book will be out, and the book will go live on all channels on the same day.  If things smooth out with Kobo and the system works like it’s supposed to, I’d like to keep using the pre-order over there.  But if not, I might have to publish directly to them on the day the book is released.

However, at the moment I am locked into pre-orders on four more books at Kobo.   They are Just Good Friends (set for October 12), His Convenient Wife (set for November 16), Love Lessons With the Duke (set for January 3), and Royal Hearts (set for March 21).

If you were thinking of pre-ordering one of my books on Kobo, I would strongly advise against it unless Just Good Friends goes up likes it’s supposed to over there.

If you preordered A Royal Engagement on Kobo, will you place contact me on the form below?  I don’t want to put my email on here because of someone in the past who harassed me.

[contact-form]

Now, all this aside, here are the places where  A Royal Engagement is available:

Amazon

Barnes & Noble

iBooks

Flipkart

Smashwords

I Have No Idea What To Do With Wagon Trail Bride

I’ll have Stephannie Beman work on the cover to fit it in a series if a series does evolve from this book.

Okay, so I sat down two weeks ago to try to figure out what was “off” about the part of this book I’ve done so far.  My mind was blank.  I sat down a couple days ago.  Same thing happened.  Then I sat down with it again today.  My mind is still blank.

I’m starting to think I need a different plot.  My original idea was that Richard Larson had to marry Amanda to protect her.  And the bulk of the plot hinged on him loving another woman, and Amanda had been pining for him for years.  But guess what?

I just did a story where the hero had wanted to marry someone else but got the heroine instead.  This is His Convenient Wife.  Granted, the plot isn’t exactly the same. There is nothing that happened to Harriett that prompted Stan to protect her.  But the bulk of the plot for Wagon Trail Bride is similar enough to His Convenient Wife where it is pointless to write it out a second time.  And honestly, I am so happy with the way His Convenient Wife turned out, I don’t see how I can top it in another book.

So yeah, I need another direction to go.  But I don’t know what that direction is going to be.

Usually, I have the idea before I fit the characters to the book.  This was one situation where I had the characters in mind first.  I just can’t come up with a reason why Richard and Amanda leave New York to go with his family to Omaha.  I know it happens.  I just don’t know why.

What I’m going to do over the next month or two is sit down and write out a list of all possible plots I haven’t done yet but would like to try.  I might start with a list of things I don’t want first.  Maybe doing something that is the opposite will spur an idea.

The last thing I want to do is write a book for the sake of writing the book.  I need to be excited about it.  If I can’t get excited about it, then it’s going to suck, and there’s no point in writing a ho-hum book.  I realize not all of my books are my absolute favorites, but I enjoyed writing every single one of them.  I never want to compromise and write something I secretly think is mediocre.  I want to give every book I write the best I have.  I need to be passionate about it.

Sometimes no matter how hard an author tries, a character might not have a story worth writing.  I’ll see if I can work something with Richard Larson and Amanda, but if I keep running into brick walls, I’m going to have to put it in the “maybe someday in the future” file.  I don’t like to ever close myself off completely from a character, so I always leave the option open.  But the reality is, I have some characters whose stories I will never write.

Sometimes part of writing is learning when to say, “You know what?  This isn’t going to work, and I need to do something else.” Quitting doesn’t always mean failure.  Sometimes it means there’s something else better to do.

So I’ll give it another try, but I can’t promise anything.

A Post for New Writers: Characters are the Heart of the Story

A Post For New Writers

At the heart of every story is the main character (or main characters).  Without the characters, the story falls apart because the story is all about the character’s journey (or characters’ journeys).  The journey can be emotional, physical, or spiritual.  Whatever the case, the most important thing a writer does is bring forth characters who seem so real, the  reader forgets they are reading a book and slips into the world with the characters, specifically the main one.  You want your main character’s journey to become your reader’s journey.

But how do you write an emotionally engaging character?

An emotionally engaging character is one the reader empathizes with.  Whatever your character feels, you want the reader to feel.  But in order to get there, you (as the writer) must first feel it.  You have to be emotionally linked to the character.  If you aren’t, the character will come across as two-dimensional.  Ideally, you’ll experience everything all of your characters do, whether they are the good guys or bad guys.  But the main character(s) must be connected directly to you.

1.  Be in tune with the wide range of emotions we all experience as humans.

Writers are sensitive by nature because they have to be.  They feel everything deeply, and they aren’t afraid of emotions.  If you need to cry, you cry.  If you need to laugh, you laugh. When you are aware of how different experiences make you feel in your day to day life, you can start thinking of how these emotions will play into whatever situation you put your characters in.

2.  Let the character lead the journey.

Do not tell the character what to do.  Let the character lead.  If you want the story to go one way, but the character wants to go in another direction, let the story unfold as the character wants.

This is a hard concept to explain to people who don’t write, but the idea is to free your mind while writing so the story naturally develops as you’re going.  Don’t force the story.  You might be leading things when you start a scene, especially if you’re having a rough writing day, but there should be a point where the flow starts to come in and you are writing what you’re seeing and hearing in your mind.  That’s the moment where you are fully engaged in the character and letting him/her lead.

3.  Be aware of your body’s cues.

Once the character is leading, be open to what is happening to your body.  Often, your body will give you cues that can help you write down what the character is experiencing.

For example, while you’re writing a scene where the character is rejected, you might notice you’re tearing up.  Okay, this is a great time to write down that your character also has tears filling his/her eyes.  At this point, the character has three options: let the tears flow, fight to hold them in, or fight them but fail and cry anyway.  Depending on the character’s personality, you will pick the one that best fits them.

Another example: the character is talking to another character.  This other character says something that makes you laugh.  At this point, you should write down that your main character laughs.

Having an emotionally engaging character requires the writer to be open to going through the journey with character while letting the character take the lead.  I think the more in tune you are with your emotions on a daily basis, the easier this will be.

Been Busy and Am Struggling to Catch Up

Behind in Emails, Facebook Messages, and Blog Comments

I notice my inbox is full.   I have been out of the house most of the day from Monday through today.  I’ll be out all day tomorrow and possibly Sunday, Monday, and definitely Wednesday.  So my whole calendar has been booked, and it’s been pretty much back-to-back doing everything but sitting on the computer to take care of emails or write.

I explain all that above to let those of you who’ve contacted me know I’m not ignoring you. At the moment, I’m overwhelmed, and when I get overwhelmed, I can’t work fast.  I need to step back, take a deep breath, and write.  Writing helps settle me down.   So if I can sit down and do some writing, I’ll be better able to focus on emails, Facebook messages, and blog comments.

I will get to your email, message, or comment.  It’s just going to take me some time to get there.  I’m sorry it’s taking so long.

Editing His Convenient Wife

In the meantime, I have been editing His Convenient Wife, so it’s not like I’m not being productive at all, which is good.  I want to get that book uploaded and ready for preorder by October 1.  I want to give enough time for Barnes & Noble and Kobo to have the files on hand when the release date is set, which is November 16.  I figure the sooner I get it out, the better.

Nervous About Next Sunday When A Royal Engagement is Due Out

To be honest, I’m getting nervous about next weekend (September 28, specifically) because that’s when A Royal Engagement is due out.  I don’t know if preorders on Barnes & Noble and Kobo usually have samples or not, but I don’t see samples of that book.  Smashwords sent this book to both places on August 29.  I figured a month out should be enough time to get things set up.  On iBooks, I see the sample there, so I know iBooks will let people preview the sample.

My big fear is that September 28 will come, and I’ll find out Barnes & Noble and Kobo don’t have the book available.  Meaning, what they’ll get is a blank book.  I’m trying not to think about it because when I do, I start to worry, and worrying accomplishes nothing.  All it does is robs me of my ability to focus on what I need to get done.

****

I wanted to make this blog post shorter than what I usually do.  Next time, I will have the blog post I wrote last month on writing and working with characters.  It’s been so long ago, I don’t even remember the exact angle I went with.  But I’ll tweak it before I post it, so hopefully, it’ll be polished.

I hope everyone else is have a less hectic month than I am. :D