Day #4 of the No Social Media Month experiment.

Today’s muse: Sam’s story

“It is fate that I am here,’ George persisted, ‘but you can call it Italy if it makes you less unhappy.”

I would like a room with a view. But I would like that view to be nothing but my laptop screen. From now until midnight on September 15th, please. Also, this quote made me chuckle because of the part Italy plays in the #wip.

Thursday gave me a chance to explain to the grandboy what I do. How I build stories out of words, instead of Lego bricks, using creativity to make up situations and characters. We were packaging up some books to mail, and putting others in the closet, and he asked me with each new cover what the story was about. Hard to explain to a seven year old why a character-driven tale might be interesting, but I found at least something exciting going on in each book.

After that, he came down and drew a picture of a Minecraft adventure, with an airplane that crashed and a cave, and I asked him what his character’s name was. “I don’t know,” he said. “How about Steve?” I asked. “Steve? Are you kidding me?” he replied, because, you know, he’s seven. Then I had him tell me Steve’s story, and I wrote it down in his words. There were slugs and slime and TNT and spiders, so it was typical boy stuff and good fun. I think I’ll frame it. Or make it into a book for him somehow.

I ended the day at 56320 words, and really needed another 785, so that’s two days now where I’ve quit short of my goal. But the brain can only do so much, and I spent some of that writing time playing chess with the grandboy, so it was worth it. I’ll burn some candles next week after he’s gone and catch up.

Not much in the way of social media still, and very proud of that. Some family stuff posted to Facebook, and this morning a video to Twitter, but as long as I don’t read my news feed or my Twitter timeline, I’m good. I also bought nothing online, nor did I add anything to my Kindle wishlist for the month.

A funny thing I noticed this week. My agent emailed, and since I hadn’t been on Twitter to see her tweets, it was a surprise, and reminded me of the early days of publishing, before social media, when we didn’t have all this instant access and gratification. It’s nice not to find my mind drifting to what’s happening OUT THERE and being more present RIGHT HERE.