Coffee time

Coffee is good. Coffee is great. I appreciate coffee and all other caffeine-containing products on days like these. I slept really well, too well in fact. The bed was nice and warm and the outdoor thermometer said -3.7 degrees Celsius. Minus. I don't like minus. Below freezing is not good.

Coffee is good. Spell checkers are even better. But I'd rather have coffee than a spell-checker. I can replace a spell-checker, but not coffee. There's tea, you say? Ha! I scoff at tea. Tea is for sissies. Unless you are Captain Jean-Luc Piccard that is. He drinks Earl Grey tea, without cream or sugar. I like it too and also the Lady Grey. Mmm. But coffee still rules.

In about 15 minutes I have to go out in that Minus outside. My cats don't know what they are missing -- coffee and Minus, among other things that I can't think of right now. Today I'm gonna be active in contrast to yesterday I was quiet. I had coffee yesterday, but I plan to have a lot more today!!

I need more exercises and also feedback from people that know what they are doing. I have a challenge to improve my craft and I am excited (really, even when the coffee hasn't kicked in yet) to get on it, work on it. I need more self-discipline. More than ever. Can coffee give you self-discipline? Can anything other than working at it everyday (commitment and all that motivation crap) GIVE one self-discipline? It has to come from within, says the deeper sage inside me. Is that Teresa? My Tree? Coffee grows on bushes I think, or is it vines?

where oh where is my coffee gone? down to my tummy. Ah. Time to go and face the Minus world. Maybe there is some hot coffee somewhere out there.

happy

We have a tree in our house! It is stringed up with lights, tinsel, some small ornaments (cat toys apparently!), and a little angel on top. I've set it up on a timer so it goes on in the evenings, off sometime in the night so it is a soothing night light too, then on again for breakfast, off again for work. Today is however another cloudy gloomy cold morning. I have my coffee and am ready for the morning's writing tasks.

Joy. Joy is different from happiness. Joy entails a sense of deep (preferably conscious) gratefulness, of being alive and able. Happiness is just a extension of joy and the expression / sharing of it comes in our actions and words. I get great joy from just being here. In darkness and in light, those "switches" and timings have been carefully orchestrated to bring me where I am today. It is up to me how I interpret the events. I choose to interpret them in happiness, as it improves my mood, and my writing, and of course eventually, my overall health.

Joy. I am re-invented. I will continue to re-invent towards my ultimate goal -- of being a published author of a fiction piece -- but this initiation process to me seems to be complete. I just have to keep steady on and doing what I know I need to be doing. Writing, reading, scanning markets, editing, and submitting. Second piece, getting feedback and learning from it.

There's a lot of doom and gloom out there nowadays. Financial crisis, housing crisis, unemployment. But one can and must find joy in living, and enjoy life no matter what it throws at you. Lemons and lemonade. Never stop asking. Know thyself and that self is fundamentally GOOD. No matter what anyone else thinks. Life should be fun even if there is no money or drink or food. That's a positive mentality against desperation. When your number's up... well... there's only so much you can do about it! So why fret? Enjoy life, every last second, good to the last drop!

No word prompts today... will keep it for next week. Yesterday I tried to write about death and funerals. I had some trouble with that. I've actually never been to a funeral myself, only watched them on TV. I've seen mourners in real life, but never so far was touched by it directly. You can say I've been extremely naive or lucky, depending how you want tot look at it. But at least I have some support network in place now, that when the inevitable does happen, I'll be able to cope.

We'll probably hit the Christmas markets this weekend with some friends of ours. I'm looking forward to the gluhwein :-) have a nice one!

History

It's like waking up at 6 am to a blanket of snow, knowing there will be cancellations or delays. You can take it easy and wake up slowly. You don't have to rush to work. Shovel off the car with your neighbors, watch the snowplows make the streets free again, and dozily watch some tv while your car thaws out. Yeah, fill up the coffee mug with hot chocolate instead.

You stroll into work after parking in the extra lot as the garage is closed due to snow. Everybody is talking about the snow and how they got out of their house this morning. The change is amazing. The work is easier today, the sun finally comes out and reflects off the snow, blinding the lunch crowd.

Yeay to Barack Obama, Yeay to America! Yeay to the world!

sleepy like a cat

After a few nights of staying up until midnight and waking early(ish), I wanted to lie in this morning. Shower, breakfast, coffee does not seem to be working today either. It's bright and sunny outside, but my eyes feel puffy and my head is in a cloud. My body is achey. What in the world did I do?

Both cats are asleep, facing opposite directions on the couch, and yes lined up the same way. Perhaps they are in the same cow grazing behavior that's been sensationalized with data from Google Earth. I think after my morning errands, I am going to need a nap too. Then I can go back to work.

Have a nice one. Maybe I'll post something here later.

If you haven't noticed

Well, I've stopped reading "One Year to a Writing Life". It's a bit too earthy crunchy for me at the moment. I need now something more Kick Ass or Bad Ass. More practical. More real.

I need Stephen King. "On Writing".

There's something I trust about little Stevie (okay, he's not little anymore). But he was also my companion growing up, I read so so many of his books and stories, my parents were worried. I was a weird child that read too much weird stories. Maybe that's my issue, my stories aren't weird enough yet and that's why they're not drawing me in. Anyway, back to Steve. I trust him more than I do Susan, even though I've met Susan and been to her workshops and heard her stories.

And in the end it's all about who do you believe who do you trust? I wanna try Steve's method. I don't want to be in this "limbo" state anymore. I know Steve's brave... he had to have his infected ear drained with a needle when he was just 6 years old. Three times. Ugh.

So with my new fangled shiny red toolbox filled to the brim with vocabulary, grammar and style, I'm gonna set concrete goals. And I'm just gonna freakin' write. See what we see. No more boring plotting, no more pre-editing. The story's just gonna come outta my head into my hands into the computer. First at 1,000 words per day. Everyday except Sunday. Long hand works too. (harder to count words but lets allow 8-10 handwritten per day.) I miss long hand. Really. Next month, 2,000 words per day. That's about 10 typed pages. Woosh!

With this toolbox I ain't gonna get discouraged to tackle on projects that seem hard. Because I know at least I have the right tools. No siree Bob. Mindset and all, fresh and ready. I want to be weird, mysterious and wild in t-shirt and jeans.

See ya tomorrow... going to get my coffee now and get to work!!

Prompts take 3

Ex 3. Your character says. "This morning I woke up and the first thing I noticed was..."

"He was finally gone," Sabine sighed. "It took months of nagging and pushing and packing, but today it was done." Sabine closed her eyes and relaxed her shoulders. A thin curl of a smile rose upon her lips and her cheeks flushed. "There was no note, no nothing."

"Now you can go on and live your life," I said to her. It had been a year in reality I counted in my head also this morning, before Sabine and I met for our weekly afternoon coffee. I was also relieved, that I wouldn't have to hear more stories of Jeffrey, when Sabine broke up with him over a year ago, and hashing over and over how hard it was him to find another apartment in the City.

A mooch and a slob, Jeffrey lost all respect I might have had for him, had he left right away. Sabine once thought he had so much going for him, of course being an architect. It seemed the only designs Jeffrey could sell were for colossal jungle gyms and kiddie parks. Unfortunately, the City was running out of room. When he couldn't pay rent anymore, Sabine felt sorry for him and said he could stay as a flatmate until he got a better and paying job. That was 6 months ago.

"Yes! Finally I feel like I can invite some hottie over!" Sabine laughed. "It was such a battle wasn't it?" sipping her coffee, she shook her head.

I wondered if she really understood the toll the sham boyfriend had taken on her. On us. I took her free hand, rubbed it and replied smiling as widely as I could "well, yes I could come over now..."

....

dry lightning

Last night I made this killer tiramisu from scratch. Yup, even made my own "lady fingers". Ok, the coffee liqueur I did not make, but as far as raw ingredients go, I did my best. There was nothing to celebrate, we just like eating tiramisu!

Today the weather is picking up and getting better. I have another potential pitch tomorrow (on the science end), and the writing is coming along. I don't have any classes planned, but that's okay. I will get more from them once I have about 25,000 words under my belt.

I really had a rough night sleeping, perhaps it was the latte, or the tiramisu. Oh well, more caffeine or at least a nap later, then I have my writing group meeting tonight. Finally!

Sometimes I get stuck on one thought, and have to bore through it. This seems wasteful if you are observing from the outside. And maybe it is. I have several pieces so it makes sense to work on another when one isn't going so well or gets stuck.

Ah, 10 o'clock. Time to get back to work. Have fun! :-)

Orange Juice

Fresh orange juice in the morning is super. I just wish it also had caffeine. That would be something, to combine the yummy taste of OJ with the power of coffee. It would help cut down on the consumption of liquids in the morning, just in case you were stuck on the train for an hour or so.

I hope you enjoyed the series on "The Woman with Half a Smile". It was about 2500 words, and had only 5% passive voice. Which is pretty good for me, as in my previous life, all I wrote in was in passive voice. I want to clean it up and see if someone is interested in publishing out there in the big blue marble, but not so stressed about it. It was more a practice exercise for me.

Let's see, progress? The home writing office is taking shape. It's still a colossal mess with papers strewn everywhere and bags needing to be sorted. The publication plan is still a bit a ways off (target April 30), and the book is culminating slowly like a mild tropical storm (target full very rough draft 1 August) Also, I have lots of essays and smaller things started, but many miles to go before they sleep: they need to be finished, polished, incubated, shared, re-written, and finalized.

Getting resources together seems to be difficult, but it may be I haven't tried hard enough yet. I am still pacing myself, and this week is still considered a vacation / testing ground week.

Next week, the real jobs begin! Of course if you feel like commenting at any time feel free to do so by pressing the comments button (looks like a little envelope I believe).

Catch up more tomorrow,
TheWriterEngineer or TheEngineerWriter (feeling a bit dyslexic this morning, need more coffee!!!)