zerotohero – Linda Nelson

Okay, I’ll admit it. Writer’s Block has set in, or so it seems to have happened to The Dubious Heir. I’m gonna dig a hole in the ground and bury it, that’s what I’m going to do.

When one talks about making plots, isn’t that what they mean?

Graveyard plots for manuscripts you can’t make heads or tails of?

I’m sure I can bury it like a dog buries a bone and maybe go back and dig it up sometime way – way in the future. Probably light years from now.

Archeologist hits a tin box with a shovel. “Hey Max, I think I found something. It is a box with a wad of paper inside with these strange symbols inscribed on it.”

“Wow, those symbols haven’t been used in over a thousand years. Maybe we can translate these papers back at the lab, what do you think? Could it is a lost history file.”

Just in case, I should hide this manuscript better than that. Don’t want some alien come along and think our world is world different than it is.

Pirates, and Gigolos, bah, who needs them. At least I wasn’t writing about vampires and zombies.

Once again I dig a hole – a plot. I used the last plot to bury the manuscript.

So while at work today all I could think about was my Orgarlan Saga. “How the heck am I to plot this story out?” I feel like I have to many characters to keep track of. Maybe I should kill some of them off like was done in the Hunger Games.

I hate killing off characters. I would majorly suck at writing horror, I’m sure of it.

But then again who would have thought that I would be able to write a teen romance and have it come out kind of good?

I can report that I did write two lines for the next book in the Orgarlan Saga. They may not be the lines that I keep in the end, but I did write them down. I made the file – Opened it – it has two hundred words in it. Does my plotting count as word count? I hope – tee he –

The plan is to open this file every night and attempt to write one word, maybe two until this writer’s block breaks. They say it is the only thing one can do to get the muse functioning once again.

How’s your work in progress going?

Dig any plots lately?

Bury any manuscripts where no one will ever find them?

Come tell me about them – I’d love to hear how you went about hiding them.

I’m not much of a goal setter except for maybe in the writing category. The past few years I have been setting my writing goals at one to two books a year. I don’t see this changing much, even though I need new goals. It’s a new year and new goals make old goals the things of the past.

At this time, I’m also supposed to be setting my ROW80 goals for the year.

Oh and it is Football season too!

Here they are:

Hit the treadmill for a minimum of 15 minutes a day.
Write something every day – whether it is blogging or that work in progress.
Write a minimum of 1k words a week. This would equal the word count of a short novel and is my average word count for my already published works.
Cut a minimum of 2k words from the beginning of the manuscript I am currently working on. If I do this as a rule of thumb, it may have a immense impact on how my stories will turn out.

So far for 2014, I have been meeting most of these goals.

Now I want to throw in a bucket list.

How many of you, out there, keep a bucket list?

I’ve had one for many years.

Go surf casting and catch a big fish.
Hike Mount Monadnock with son for his Climb for Recovery they have annually at the Phoenix House, a local drug rehab facility.
Trip to the beach. It’s been a while since I have been to a beach. Hampton would be nice.
Go to a Fisher Cats Ballgame.
I’d like to do some candlepin bowling.
Visit my Daughter and Granddaughter in Upstate New York
Attend the Deb Dixon workshop in May. (Oh right, that would be a writing goal – jeez)
Then here’s another writing one to add even if it fits my bucket list too. Attend the New England Romance Writers Conference. I’ve never been to a writing conference, and it would be neat to attend one nearby where I live.