Falling in love...

Happy Valentine's Day everyone! Any romantic plans for today/tonight?

I am very lucky to have an amazing hubby to celebrate V-day with, and two adorable little boys. We're going to have our "official" ultrasound this morning to see our baby girl again. Very exciting! I am in love with all of them--all the people I am lucky enough to call my family. We're just planning on having a family dinner, and celebrating together at home. Pretty low key, but hopefully will be fun.

I'm also in love with my new WIP. I got this idea the end of last week, and started writing. I have one document full of notes about the plot and characters, and the actual document, which is already 6,000+ words. (In less than five hours total of writing--despite my excitement level, I had to curtail my writing time over the weekend. SHH got home from Mexico Saturday morning, and I figured it wouldn't be too nice to say "Welcome home! See ya, I'm going to go write!") But even with the lack of writing time, I'm pleased with how much I got done. Not too shabby! It's been a long time since I've been able to feel this excited about my writing, or that I've written something new this fast. Yes, I usually do write quickly, but recently my self-doubt has been a hindrance. Words have been painfully slow, plots hard to decipher, characters kept slipping through my fingers. This new WIP has been flying out, and I LOVE it. I am definitely in the infatuation stage. I'm hoping it lasts long enough to bust out a first draft. Then we can move on to the "figuring out what your flaws are" stage, where I can hopefully continue to cultivate my love for this project, despite it's inevitable problems.

Who knew the stages of writing/revising could be so applicable to real relationships? Ooh, except for this stage: the "I've figured out what your flaws/trouble-spots are and now... I'm going to fix them all" stage. In real life, you love someone in spite of their flaws (or maybe because of them). In writing--you find the flaws and you grind them out. You whip your WIP into shape, and make it perfect. Or as close as possible, anyway. But for now, I'm just focusing on having fun and enjoying being in love.

Lots of love for me to be happy about today. How about you?

Change... or be changed

Or something like that.

I'm sure you've heard the saying, "the only constant in this life is change." So better get used to it, right? Can change be a good thing? I like to think so. Some changes are hard, some are even devastating. However, some are exciting and fun. Like my hair. (You thought I was going to be all deep and stuff, didn't you? Ha! Fooled you again!) I love to change my hair. I get nervous about cutting it too short, because it takes FOREVER to grow back out (since it's naturally curly). But I even tried a short 'do last summer. I was brave. And when it comes to color, or variations of style/bangs/etc, I'm all about the change. I thought about posting a whole bunch of pictures from just the last two years to show how drastically I have changed my hair (over and over again!) during that time, but eh. That's probably not interesting to you. Or is it? I can if you'd like. It's almost funny to see what I've done. But anyway, I digress.

So what does this have to do with writing?

Thanks for asking! Let me tell you. Change is good. When you're stuck in revisions, or when you've written yourself into a corner, try changing something. Have the courage to do something drastic if necessary. Even though it might be scary, it could end up being the best decision you ever made.

The thing is, when you change your hair, you know it can easily be fixed if it turns out badly. If you don't like the highlights, get the dark color put back in. Badabing, badaboom. If you try the big change in your manuscript, and end up hating it, you can just change it back to how it was. Delete. Copy and paste. Voila. It never hurts to try, and you might be surprised at what a huge improvement the change might make. At the very least, you'll know you tried, and won't ever wonder, "what if I'd had the courage to ____."

So, what do you say? Any big changes you've been to scared to make, that you're ready to do now after this little pep talk? Come on, don't be shy. And don't be scared. What's the worst that can happen? Besides this: