New inspiration

I, now more than ever, want to flog my stupidvisor (no, that is NOT a type-o).  I won't bore you with all the idiocy about how many times he says he "will" {fill in the blank}, the future never actually coming to pass; or how yesterday I got to sit across a desk in a one on one meeting and be the one mentoring HIM on how better to lead our team with what I would consider common sense things.  No, instead I'm going to tell you about my amazing writer's group who have given me the inspiration I need to *finally* finish my novel and do what I really want to do.

First, I've taken a semi-sabbatical from Facebook.  No, I didn't deactivate my account but I took it out of my tabs that auto load every time I open my browser.  Now that little tab isn't staring me in the face beckoning me to come and waste valuable time when I sit down to my computer.  It's amazing the writing you can get done in fifteen minute chunks of time here and there which would otherwise be wasted just staring at all the links and videos people post trying to sift through to find noteworthy status updates from people you haven't seen in years and who you probably wouldn't recognize if you saw them on the street.

My writing group meeting with our real-life-published-author has really motivated me to get back to writing my novel.  Bottom line, the only major difference between her and any of the rest of us is that she actually finished her manuscript and edited and polished it so she could shop it around (a brutal and painful process though it was) and finally land a deal.  So, step one: finish my manuscript.  Should have been a no-brainer, I know, but hey I've been a busy girl!  Doing the writing exercise was amazing.  To see things I do in other people's writing and learning from each other... it was a fun night full of learning.  And looking back at where we started and how far all of our writing has progressed shows the amount of hard work we've put into learning the craft.  You can't go out and run a marathon without training and the last few years for me have been training for the marathon of writing a novel.  It's almost race day... I can feel the anticipation.  My characters are back, swirling through my head and whispering things to me.  I just need to *gasp* outline the basics of the story (I'm a discovery writer mostly) and work out a few more things that happen in the middle to get to the ending I envision and it will be time to hit the starting line.  Wish me luck!