November 30, 2016 Why is success scary?

    I didn't write anything today either.  I'm totally okay with the 176,000 I manged to get over the course of the first 24 days of the month.  Totally.
    My burnout is wearing off.  Today, I was spontaneously thinking about my characters and some things.  I had a few small revelations, but I didn't get them down.  If they're supposed to be there, they'll come back.
    I did get some plot work done.  It's not all of the story line, I'm missing a bit, especially towards the end.  Some of it might need to get moved around.  I do have enough to get through most of the book and plug things in as I go.  That's major.
    Tonight, I'll get Part 3 mapped into my overall plot line Excel sheet.  It's a handy thing.  On the left, I have the days of the week listed.  Across the top, is each of the two main and several major characters.  The events are then plotted out so they lace together.
    Tomorrow, I'm going to do a little bit of painting in the living room.  Then, I'm going to read and grammar-ize two chapters in Part 2.  If I have some time left over, I'm going to come back around to the beginning of Part 3 and start the third draft with the new timeline.  There's no sense in finishing the second draft.  I've changed enough of Part 2 that only the skeleton of the last half of Part 3 remains.
    I also met with one of my alpha readers today and gave her a copy of Part 2.  The last one will go out tomorrow.  That's exciting.  I'm moving along. 
    The lady I met with today, her husband has worked for one of the local magazines.  He gave me contact information to get a hold of someone there to see if they'd like to do a local piece on me.  He also told me to contact the local t.v. stations.  It's kind of intimidating.
    I talked with my husband about it tonight.  He told me that if I want this to do really well, I need to jump in and swim in the deep end.  Why is success scary?  It's not even success at this point.  It's potential success.  And it frightens me.
    I still haven't locked down a book signing with the local Barnes and Noble.  That's been out there since August.  I also had an offer from a local librarian to do a reading.  I told both of them I'd have to think about it.  Why didn't I jump at them?
    My hubby has a good point.  I can continue to be a stay-at-home mom who paints her house and writes/publishes OR I can be an author who paints sometimes... and still stays at home.
    I'm sitting here crying because it scares me to death.
    I'll let you know what happens.

October 26, 2016

  So, I did get two chapters (re)written yesterday for a total of around 5300 words.  Some of that word count is warm-up and me 'interviewing' my characters.  That's a technique I use when I'm staring at a blank page and don't know where to go.  It works really well.
  I spent most of the day avoiding these two chapters.  I have a suspicion that I know too much in my head and I know (at least I think I do... it's possible it could change) what's going to happen to these two and I don't like it.  I had a long discussion with myself (yes... sometimes it has to happen), telling myself that I needed to be true to my story and write these chapters.  It took all day, but I finally got it done.  I feel better now that it is and the whole process produced another chapter that now needs to happen.  It's all good.
  It's busy Wednesday today so I don't know how much I'm going to get done.  I'd like to get two more chapters done today, but with my performance yesterday, I don't if that's going to happen.
  I got the rest of my shipment of my book order in the mail today.  Next week, I'm going to go talk to the local Barnes and Noble to see if they'll put them out.  Maybe there'll be a book-signing too.  We'll see.