Month: July 2004

Got some good writing done yesterday! I didn’t think I would but around 11:30pm, it just starting rolling out. Long Lea (LL) is coming along nicely and I am happy with it so far. It still doesn’t look as if this one will be as large as Simple Sarah (SS) but who knows? Writing LL is my way of getting into rewriting SS. I will most likely submit SS first then later LL or perhaps both at once. Who the heck knows?

LL is taking longer because I am kind of re-reading what I did the day before as well as doing research. This timeline thing is going to either kill me or make me stronger, I am not sure which and I am not sure which is better.

In Real Life, not much going on. This identity theft thing is a big pain since my soon to be former bank still has not sent the PIN to the new cards. A lesson we learned is that we need CASH on hand at all times. We used to, then the ease of the debit cards took control. I find that I am getting back into the ham radio habit, I mean hobby. I only have the one rig in the truck right now but hopefully that will change in September. There is a huge hamfest in Shelby then and I hope to save up enough to get the Yaesu FT-897 (insert Tim Taylor grunt) or perhaps the Icom 706 alphabet-soup but most likely the Yaesu. Donations accepted.

WANTED: BETA READERS. What’s a beta reader? Beta readers are folks who read either chapters, stories or the novel to give the writer active feedback. We writers tend to get so caught up in our stories that we can’t see the whole picture, er, storyline.

Anyone interested in becoming my first beta reader or two?

My what a busy day! First, we didn’t believe Lorna would get done with work soon enough to make neither the hamfest nor going to Maryville. Then, she did get done in time so we hit the road to try and get both in. Traffic on I40 going over to TN was horrendous. We barely made it to the hamfest! There was no way we could get to Maryville and home all in the same day. Instead, we went ‘adventuring’ which translates into ‘let’s go down this road to see where it goes’. We wound up somehow at Max Patch and then over to Hot Springs and finally back home. Took us about three hours. Got home and collapsed! I have since been updating the paulaoffutt site and making it accessible and purty.

Haven’t gotten any writing done today again. But I did see some things on our ‘adventure’ today that has me thinking.

NOTICE! I have put a poll up to gather opinions on this part of my website. If you are reading this, please take a moment to take it. On to the poll!

Not gotten any writing done today, but I did some major updating to my websites. I own several (six I think) but only two are active, the others are placeholds or redirects. Anyway, check out Paula Offutt dot com, if you wish.

As of August 1st, all of the writing parts to this site (holyroller.org) are moving to the paulaoffutt.com site. Once the are finished moved, I will change all the pages here to ‘ooopsy’ pages with the new links. I will keep updates here of how the move is going. As of today, the nonfiction pieces are now also over there. They are still here too.

On Tuesday I went to visit my friend KS4OX in Charlotte. I had borrowed two rigs from her and really needed to get them back before they were damaged by the dust and mold and stuff here. We had a blast! She’s got a Beagle for a service dog, Marley, and it was a hoot to see Marley keep big Rottie Joella at bay!

Anyway, I got no writing done that day and I got nothing done yesterday due to a massive headache. I bumped my head Tuesday and it did very little to help the already existing headache. I did some research and did some re-reading of Simple Sarah. But today I have gotten some writing done! 3474 so far today, bringing Long Lea to just under 18K. Cool, eh?

In Real Life, I had a headache. And I got a boo-boo on my noggin. And Bele Chere starts tomorrow. And the WCARS Hamfest is Saturday. And my good friend Martha called to invite us over Saturday afternoon to her place in Maryville TN. Suddenly I have a life. But did it have to happen all on the same weekend??

UPDATE: I am done for the day I believe. Word count for today: 5560. Total for Long Lea: 19,791.

Wowzers, I got some major work done last night. Worked on Long Lea and got 3606 words done! Can ya believe it?!?! Me either! It felt good: the words flowed, the thoughts just happened, and the plot was filling out wonderfully.

I tried to do some background world-building kind of stuff too but I got stuck. I am going to try and get it done today, at least back up and make notes of what I already have.

In Real Life, well, its been quiet here. Everyone is fine, everyone is okay, and the world still turns.
This just up! I have a poll I am taking, purely for the giggles of it. I tried to do it in CGI script but kept getting ‘recipient’ field errors. So, I did it this way. Have fun!

I did fairly well on Long Lea yesterday, getting about 880 words. Yesterday was a rough day – I had a killer headache all day that just recently went away. Anyway, working on Long Lea has given me a boost of writer confidence, just what I need to get going.

In Real Life, Lorna had a doc appt yesterday which may lead to surgery soon. She seems to be handling it better than I am. She is so dang healthy that I am not used to being the one on THIS side of the table!

Did some thinking today, about which project to concentrate on and follow through. This hopping from one story to the next is not getting anything done. So, after discussing it with Lorn, I decided to work on Long Lea. I will probably do some on Simple Sarah at the same time, since they are so linked.

I also did some calculations today. I have the Ultra Marathon (500K) and the Insanity Marathon (1000K) that I am working toward. In order to reach the Ultra, I need to do an average of 924 words a day for the rest of the year. And to reach the Insanity, I need to do almost 3850 words a day. Guess which one I will be reaching? Dang, I so hoped to reach the big one. Be sure to check out the word count log to keep track of how I am doing.

In Real Life, Mom and Jim’s house flooded. The water reached over 6″ in the first floor of the house. All of their vehicles are fine. They lost phone, AC and the pilot light to the water tank. As of today, all is back on. Lorna heard on the news that their area got over a foot an hour of rain. Three dams broke in central NJ but Jim doesn’t think it had anything to do with their damage. This flooding happens when it rains this hard at the same time as high tide.

I had some ideas and decided to re-write Wayback. Or at least the first part or so. I am thinking it will make a good kid/YA book if I divide it up into parts. I must be on the right track since I got 1350 words on it last night!

I really need to get caught up on my 2YN project. I am about 6 or so lessons behind. Perhaps that is a definate top on my ‘to-write’ list. Or at least a close 2nd.

In real life, my parent’s house was flooded last night. They live at the end of a cul-de-sac. This flooding has happened before and that one resulted in three of their cars being totalled: my stepdad’s, my brother’s and his wife’s cars were almost completely submersed. Last I heard from Mom last night, the water was coming in through the garage door as well as into the downstairs. Jim got Mom’s van as far forward as he could and his van was parked up onto the yard as far forward as he could go. Glad it didn’t happen while I was there! I would be driving my truck up their steps to the second floor!

Got some writing done yesterday after all. I am also in the process of updating the writing part of my website. Keep an eye on the listing below for address changes or new pages. You can also check the site update log if you are really bored.