I Finished an 8,500 Word Short Story

When sudden stroke or paralysis knocks a person off the track of life, it takes time and rehabilitation to re-order things. One starts walking again one baby step at a time.

In my recovery from my writing paralysis, it is similar. Time helps. Writing therapy (exercises) does, too. Finally, I reach the point where I decide I am going to finish a story I started two years ago, and I do. It feels good. A friend of mine, an avid reader, looks at it and says it works. That feels good, too. I like the story. That feels best.

Final editing and getting the story formatted for publication comes next. Baby steps. Each step gets me closer to my goal of professional author.

Breakthrough

Today the breakthrough came! I finished the first chapter of the re-write on Dead with Envy. This is huge. The dreaded writer’s block is gone! Tomorrow, I’ll finish chapter two.

Breaking It Into Manageable Steps

My daughter is a sweetheart. She sent me a very helpful article from www.daringtodeliverfully.com. I am feeling overwhelmed and uncertain as I am finalizing the book for publication and starting the marketing process.

The article, called “What a Masked Vigilante Can Teach You about Goal Achievement–The Zorro Circle,”  by Marelisa offers concrete steps to take in the midst of mental chaos to restore order and purposeful action.

The basic idea of “The Zorro Circle” is to set a large goal and then select a small area of that goal to conquer. Once you’ve conquered that small area, you expand the circle. As you conquer each successive “Zorro Circle”, you get closer and closer to achieving your goal. Here are the five basic ideas behind “The Zorro Circle”:

• Research shows that when we feel that we’re in control of a situation, we’re happier and able to perform at a higher level.

• When a task is very large, we lose the feeling of control and influence, we feel overwhelmed, our brains are hijacked by fear and stress, and our abilities plummet.

• You take control of the situation by starting with small, manageable steps.

• Once you’ve mastered one small area, you expand that mastery outward.

• Keep expanding outward until you’ve achieved your goal.

This morning I applied the principles of “The Zorro Circle” to work on a marketing blurb for the book to be used at the Creatures, Crime & Creativity Conference this weekend. I am a panelist at the conference, and will be introducing my book.

All of this is new to me, and the novelty (combined with my own inexperience) paralyzed my thought processes. My daughter came to my rescue.

Consequently, I focused on writing the blurb that will go on the promo materials I am handing out at the conference and nothing else. I finished two versions and sent them out to my beta readers for feedback.

Later this morning, I will create and print the advertising pieces. It’s nice to be back on track.

3 Days of Writing and 2,800 Words

It’s Day 3 of the writing getaway. I am realizing this was a great idea. My production dropped a bit on Day 3. I think it’s because the writing I did  was mostly dialogue. It’s slower going when I write dialogue. It takes up more page space, but yields less words.

Outside the window of the room where I am working there is an abundance of air traffic today: black unmarked helicopters, small planes, commercial jet aircraft, brightly painted helicopters. It’s noisy, so I am declaring my writing done for the day.