Making the time

I know I can write more than I do. When I put my mind to it I can write 2000 words a day. I just have to put my my to it every day. My problem is Writer ADD. There are so many things I want to do when I get home from work. One of them is writing. The rest – spending time with the boyfriend, playing with my websites, email, Facebook, read.

I’m taking two online workshops right now on how to be more productive. Yes, one isn’t enough for me, that’s how much help I need. For one we had to list what gets in the way of writing. After looking at my list I realized the only thing that gets in the way is me. I could be more disciplined. The boyfriend is very supportive. He asks me if I’ve done my words for the day. We share the cooking. He does the laundry. There’s no reason I can’t write more in the evenings. The second had us write out our schedule for the day. I looked at that and realized how much time I wasted on email and Facebook. It really isn’t necessary to hit the refresh on email every two minutes. Or hit the refresh on Facebook every five minutes.

If I want to accomplish my goals of finishing one novel, one screenplay and six short stories I have to get cracking. So far I’ve finished three short stories and submitted one. Which is actually more than I had done in the past year and a half. I’ve got another short story on the go. I have my novel input into my Write It Now software so I can figure out what’s missing. And I’ve got 25 pages of the screenplay done. The goals are still doable.

To help me write more I will be keeping Outlook closed until I’ve written my minimum words for the day. I’m upping my minimum words of 100 per day to 500 per day. Facebook will also be closed until I’ve reached the minimum for the day. The big step is getting my office set up. I need my things around me to write. I need my desk and my printer. I need my office supplies. I need my reference books right there so I can flip through them when I need them. I can’t wait to have that. I know I’ll be able to get lots of writing done that way.

No writing for me right now though. I’m off to work.

Until next time…

Cindy

Late to Hell’s Kitchen

If you read the blog regularly you know I tape a lot of stuff because I don’t have a lot of time to watch TV. With the writing and the day job and the boyfriend something had to give. So I’m behind on a lot of my programs lately. I hope to catch up before my shows start up again in September. But one show that wasn’t my show until just a few months ago is Hell’s Kitchen. My boyfriend watched it from the beginning. I never did though. I usually steered clear of any reality type stuff. I’m a fiction girl.

When I met my boyfriend I wanted to like his shows too. We’d have something else in common and could watch them together. Some of his shows I can’t stand. Some of them I love. Hell’s Kitchen is one of them. We just finished watching Season Two. I love Gordon Ramsay. Through all his bluster you can tell he cares. He’s trying to pull the best out of the chefs. I was thrilled that Heather won. After the second episode I had picked her as my favourite. I would love to have some of those recipes. Some of those dishes look so good. I wonder if I’d be able to find them if I searched the internet. I got really excited at one point when the guys were going over how to make one of the sauces but then the camera cut away to something else.

We’ve just started watching Season Three. Can’t wait to see how that one turns out. I don’t have a favourite yet. We’ve only seen the first episode. We’ll be watching more episodes this week, hopefully getting to the end of the season by the end of the week.

Before I can do that I have to get to work. If anyone knows where to find any of the recipes from the show send me an email or comment!

Until next time…

Cindy

Thirteen

Triskaidekaphobia is fear of the number thirteen. It relates specifically to a fear of Friday the 13th. That would be today! Many cultures around the world view the number thirteen as unlucky. And Friday the 13th as the most unlucky day. So how did a number get such a bad rep?

There are a number of theories about how thirteen came to be known as unlucky. And Friday the 13th specifically. In numerology twelve is a number of completeness. Twelve months of the year, twelve signs of the zodiac, twelve hours of the clock etc. While thirteen is considered to be irregular. Combine that with the belief that Friday is an unlucky day and you get a great premise for a movie.

If you look at buildings with more than twelve floors the elevator buttons jump from twelve to fourteen. I don’t know why. They’re not fooling anyone. If you live on “fourteen” you actually live on the thirteenth floor. I would love to see the number thirteen on an elevator button.

I loved it when I read about a group in New York that formed a dinner cabaret club called Thirteen Club in 1881. They laughed in the face of the number thirteen. The first meeting was on Friday January the 13th, 1881 at 8:13 PM. They had thirteen people. They ate in room thirteen. After that similar clubs sprang up. But when people became less superstitious the clubs died down.

There is a ton of information out there on these subjects. I find it all fascinating. Even though I am superstitious when it comes to some things, I’ve never considered thirteen or Friday the 13th to be unlucky. For more on Triskaidekaphobia and fear of Friday the 13th check out this article and this article at Wikipedia.

In 2013 my birthday falls on Friday the 13th! Cool.

Off to work.

Until next time…

Cindy

Add title here

Titles. Blog posts need them. Books need them. Movies need them. Short stories need them. Poems need them. And I suck at them. The only one of those I don’t write is poems. So I have to come up with titles for a lot of different projects. Frankly I’m glad that once I publish my editor will most likely change my title. I don’t get married to my titles because I know they’ll most likely change. If they don’t just come to me in a flash of inspiration I have a hard time coming up with a title. The inspired ones though, I’ll fight to keep. As an example, here are the titles of my complete, still unpublished books.

Highland Deception
Double Deception
Lorelle’s Song (ugh, that one’s really horrible)
Silk Secrets

Highland Deception takes place in the Highlands of course and the hero thinks the heroine has deceived him. In Double Deception my heroine is a twin. For Lorelle’s Song I had no clue what to call it. The heroine’s name is Lorelle and the hero writes her a song to show how much he loves her. The heroine in Silk Secrets owns a lingerie store called Silk Secrets.

Titles are important. In an article in the Huffington Post about what motivates readers to buy books titles are on the list. A good, catchy title means a lot. For me that’s the first thing that usually attracts me. If the title sounds intriguing I’ll pick up the book and read the back cover copy. Then I read the first page. If everything sounds good I’ll buy it.

I was looking at the Chapters list of NYT bestsellers and I gotta say, based on the titles alone I wouldn’t have picked up a lot of those books to even get to the back cover copy. For example: Charlie St. Cloud: A Novel. It’s just not speaking to me. The Passage. Also didn’t speak to me but it was a recommended read by Stephen King in his Entertainment Weekly article so I read the blurb. It sounds like an awesome book. I will be buying it. Maybe even before it comes out in paperback. Swimsuit. I love James Patterson but that title doesn’t grab me either. Not like his older ones – Kiss the Girls, Cat & Mouse, Cradle and All.

Of course if you’re a well known author readers will buy every book you write. I would buy Dean Koontz’s grocery lists if he ever decided to put them into book form. Other authors have to grab me first. And they do that with the title. Publishers know this. That’s why they usually end up changing the title the author originally thought up. Sometimes titles just don’t grab me though so I’ll have to buy those books based on recommendations from other people.

I’m off to work. Maybe on my way I’ll come up with a title for the first book in my urban fantasy series. I love the idea, love the character. Can’t come up with a title for it to save my life.

Until next time…

Cindy

Cheesy movies

There are a lot of them out there. I love a good cheesy movie once in a while. The chessier the better. Now usually I watch cheesy horror movies. Those are my favourites. But this weekend the boyfriend and I watched some cheesy science fiction. And man were they cheesy.

First up was Zardoz. I watched the whole movie and I’m still not sure what it was about. I’d like to know what kind of acid the writers were on when they wrote that movie. The first thing I thought of when I saw the giant flying head and booming voice was The Wizard of Oz. At least I “got” that part of the movie. I have to say it wasn’t Sean Connery at his best. He looked horrible with long hair too. It made him look much older. Okay, so I got that Connery’s character, Zed was a savage trained to kill. I get that the immortals were bored and just wanted death now. It could have been done in a much better way that didn’t make me feel like I was on an acid trip.

Next up was Barbarella. Okay, very cheesy but at least I could follow the story. An evil scientist has disappeared and Barbarella is tasked with finding him and bringing him back. Of course along the way she has sex with just about anyone. Barbarella is a highly sexual astronaut. During her mission she encounters a number of colourful, odd people. Her good heart and innocent nature save her in the end. I have to say, Jane Fonda was seriously HOT back then. I know it’s listed among The 100 Most Amusingly Bad Movies Ever Made in a book by Golden Raspberry Award founder John Wilson. But this is a must see movie.

I’ve watched a number of movies from the late 60′s lately and they all have a huge focus on sex. Looks like things don’t change a whole lot over time.

Well, off to work. Lots of catching up to do because of last week’s teeth problems.

Until next time…

Cindy

It’s the tooth

Today’s post is really late because of my teeth. Since last Wednesday I’ve been having problems with them. Well, it all started almost two weeks ago when one of my teeth cracked. Had that filled then the day after the pain began. Excruciating pain that no over the counter pain meds put a dent in. I’ve seen a doctor and a dentist and now have pain meds that work and antibiotics for the infection.

This all made me think about teeth and toothache superstitions. I knew they had to be out there. There’s a superstition for everything. The teeth did not disappoint. There are too many to list here but some of them include a clean tooth never decays. Chewing hard food strengthens and hardens the enamel. I wish. You can use chewed tobacco as a poultice for a toothache. Yuck. Glad that one’s a superstition. Good teeth are a sign of sexual weakness but bad teeth mean the opposite. Who thought up that one?

How about the ways to prevent a toothache? Wear a spider enclosed in a nutshell round you neck. Shudder. Would never do that one even if it was true. Lots of people wear amulets and talismans to prevent toothaches. If anything besides good oral hygiene worked someone would be getting rich and everyone would know about it. Sometimes toothaches happen. I brush at least twice a day, floss, and use a fluoride rinse. The toothache still happened. At least it’s feeling almost normal again.

I’m off to take more meds and then write before bed.

Until next time…

Cindy