Wednesday Update

Good morning, my lovelies!!!

I hadn’t planned on taking a vacation from social media, but I’ve learned to listen to my body. Sometimes you have to push through the pain, but most of the time it’s better to hang back and rest. The last few weeks were rather ugly, and stressful, and hurtful, and far too political. It seemed like empathy and compassion were in short supply.

Unfortunately, I can’t repair the world, but I can take care of myself. I can regroup so I’m mentally healthy to fight another day. That’s what I did. Rather than get bogged down in depression, I (temporarily) cut the source of my anxiety: Facebook, Twitter, etc. While I enjoy seeing what my friends have been up to, and I love a good cat meme, I also think that too much social media can have a negative influence on anyone going through a vulnerable time in their life.

So, instead of social media, I did some ACTUAL socializing. I had a “sisters day,” which was awesome! I went to a book club meeting at my local library—always fun. I was approached by a long-lost relative (the second since I had my DNA tested through Ancestry) and that compelled me to put more effort into my family tree. I found TWO family members who fought in the War of 1812. And best of all, I was able to trace one branch of my family tree all the way back to a village in England. I had ancestors who came to the United States back in the early 1700’s who were Quakers, and fortunately for me, their descendants kept records in their bibles, which are still in existence! In fact, one of my distant relatives scanned these notes and put them online, so I am able to sit in my living room, more than one hundred and thirty-eight years after his death, and read the words written by my 5th great-grandfather, Silvanus Minton, in his own handwriting. How amazing is that???

And…to top everything off, I was able to FINALLY finish writing the latest chapter in the book I’ve been working on and send it to off to my Beta Readers. YAY!!!!!!!!!!

I got hung up with ONE chapter, and couldn’t move forward until I got it right. I wrote the chapter too quickly and it didn’t match up with my outline. Worse still, it became a useless chapter because it didn’t contribute anything valuable to the story. The only thing I could do to get past this point was to erase what wasn’t working and start over. You can polish a turd, but in the end, it’s still a turd. LOL

It made much more sense to erase and rewrite. If I’d done this sooner, I could have saved myself a LOT of hassle. Live and learn. It’s much faster to create new content than to spend WEEKS trying to fix something that simply isn’t working.

Also, I love sending out chapters as I finish writing them. Everyone reads at their own pace. I feel like I’m getting the feedback that I need without bogging anyone down with an entire manuscript. Plus, I no longer feel as though I’m writing in a vacuum! I highly recommend the use of Google Docs if you’re a writer and looking to try this method. Your readers can use any device to access your documents, including their cellphone. I like to keep each chapter in its own document file, for ease of use. This saves me from messing around with previously written chapters (editing) rather than writing the next chapter.

So what have you been working on? Let me know in the comments!

xo Juli