The trailers for the movie ‘Shutter Island’ drew me in and I bought the book the other day.  Could not put it down.  Stayed up till 2:00 AM this morning and had to go to bed because I couldn’t keep my eyes open.  First thing this morning, I put on a pot of coffee and sat in my cozy reading chair and finished it.  It was so good.  I won’t spoil anything by telling you more about the story but if you like suspenseful mysteries, you have to read this one.  Now I am counting down the days for the movie.

Spent the afternoon with my writer friend Sara.  We like to get together at least once a week.  We usually meet at Barnes and Noble and we discuss writing and books.  We have both been struggling with finishing our most recent attempts at novel writing.  We have both been struggling with either trying to find a job or supporting a spouse who is trying to find a job.  I do think that has taken a little bit of the drive to complete the work – out of us.  On top of it, she had a trip to the Emergency Room recently and is waiting to follow up with her own doctor and because of a debilitating headache has found it hard to do anything, let alone write or read. 

I have gone back to basics and started reading ‘The Writer’s Book of Days’ again and doing the daily writing prompts.  I actually wrote a pretty good short story the other day, if I do say so myself.  Since I have published one short story in the past, I think I can tell when something might be worth sending out and this is the first story in a while that has jumped out at me and encouraged me to submit it somewhere.  This week I will edit and polish and start looking for a home for it. 

Doing the prompts has helped pull me out of whatever was holding me back with my writing.  It gives me something to warm up with before I jump into the story I started in November.  I think part of my problem was Nanowrimo.  Though it is a great way for me to get a huge amount of words written on a project, it also leaves me feeling a little disenchanted when it is all over.  I know it isn’t supposed to be perfect, it is a first draft but I spend so much time pumping it out that by the time the end of November comes, I’m getting burned out with the whole process.  I lose my desire to write.  The other thing that has made me slow down and reassess what I’ve been doing is the fact that though I am thrilled to be starting a new job next week, I know I will not have any time to take off to attend any kind of writing conference this year.  That fact took a little steam out of my sails.  But now I have something to look forward to next year.  I am going to take a little more time to finish my novel, continue writing some more short stories and start another novel this year.  Hopefully I can start planning to attend a few conferences in 2011.

I will have a new Write a Novel with Me post – hopefully tomorrow.

In the meantime keep writing,

Virginia