10:08am Writing Practice 43°/Boise
I've been waking up decently early, which is good, but today I ran into trouble with my laptop and with YouTube. My laptop wouldn't load Firefox and I had to turn it off twice. YouTube must have removed my favorite fireplace video, I spent too much time looking for it but it's gone. It may reappear eventually, I'll keep an eye out. It's my favorite because it's a 10 hour video and the fire is perfect and never changes. Right now I have an outdoor wilderness campfire going. Looks like early morning at the top of some mountain. It's not warm and cozy like a fireplace in a house but maybe it will get my mind outside itself somehow. So now that I'm finally all settled and typing away, what shall I write about with my practice time?
I watched a video yesterday about how to write a book when you're too busy. It was actually excellent but the offer that came at the end for the program he was wanting to sell was for getting published, not for getting the book written. Writing is such a solitary business, I guess everyone is really on their own getting to the final product: a manuscript. Finding the focus and concentration to get the job done is a personal journey and one that I'm still on and maybe always will be. There were some very good points in the program, though, and I plan to watch it again today and take more notes and see if I can put some of the ideas into action. If nothing else, I have that How to Write a Book idea, Freeing the Book Within, that could be outlined. But how in the world can I create that program if I can't do it myself?
The guy who created the program I watched yesterday included some tools that I have to check out today, including EverNote and Scrivner. I've seen those tools before but couldn't figure out how to use them.
I just went on a hunt for writing software and I'm just as clueless as before. The good news is, there's lots of options. the bad news is, it's hard to tell which one would be the best for me. I loved my Student Writing Center program, I used it for many years but they never updated to the newer versions of Windows and now are years behind. Plus, it's a program for children to learn to use a word processor, which is probably why I liked it so much. I've tried Scrivner before and found it too confusing, although there's an online class I can take for that one. I'll bet there's YouTube videos about the other ones, I can check that later. I love writing in this blog format but it's really only suited for journal-type writing.
Anyway, I've got the pan heating on the stove for my breakfast and I'm going to go eat and do some more hunting for software ideas. The fact that I have too many ideas and too many outlines is not a good thing --- I need organization and a way to use what I have already. I'll find it. I fade in and out of the book writing business but I'm always thinking about it in some form. I can only fail if I stop trying and so far, for 20 years, all I do it take breaks. I'll get there. Someday.
