It's Okay if You Get Sidetracked. Just Re:Focus.

I know it’s been forever since I posted. But I’ve still been journaling on an almost daily basis. Here’s an entry for your enjoyment, and possibly amusement. Don’t judge me, lol.
There’s stuff that's a lot more crazier than this in those pages. :)

Image  ©Helen H. David

Well, I just commented on a blog. May not seem like such a big accomplishment, but it is for me. I did something on my checklist. That's great progress for my ADD self that finds it really hard to join in on a conversation. I'm a pretty quiet person around people I don't know. I usually don't talk at all. I'm too busy observing. But I digress... 

Back to leaving the comment. I haven't done that in more than a year. And I was so ashamed that I haven't posted anything to this blog in so long, I wouldn't even put a link to it in my comment. Sigh. I only made that checklist last week. I love my blog. Really, I do. But seriously, I've got to get on the ball. I can't neglect my writing anymore. Now that Angst and his other half are gone, my life has returned to some sense of normalcy. Thank God. Don't get me wrong. I DO miss them. Some days I miss them terribly. But it's better for all of us this way. Anyway...

The good news is that VACATION from the day job is August 8-12! I'll have a whole week to work at home! WOOT! I've been really busy. I've found some more content sites, and joined two new freelancing groups on LinkedIn. I really like that site, and I've got to network more on there. I've got Google+ now, but I haven't really done anything with that.

Really, the last thing I need is another social network time suck. Seeing as I strongly dislike Facebook, I'm hoping I can use Google+ for my writing. I spend way too much time on the internet (mainly reading Tweets) and not putting words down as it is. And while online I found some videos on YouTube about writing for Demand, and I'm watching them. So I'm still online and not putting very many words down. But, I'm learning about SEO and keywords, and branding and how to use social networking to further my business. So it's not totally unproductive. A writer has to find these things out to be successful. I've been looking at how much domain registration and hosting will cost, and trying to think of a name for my website besides helenhdavid.com. That just sounds so boring to me. 

And I'm working it out in my brain how I can travel and do travel articles and have the writing pay for my traveling. And in the meantime I've been trying failing at Camp NaNoWriMo. I'm supposed to be at, oh, 29k or so today. I'm at 6200 or so. And I'm trying not to beat myself up about it, because that's more fiction than I've written in about eighteen months. I'm still working on the guilt of not doing NaNo last November. Moving TWICE in the thirty days of November is a damn good reason, and I have to keep reminding myself that it's a reason and not an excuse. And when I moved I accidentally packed up my Writer's Planner! I know, right? And I just found it the other day and went and bought ink and printed a new one for the rest of the year. It's the only planner I've ever stuck with for 10 straight months, and I was lost when I didn't have it. Now I can get back on track, and try to find some sense of balance between getting the words down on the page and learning about the writing business as much as possible.

Sometimes I hate the internet because it's such a time suck. It draws me in, and before you know it, I've clicked a hundred links. It's just that there is so much interesting stuff on there! But it's really not the internet's fault. It's my time management. And I'm working on that. No more internet until I get some words down as a warm up when I get home from work. Most days 700-1000 or so words is my usual warm up.

I've had to quit worrying about if Jesus is coming back, if the NWO is going to take us all to the FEMA camps tomorrow, and if Elenin is a meteor or a brown dwarf. And speaking of Elenin, just what the hell is it? And is it going to come between the earth and the sun and give us three days of darkness like it says in the book of Revelation? I don't know. And if it does, there's not a damn thing I can do about it. So why worry about it? Why worry that the banks are going to fail when your balance is $10? Why worry if Michael Jackson is really dead or if he faked is death to get back at the media for crucifying him? Either way, life will still roll on. It's just a waste of mental energy and it ends up affecting me physically. And I can't keep worrying about if there's enough time to make all my dreams come true before Jesus comes back anymore. (I still love Jesus, though. But Buddha saved my sanity. I don’t have to worry about if he’s coming back or not.)

Worrying about things I have no control over is paralyzing me. Even though it’s in my nature to worry, I’ve got to stop. Seriously, I have enough grey hair as it is. I've just got to keep taking those steps. Baby steps they may be, but I've got to keep moving forward.

Like writing more sample articles for the applications to those freelancing sites I found, which I'm going to do this week. I've joined Klout, and it's helping me see what I've been doing wrong in the social network realm, and what I've been doing right. I've been working on my platform for three years. Sometimes I think that's way too long, but I remind myself that I only started thinking about my writing as a business three years ago, and that I've been doing this in my spare time while honing my writing skills. I think I've made progress, but I've also wasted some precious time. Time that I can never get back. I'm going to use my time more wisely. Having my planner will help tremendously with that. Don’t worry that I won’t use it. I made it myself, and it’s amazing! It went through some changes, but it works for me, and that’s what matters. And I’ll use it to block my time to keep my internet addiction under control.
    I've heard that a person will work harder for themselves than they will for anyone else. I'm willing to do that to make this dream come true. I don't want to get rich. If that happens, then great! But I just want my writing to pay my bills and have some left over for a change. I don't want my picture beside the definition of "starving artist" in the dictionary. And I don't think that's too much to ask.
     And my biggest dream is that I want my writing to change the world. It's already changed me. And if it is a blessing to just one person, I've done a bang up job. If it blesses hundreds, well that's wonderful. If more, then YAY! But I've got to do it. I have no other choice. Seriously, there are other writers in my family. I think it's in the DNA or something. It has to be. Because...

You had me at "Write."

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Test Post: Blogging on MyTouch

Image via CrunchBase

I blogged on my Blackberry. I got this MyTouch in February, and I'm just now trying mobile blogging from this phone. Yes, I'm easily distracted.

Anyhoo, I'm using Blogger-droid from Android Market. The photo is from one of my Picasa photo albums. (Photo was edited. See below.) Picasa is required for this app. Don't like that, but only because I don't use Picasa very much.

First thing I checked was if it could save drafts. It does. Second thing I noticed is that the predictive text function isn't working. I don't like that, either. Guess I'd better brush up on my texting accuracy skills, or find another app that will allow predictive text to work.
 
My point in all this is that I don't have the luxury of having a job that allows me to bring my netbook to work anymore. That is what saved my ass during NaNoWriMo last year. So the time I am at the keyboard has been greatly reduced.

I have to find a way to blog on the go as well as work on my novels on the go. My productivity must increase in proportion to the reduced amount of time I now spend at my computer. Hopefully this phone will save my ass this November. Saving as draft now to check if that works. It does.

I have Dropbox, Documents to Go, and the amazing Evernote all on my phone for working on my novels. But I need to blog more often. I got a kick in the creative pants in June on Twitter from my friend Warren Wooden of PLR Internet Marketing. Thank you for that kick, Warren. I needed it. Moreover, I deserved it. Six months with no post! *hangs head in shame* I told you I get distracted easily, didn't I? *checks post* Yes, I did.

I'm also going to check out blogaway 4.2 from Android Market, and also Mail2Blogger with my Gmail. So there will possible be more posts similar to this one. I know they aren't interesting. Sorry 'bout that.

Published with Blogger-droid v1.4.7

Update: Predictive text is working in edit mode. Links are a pain in the ass on the phone. And I won't lie. I've got that Honest Scrap Blog Award thingie on the sidebar, so I have to be honest. I updated and edited some of this post and changed the post pic using Zemanta on Elvira, my trusty desktop eMachine. And I am not ashamed to admit that. Some habits are hard to break. ;)
Update2: blogaway 4.2 from Android Market won't work right on my phone. That is really sad because that app rocks! It lists all your blog posts and saves drafts. Predictive text works in it. You can even read blogs with it, but it doesn't automatically load my Google Reader, so you have to add the blogs URLs you want to read manually. I don't like manually adding anything nowadays. If the bugs were fixed, this would be the best blogging app for Android in my opinion. I'm following them on Twitter @blogaway to hopefully find some solutions.

Oh, well. I guess I'll stick with Blogger-droid for now. Less temptation to read instead of write that way. And God knows I am distracted easily enough these days. ;) It's a pretty cool app. It lists all my published posts, and when I click on them they come up in my browser so I can see my whole blog. I like that. It seems a little unstable, though. Sometimes the page won't load when I click on "Published Posts." Other than that, it's very good. If the instability continues, I'll have to uninstall and stick with Evernote and Mail2Blogger. I just can't label in Mail2Blogger, and that's pretty important for my blog posts. What's the point of mobile blogging if I have to get on the computer and edit my post for something as trivial as a label? ;)

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Steal This Post and Show the World: Please Copy, Please Share. Please Care Enough Paste Everywhere

This is the ONLY time I will ask you to PLEASE STEAL THIS POST. Please, please copy and paste this video everywhere. Permission from the creator of the video to copy and distribute this video is given in the video information.
Thank you DreamChild777 on Twitter for the link love, and JimUFO on YouTube for creating this video.

I fear for my planet. Even a dog won't soil his bed. We are the most intelligent species on the planet, and this is what we have done and continue to do on a daily basis. *smh*

No more words are needed for this post.

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New Year, New Resolve, New Horizons

Happy New Year, everyone!

I've decided to set some goals for my writing for 2010. I say goals instead of 'resolutions' because those things never pan out for me. They are usually forgotten by Valentine's Day. So far:



Fiction
* I will complete my first draft of "Call the Four Corners" by Jan. 31st.
* I will start the 2nd draft of "Cast the Circle Widdershins" on Feb. 1st. Completion date is 5/31.
* I will start the 2nd draft of CT4C on 6/1. Completion date is 10/1. This will give me time to prepare for the 2010 Muse Online Writer's Conference that begins on 10/17. (Check the link, I'm listed on the site as a promoter! Thanks, Lea!) I also will work on the story arc for The Willowvale Chronicles series in preparation for another year of insanity otherwise known as NaNoWriMo in November.
* Complete 1st draft of Book Three of The Willowvale Chronicles in November. The title of this one is "Guardians of the Watchtowers."

And if that's not enough, I also plan to take my freelance life to a new level. I haven't done any freelancing since I got sick in Oct. 2008, and at that time I only published a few articles online, and that was just to see if I could. I'd never done any kind of non-fiction before. But at least I took a good long swim in the Fiction Pool from then until now. And I'm not getting out anytime soon.

But I've got to get serious about freelancing. It's looking more and more like freelancing will eventually be my full-time job due to my health. I will still be writing fiction, just in what spare time I have left. But I will make time to work on The Willowvale Chronicle series. While I have made vast improvements since going gluten-free, I still have a long way to go. And I have come to the stark realization that I might never fully recover to the point where I was in May 2008. Sorry to be so depressing, but I've got to face that reality and plan accordingly. It gets reinforced in my mind every night at work that I won't be able to do my job much longer due to chronic fatigue. I have to stop and rest after climbing only 16 stairs. And after doing that repeatedly for 8 hours a night, I'm completely exhausted and in a lot of pain by the time I get home. Making a living exclusively from writing has always been my dream, and I plan on making that dream a reality in 2010.

So here goes:

Freelancing:
eHow
* 100 articles in 2010. Yeah, yeah. I know that sounds like a lot, but it's only two articles/week.

Suite101
* Apply to write for this site.

HubPages
* 100 hubs in 2010. Two hubs/week.

Demand Studios
* Apply to write for this site. I've heard the pay isn't so great, but I can make quick $ here.

Examiner: Huntsville
* Apply to this site and pray I get accepted. This would be freaking awesome for my resume.

I have some other sites I will apply to and post a few articles and see what happens. Most of them don't pay as well as the sites listed above, but they are good sites for beginning freelancer to start with. They include:

Associated Content: This is a money-maker. I'm going to shake it, shake it good.
Bukisa: Looks good.
ConstantContent: Another money-maker.
Elance: This looks interesting.
Helium: I've been a member here for a while now, just got sick and didn't post any articles. That will change this year.
Life123: Just joined this site. Will post articles.
Qondio: Been a member here also. Will post articles here.
Orato: Possibilities.
Red Room: I will be posting articles here once I get a few more freelancing credits under my belt.
Squidoo: Been here a while also. Will make lenses in 2010.
Triond: I'll be trying this one out.
Xomba: Already joined, will post articles on this site in 2010.

Well, as you can see, I've done my homework as far as finding out where to write. And I've set some goals that are attainable. Now I've just got to get it done. So the motto for 2010 is:

Write. Now. As if my life depends on it. Because the reality is that it does.

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