We’ve been spending time at the house on the coast. Lots to do to recover from winter.

We were told it’s been a dry winter. You can’t tell it by the vegetation. Everything has grown like crazy. A little, or a lot of rain and a little sun, really makes the plants put on growth spurts.

We chopped and raked and picked up limbs and pine cones. Some of the plants have totally overgrown others. I cut the growth back around the azalea to find that it was blooming.

Actually working in the yard is great for creativity. There’s nothing like digging around in the dirt to puzzle out a plot problem.

We have a lot of ferns that we didn’t cut before we left last fall. That means they have all these dead fronds. I’ve been pruning and pruning on them. Some are so bad that I was afraid any new growth had been pushed out.

When I cut last year’s growth away, there were little green shoots all curled up and ready to reach up to the sun. The plants looked better than I had ever imagined.

Recently, I edited a manuscript that I hadn’t looked at for awhile. I knew it needed a lot of work. It was an effort I started for National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) one year. All I had was a REALLY rough draft.

I knew the story started in the wrong place. (I know very few writers who start where the story begins on the first pass.) However, I had a place to repurpose the first part, so it needed to be edited as well.

I worked through the first chapter, cutting away the dreck and expanding the texture of the story. (My first drafts are very sparse, just touching on the bones of the story.)

The final result surprised me. Some good writing  lurked underneath the first-draft drivel. I really like the characters. Some day they will have a wonderful story.

I’ve always known that gardening stokes creativity. But I never realized that trimming greenery would help me find joy in editing.

What simple task renews your muse? Leave a comment below and share it.

Write on,

Lynn

Image by mpclemens via Flickr

NaNoWriMo 2009 has kicked off. Some people are shooting ahead and some are lagging behind. Whatever your status, just keep going. NaNo is a great way to get some words out of your head and down on your favorite levitra 10mg medium.

The 40 mg zocor NaNoWriMo forums are a great place to get ideas, inspiration, and encouragement. I love the technology forum, since I can always find new toys…I mean tools.

Here purchase cheap viagra online are links to some of them.

NaNoWriMo Report Card for Google docs Save the report card to your google docs. This is a handy way to access your spreadsheet from any location.

NaNoWriMo Report Card for Open Office If you are running Open Office, this report card file is for you.

Standard NaNoWRiMo Report Card for Excel This is from the guy who is kind enough to create a new one every year.

Write or Die website A great website Best online prescription to get you to keep writing. Terrible consequences happen when you stop before you reach your goals.

Now Write or Die has a desktop version. It lets you write while you are off-line. It also lets you challenge others to word wars. Of course you have to be online to issue a challenge. It only costs $10 and is well worth it.

Your internal editor should already be on vacation. He/she/it will have plenty of work after NaNoWriMo is over.

Your internal critic should get lost and stay lost. Your characters’ voices should be the only ones in your head.

No matter what your preferred method, keep putting those words down and moving your story forward.

Drop me a note and tell me about your favorite NaNoWriMo technology.

Write on,

Lynn

I made it back to Portland in time for last month’s meeting of Rose City Romance Writers. This great group of writers support each other in every level of their writing careers. The meetings are informative and inspiring.  I always can’t wait to get back to the keyboard when I leave the meetings.

After a great presentation on promotion (one of my favorite subjects) by a couple of the rising stars of the group and celebrating some great new contracts, a bunch of us went out to lunch. I finally got to catch up with a few friends who I haven’t seen in several months.

One friend has recently started writing again after several months of dealing with life’s obstacles. She bemoaned the fact that her writing wasn’t flowing as smoothly as it had in the past. The words weren’t coming easily, and her writing didn’t evoke emotions of the reader as it had in the past. She asked me how to improve her writing skills.

You’ve probably had this problem at one time or another. When you sit down to write, your fingers don’t fly over the keys or your words would be better gracing the bottom of the bird cage instead of shining in your next novel. › Continue reading…