I don’t know why I’m thinking about this tonight, maybe because stuff happened that left me a little sad, but I can’t help thinking about that idea from Stephen Covey about stimulus and response.

That our integrity, how our life shapes up is determined in that small gap between stimulus and response.

My alarm ring at 5 am, I have a choice, get up to do my edits or sleep an extra two hours. My boys are running wild in the house, I can either start shouting at them or take a deep breath and move to another room for 5 minutes to regroup.

Big changes in our life are sometimes created in that tiny sliver of time. Which choice we make depends on our character and sometimes chosing the harder side also builds up our character.

At some point, we stop reacting to events without thought and chose the path towards our life’s big picture. It’s not easy, but it gets easier and small pain of today go away for authentic life blessings of tomorrow.

Wrote 300 words to Ancient Whispers today, a small new scene for my revision. And I addressed 14 editor’s comments, the easy ones. 35 to go!

Blessed Be.

Winter morning by =Kechake on deviantART

My mom always says that there are no guarantees in life. Anything can happen no matter how much you set yourself up for things.

My father always used to say that all you can be certain of is that one day you were born and one day you will die, so you better make sure to have fun in the middle.

I can worry about the publishing market, worry about my future, worry about others but the truth is I have no control over many things.

It’s how I react to those things that sets the tone of my life. Do I succomb to panic and stop writing, do I forget to write what I love to pursue a trend? Do I let a setback or deception veer me off course?

It’s good to plan and I do, a lot. But I don’t know if I’ll be there tomorrow. So I leap and plunge, take a chance. Sometimes I fall flat on my face, sometimes things actually work. When they don’t, just like the proverbial cat, it’s time to scramble on my feet, and move on.

Did I fall? Moi? No way!

Nice things today in my writing life. A good 2000 words written and a lovely lovely surprise.

The very talented Monica Burns thanked me in her acknowledgements of KISMET, her brand new release with Berkley, for some help I gave her with French! She is wonderful and what a great romance she wrote!

And I get right back to her with “Merci mon amie”

Blessed Be

Steampunk Assassin by ~Conceptbloke on deviantART

I bought a book today featuring essays from many famous writers. It’s called The Time to Write or something like that.

I love reading blogs from other writers but sometimes curling up with a non-fiction book is just what I need in order to resource myself.

How do I find the time to write? I’d love to say that I have such discipline that, no fail, I’m up at 5 am and write my 1000 words daily. That’s the plan but it doesn’t always work.

I try though, I try hard. I try half of that which means that for the last 5 months I’ve gotten up at 6 or earlier everyday. I’ve written, yes, anywhere between 500 and 1500 words. But sometimes, I’ve brainstormed and sometimes, when I was so drained from the stress of life, I just wrote in my journal.

The discipline of waking up an hour before everybody is there. I don’t succeed everyday but I do go forward.

I noticed that during the holiday I wrote about 7000 words in 2 weeks. I could not write at all during the day, but I squeezed writing in that one hour alone in the morning.

I try so hard to be perfect and set my goals so high that I’m always bind to fail but sometimes I can look back and say that good enough is not bad, it’s not bad at all.

500 words today and a good constructive time planning the third and last act of Ancient Secrets. I hate writing in the dark, not knowing what next, so now that I know what I want to happen and the motive behind my characters’ actions, I feel much better. I now know I have a novel.

Passion gothic by =Senderosolvidados on deviantART

I am much too tired to blog tonight. Yesterday was much too stressful, complete with toothache and my crashed blog.

I was brave enough to attempt to retrieve it today and miracle, I got it back.

I’m a brute force kind of programmer, not elegant but it works!

That said, I spent my day planning and it was great!!! Amazing how a little planning lower the stress level.

1600 words yesterday and none today but it was a good day nonetheless.

winter’s cry by =WCS-Wildcat on deviantART

Some latest publishing industry news had me in upveal today (you’ll find out soon enough) and I am quite struck by how important it is to keep a schedule that keep you going when you lose your cool.

No matter what, today I wrote my words and went for my short run. Both were tough to do but I promised myself I would do it and with each promise fulfilled comes the good habit ingrained in us, easy to sustain.

Bob Mayer suggest to keep a to-do/done daily list and he has his daily non-negociable. Margie Lawson suggests a winner/superstar to-do list where if you do all your winner tasks your are doing pretty good, so no need to beat yourself for not being a superstar everyday.

I like the non-negotiable thing. A while back, when my kids where little I read all kinds of housekeeping books. I should have known then that I’m more of a reader than a housekeeper! But I came accross the concept of Minimum Maintenance (MM). Basically not to feel overwhelmed, it means to spend 5 min in each room of the house, tidying up, starting with the room where visitors are most likely to come in.

It does work. I do MM twice a day, usually while the kids are around and I can’t work anyway. I don’t always get to all the rooms but it does keep the chaos away.

MM is a small non-negotiable thing after the writing.

So I feel that even if I get stressed over news, I just have to stay the course, calm down. I have a big plan.

I’m not just reacting to events but acting towards a big goals. Yes I may take tosses and turns but I’ll get there.

Added 1400 words to Ancient Secrets today.

Blessed Be.

GOTHIC WINTER by ~JTphoto on deviantART