Are you living your dream?

When I was a little girl, my mother would ask me what I wanted to be when I grew up. Of course, I wanted to be a singer or an actress or dancer, but most of all I wanted to be a mommy. And I used to tell my mother that when she got old I would take care of her.

Have I been able to live my dream? Well, you could say that I have. I had four little girls of my own, and when my dear mother was dying (only in her 70’s) I helped take care of her the last month of her life. Perhaps that was a love commitment more than a dream.

My childhood dream has not been my only one. I have had several over the years, as I’m sure you have. As we grow we learn new things and try our hand at them. I sewed clothes, made toys and crafts and quilts, tried sketching and painting, wrote poetry, and dreamed dreams. I took voice lessons but I’m shy and nervous about public singing. I dance but mostly when I worship the Lord in the privacy of my home. And the acting? Uhh, No. 🙂 But I keep returning to writing – ministry things, poems, stories, plays, songs, articles, blogging.

Again my dream is to be a writer and author of children’s books. Having accomplished NaNoWriMo, perhaps by sheer determination, then shouldn’t I be able to write a book for children, perfect it for publication, and stick with it until that happens?

But what do you do when life happens, when the time you had which didn’t seem to be enough is now split in half? How do you see those dreams fulfilled?

How do you choose what to sacrifice and what to push to the forefront?

It is a challenge in which, so far, I don’t feel I’m succeeding. With all the reading I try to do, my writing is taking a backseat. With the book reviews and author interviews I committed to, my newsletter publishing is delayed. But do you see the connections? In some way they are all to do with writing, so I haven’t completely left it behind, I just need to discover my balance. What I must do is trust the Lord to lead me in all of these things in my life. If I’m meant to continue them all then He will show me how.

Then there are the unexpected things that crowd in. I gave my piano to our oldest daughter who loves to play. She told me Tuesday that the movers will be here Thursday morning. That meant today’s time was devoted to rearranging things for the piano to be maneuvered around in order for the movers to get it up the stairs and out to their truck. This also means there will be more space for my stuff! 😉 Such as more books? Umm, maybe for all the fabric I have. (Yes, I love fabric too, which is intended to be listed for sale on my business website.)

Do I have too many irons in the fire? Too many interests and not enough focus? Too many ideas and not enough ‘stick-to-it-iveness’? Or maybe I dream too big? – forgetting I’m only one person and nobody else will be interested in my dreams – so I live a little of this one and a little of that one.

I don’t ever stop dreaming.

What about you? Are you a dreamer of dreams? Are you living your dreams? Or have you given up on them?

Thanks for reading, and … Creative Musings! 🙂

NaNoWriMo 2010 is over — I WON!

Yes, NaNoWriMo is over for another year.  If you have not been following my posts — this is the first NaNo challenge for me and I WON!  That means that I met the challenge of writing 50,000 words in 30 days – with a few words over just to be sure – and I now have the certificate to prove it.  Yay!

My ‘novel’ is not completed, though.  I stopped writing in a place where there are three conflicts set up to be resolved, but I think it was a good place to stop for this challenge.  Now I have the personal challenge of completing my ‘novel’ and doing a LOT of editing.

Writing my last post I was SO TIRED, and I had to laugh today when I read it over and saw the typos I made last night.  And I don’t know why I didn’t say in that post’s heading that I had won in NaNo.  Too tired to think it through, I guess.  🙂

Last night I also signed the pledge to verify that I had completed PiBoIdMo, and now we wait to learn who, of all of its participants, win those great prizes that Tara Lazar gathered to give out on December 3 or 4.

Talking to my husband over supper tonight I realized that I really did accomplish quite a bit of writing last month (November) — 50K words for NaNoWriMo, 30 picture book ideas for PiBoIdMo (I actually got 44), and I completed and mailed out the Autumn issue of Valley Sunshine newsletter.

No wonder I’m tired.  I am ending this day early.   Hopefully tomorrow I can get more accomplished in my house than I did today.

And it’s now December!  Time to get my house in order to start decorating for Christmas!

So, how was your day?  Have you started Christmas shopping and decorating?

Thanks for reading, and … Creative Musings!  🙂

 

Day 30: NaNoWriMo & PiBoIdMo

Tuesday, Day 30 of NaNoWriMo — I’m SO TIRED!  Last night I stayed up and wrote until 4 AM.  As I posted yesterday I did what I said I would do … wrote until I couldn’t stay awake to write another word.  That is just what happened.  (I’m glad I did this because I had several interruptions today that would added stress to completing.)  So at around 4:30 AM I had just relaxed beside my husband and his alarm went off.  I went to sleep and slept until my alarm went off around 8:30, then I was up and wrote until I finished NaNo.  So I WON!  It’s a feeling of accomplishment and relief that I actually completed it and got my ‘novel’ validated on time on the site.  I did use the program that generates paragraphs and words.  When I finished the challenge and posted my word total, then I generated the number of words I had recorded – which was 50265 – and submitted that to make it official.  (I’m actually having trouble staying awake right now to write this post.)  I have the NaNoWriMo challenge 101% completed!

Even though I completed the 50K challenge, my story is not completed.  I left a major conflict unresolved and hope to continue writing to finish the story.

PiBoIdMo ended today, too.  I completed with 44 ideas. It was a wonderful experience for me.

Have you pushed yourself beyond what you thought you could do?

Thanks for readings, and … Creative Musings!  🙂

Day 29: NaNoWriMo & PiBoIdMo

Monday, Day 29 of NaNoWriMo is the best day for me yet!  The pressure is on and I have to finish this!  I spent most of today writing, thinking, writing … and writing, thinking writing some more .. but mostly writing.  Just writing.  whew! I wrote 5073 words today!  Can you believe that?  One more day of this challenge and I can write no more that will be counted.  My total word count stands at 44257 which means that as much as I managed to put on paper today I have to do that and more before tomorrow at midnight.   5743 more words should do it, but to be safe in case of miscounts I will try to write 5800 more.  I will not be stopping tonight until I just can’t stay awake to write another word.

A very good thing is that I found a program that will generate the number of words I need posted to the NaNo validator once I reach 50,000 words.

As for PiBoIdMo, today I came up with two cute ideas, so now have 43 to my credit.  Surely something of all those will be worth turning into a picture book manuscript!  The PiBo challenge ends at midnight tomorrow too, and then there will be winners announced soon after – winners who are chosen among those who finished with 30 PB ideas.   I would be thrilled to win something, but I already have from one of the daily blog posts of encouragement.  (Remember the bug caricature from Day 19, Nov. 20?) And, besides that, I am so much further ahead now since doing PiBoIdMo in discovering what I can do and how to brainstorm for picture book ideas.   So, yes, this has been a very good experience for me.

Have you found encouragement lately to keep you going?

Thanks for reading, and … Creative Musings!  🙂

Day 28: NaNoWriMo & PiBoIdMo

Sunday, Day 28 of NaNoWriMo —  Today was a busy and rather jumbled up day.  This evening I am so tired I just can’t think my way through this.  I have only written 657 words and I am going to be “hitting the hay” soon — going to try to sleep longer tonight.  This means that tomorrow I have to WRITE probably all day or as much of the day as I can.  I’ll only have Monday and Tuesday to finish this challenge.

I visited a writers chat room tonight and got some tips from Wrimo‘s in there.  Some of the writers there have participated in NaNo and are doing it this year, too.  One lady got a book published that she wrote during last year’s NaNoWriMo!  Cool, huh?

A big problem has arisen for me, though.  It seems that I have to type all this over so that I can submit it for validation, and I haven’t finished writing it yet.  But they gave me tips regarding that, too, so I will be very busy the next two days.  All the more reason for me to get more sleep tonight instead of writing until midnight and then blogging about it after that.

So, my total is now 39184 at 79% completion.

I also wrote down an idea for PiBoIdMo so I have 41 ideas for that challenge.  I certainly hope that from all this writing something good comes out of it eventually.  🙂

Do you have any dreams you are working on?

Thanks for reading, and … Creative Musings!  🙂

Day 27: NaNoWriMo & PiBoIdMo

Saturday, Day 27 of NaNoWriMo.  Wow! What a day this has been. First of all, in the morning my husband and I went to town to the Farmers Market where I purchased three Chr istmas gifts (just couldn’t resist) after I met local author Jan L. Coates – which is why we went there today.  She is delightful!  She signed my copies of her newest book – A Hare In The Elephant’s Trunk – and we chatted a bit.  (Actually, I’m sure I talked too much.  oh dear)  I urge you to check out this website: http://www.wadeng.org

I have several books I am eager to read — three books for which I will be writing reviews.  I will be posting those reviews here on my blog, just as I did on October 26 after reading Max Lucado’s book – Out Live Your Life.  But I am especially so looking forward to reading Jan‘s book after NaNo is over.  I heard an interview on the radio several weeks ago and was touched by the story, built around a true and tragic story. I will probably write about her book here, too.

When we returned home I got down to writing.  For hours I sat writing, getting up to walk around or stretch, and to make myself a lunch in the middle of the afternoon.  Just before midnight I punched in my new numbers.  I’d managed to write 3525 words today!  Yay!  That takes me up to 38,527 words written for this challenge so far. Now it feels more as if I can win this NaNo challenge, whereas I was beginning to doubt myself the last few days.  Now I have it 78% completed! Almost 11,500 words have yet to be written – in three days – but now it is reachable again.  I just have to aim for 4000 words a day (which I haven’t done yet!) and I’ll have it, with extras as security.  🙂  Piece ‘o cake, right?… Right?

An idea for PiBoIdMo came through right around midnight.  I now have 40 ideas for that challenge.  It has been fun in a different way doing PiBo.

I believe I can call myself a writer after all this, what do you think?

What does it take for you to see yourself as a writer?  Or if you are not a writer, then what makes you believe in your talents and abilities?

Thanks for reading, and … Creative Musings!  🙂

 

 

Day 26: NaNoWriMo & PiBoIdMo

Friday, Day 26 of NaNoWriMo was a poor writing day for me.  To start things off I got maybe four hours of sleep last night which would have been longer except for the fact that I was up early this morning to go to town with my sister.  I had errands (banking, shopping) to do and she did some shopping, and it took longer than we had anticipated so I didn’t get back home until middle of the afternoon.  I was SO tired and my writing didn’t amount to much tonight, but in looking back over my daily totals I discovered that it wasn’t my worst day.  I haven’t let myself not write something each day because I didn’t want to get out of the habit of writing and into the habit of skipping days.  As it is I am going to be doing major catch-up soon.

I have the NaNo challenge 71% completed, having added 768 words today which brings my written total to 35002 words. I had to get it over 35000 before leaving this for a longer sleep tonight.  (It’s time to quit when I keep nodding off with pen in hand!)

When we were in town today we drove past the car lot which had been one of the sets used in a Jason Priestly movie last year.  We were commenting on the look of it today, they had some strange goings-on there, and I joked about it – then realized that from what I said .. oh wow!  A picture book idea for PiBoIdMo!

It’s amazing to me how so much around me can be converted into picture book ideas.  (Thanks Tara and friends!)  You can check out what I am talking about all the time by looking here: http://taralazar.wordpress.com

And before I quit I just want to say that I’m looking forward to tomorrow morning as I will be going to the Farmers Market in Wolfville to meet Jan Coates, author of A Hare in the Elephant’s Trunk.  She is going to be signing copies of her book there and I’ll be in line.

Have you met any authors and did you get a signed copy of that author’s book?

Thanks for reading, and … Creative Musings!  🙂