The Future Is . . .

For I dipt into the future, far as human eye could see, saw the vision of the world, and all the wonder that would be.
— Alfred Lord Tennyson

The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.
― Eleanor Roosevelt

You realize that our mistrust of the future makes it hard to give up the past.
― Chuck Palahniuk

The future depends on what you do today.
― Mahatma Gandhi

The future is out there.

The future is coming.

The future is now.

As you might have surmised, I’ve been thinking a lot about the future lately. Specifically, my future as it pertains to my writing.

Fifteen years ago I was working on three novels at the same time and making good progress on all of them. I didn’t have a blog schedule, per se, but I was posting more often (although they were shorter posts) and I wasn’t struggling to write them.

It was actually a little depressing really to read those early posts. There I was, doing all that writing, and I still didn’t seem to be getting anywhere. I was writing more in one day than I’m writing now in my Sunday posts (my longest one). My future was no more defined then than it is now. And that’s just sad.

But it got me thinking about being a writer and where I’m going with this.

I first dreamed of being a writer back in high school. I had all these stories in my head and I was going to write them all down and publish them. I was going to be the youngest writer to have a story published in Marion Zimmer Bradley’s Swords and Sorceress series.

Vera Nazarian beat me to that, but I couldn’t even bring myself to hate her for it because she’s a wonderful writer. She’s written (and sold) many short stories since then, wrote a bunch of books, had life throw her some curve balls, and kept going.

And that, my friends, is the big difference. She kept going. She finished what she started. She persisted in following her dream. She didn’t make excuses, she just wrote. I’m sure she has a whole crap ton of books in her future, just waiting to be written.

Now don’t start thinking I’m comparing myself to Vera, I’m not. I’m just admiring her work ethic, something I’m sorely lacking. I’ve been paying a lot of lip service about writing every day, and getting organized, and the list goes on, when what I really need to do is stop talking about it and start doing it.

The reason I’m writing hasn’t changed over the years – I still have stories to tell and I’m the only one who can tell them. And every once in a while I’ll do a post like this where I get all angsty and whiny and point out that I need to do better, and sometimes I even do for a while, but it doesn’t take long to slide back into my old habits.

I don’t want another 15 years to go by and look back and see my lack of progress. I can only blame my dysthymia for so much, the rest is on me. If I want to get to that future and look back with pride then I have to be willing to change my ways. Time to start making progress instead of excuses.

Otherwise, why am I even doing this?

* ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ *

WORDAGE REPORT

I have a confession to make. Early in the week I downloaded a hidden objects game. And then I started playing it. A lot.

I was having one of those weeks, I guess because when it got annoying that I’d have to stop when I ran out of gaming energy, I downloaded another. Then a third.

The turning point for me was when I ended up with a pinched nerve from spending such long stretches in my recliner doing nothing but playing those games. I smartened up, deleted the games, and went on to do other things.

Of course it was too late to salvage productivity for the week, but at least I didn’t fall behind on my blogging.

NEW WORDS:
2235+394+353+601=3,583
UP – 191 words from last week

Goals For Next Week:
Get some words written besides my blog posts.

EDITING:
0 pages
I guess the miracle of starting work on Elemental Spirit didn’t happen last week, maybe it’ll happen this week. *sigh*

You know, it’s not like I don’t have other stuff I could be working on instead. Maybe I should start looking at my backlog of novels and stories. This is starting to feel like Magical Mayhem all over again – look at how long it took me to finish it.

Goal For Next Week:
Start work on An Elemental Spirit or something else.

TECH & TRAINING:
Okay, this isn’t exactly computer or writing related, but it is using technology, so I’m counting it.

As you’ll know if you’re a Netflix user, they changed their policy recently. This means I can no longer share my daughter’s account. So, I had to get my own Netflix account, and since I already had my credit card handy, I got Paramount + as well.

Signing up was the easy part. Accessing them on my laptop – no problem. Trying to watch them on television . . .not so easy. Well, Netflix was fine, I just accessed it the same way I did before only I used my own password.

Turns out my smart TV isn’t much smarter than I am. It did not offer the Paramount + app in its app store, so I had to go through the Roku. I was able to add Paramount +, but when I tried to sign in I kept getting a message telling me my login or password was incorrect. After many fruitless attempts to sign in, I went to the Paramount site to trouble shoot.

The first suggestion was to reset the Roku itself. Which I did – I still couldn’t log in. Then it suggested I reset my password, which was a little more complicated than I expected. But when I did, suddenly I could log in.

Whew! Crises averted

Goal For Next Week:
Learn to use Dropbox properly so I can backup my files.

POETRY WEDNESDAY:
Last week wasn’t nearly as exciting as far as poetry went. I found a new form, one with plenty of information available about it for a change, and actually enjoyed wading through it all. I was fairly pleased with my example, too.

And when looking for my weekly form I found a bunch more forms I haven’t tried yet. With any luck, it’ll be months before I have to resort to the coded Welsh forms. :-)

Goal For Next Week:
Find another new poetry form to share.

CRAFTING:
The craft migration is done. All I need is a table to craft on and all will be right with my crafting world. However, I got no work done on the afghan. Not a stitch.

But when I was grocery shopping I noticed some plain dresses in the children’s section that looked similar to the one I embroidered for the granddaughter last year for Easter. I bought one in blue (blue being her favorite colour) with the intention of stitching on it for this Easter.

Goal For Next Week:
Work on the afghan. Figure out what to embroider on the dress.

WHAT I’M READING:
I re-read Sanctuary by Nora Roberts, and that was it. Just goes to show how focused I was on those stupid hidden object games.

Goal For Next Week:
Keep up my good reading habits.

GOAL REVIEW:

Well, in some respects it was a good week – I had no trouble at all with my blog posts – but in other respects it wasn’t so great. I got no other writing done and I started to slide into my bad gaming habits again.

I did start thinking about what I’d be working on after Elemental Spirit. Single book or series? And then I realized I only have two “almost finished” books that aren’t part of a series, and both have the potential for a sequel.

The rest of my unfinished books all begin multi-book series. So looks like once I’m done with the elementals I be looking at another series. Unless, of course, I come up with a whole new book.

You’ll notice marketing is missing. Yeah, it’s been so long since I’ve even made an attempt at marketing that I figured it was time to let it go. And I know it was a stretch for tech, but televisions are technology too.

Crafting was pretty much non-existent last week, but for all intents and purposes my crafting migration is done at least. Will this make a difference? Only time will tell.

The big surprise last week was the reading. One book. Guess I spent a lot more time on those hidden object games than I realized.

Maybe without the distraction of gaming and excessive reading, I’ll actually get something accomplished besides blog posts this week