Sentimental Value

There is monetary value, and there is sentimental value. You tell me which is worth more, and I will tell you what your heart is made of.
― Richelle E. Goodrich

You can't put a price on a sentimental value.
― Astrid Yrigollen,

What counts now are the value-less facts, the material and the rational. All else is regarded with condescension as being of only sentimental value.
— Jean Gebser

I’ve been trying to de-clutter my house lately, but I’m finding it hard to let things go. Like that paper angel that used to top our Christmas tree (now sitting on a shelf) that the daughter and I made more years ago than either of us care to remember. It’s more grey than white (because of the dust), the styrofoam ball used to make its head is degrading, the paper making its body is eroding, and it’s halo is long gone. And we haven’t used it more than ten years. So why do I keep it around? Sentimental value.

We finally made our wills a few weeks ago, and one of the things we were told to do was make an itemized list of all of our things and what we want to have happen to them. And while it was easy enough to just write down “Everything goes to the daughter” we were told that isn’t good enough.

We have a LOT of stuff. I don’t expect to die any time soon, but accidents do happen, so now I’m looking at all this stuff I’ve collected over the years and I have to ask myself, who’s going to want it? Especially the stuff that has no sentimental value to anyone but me?

Like . . . I have this little, carved wooden dog on the shelf. It’s a little crudely done, and painted white. It was done by a little old man in the trailer park where my aunt and uncle had their trailer when I was a kid. I loved going to that trailer. And I loved watching that old man work on his carvings. So that little dog brings back many fond memories. But anyone else who looks at it is only going to see a crudely carved, little white dog. They’ll have no sentimental attachment to it.

You see my dilemma? If future generations aren’t going to want it, why am I hanging on to it?

Because I want to, that’s why!

The problem is, most of this stuff is just taking up space. Some of it’s hidden away so I don’t even realize I’ve got it, and some of it just sits on the shelf collecting dust. So it’s not like I’m getting great enjoyment out of it, although I did quite enjoy the collecting of it.

Periodically I go through my writing files and try to de-clutter them as well, with about as much luck. I have ideas dating back to my high school days. Some of them not bad, some of them very bad. But I just can’t seem to bring myself to part with them.

I remember going through a phase where I wrote down my ideas in blurbs. You know, that one or two paragraphs on the back (or inside cover) of a book designed to persuade you to buy it? The problem with the blurb is, it’s not the whole story. Nor is it the whole idea behind the story.

One of them was for an organization called “The Star Brothers.” It was about a group of men who went around the universe doing good. Not much to go on, is it? Yet I just can’t bring myself to scrap it. Maybe some day I’ll suddenly have an epiphany and more details will come. Although the title is a little sexist. Why “brothers” and not just “friends?” Sign of the times, I tell you what.

I have many ideas that need to be thinned from the herd, but I don’t see that happening any more than I see the house being decluttered. It was a different time, and I was a different kind of writer, and sometimes I can pull out those ideas and take a sentimental journey into the past.

Ideas, even bad ones, don’t take up a lot of space. Well, some of them were written before I got my first computer, so they’re in physical files. But the rest just reside, dust free, in electronic storage, waiting to be accessed whenever I’m feeling sentimental. They’ll become the problem of whoever inherits my writing stuff.

I apologize in advance. :-D

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WORDAGE REPORT

Still don’t have extra words to report, but at least I got all my blog posts done last week, even if I did produce less words overall.

NEW WORDS:
Blog Posts – 1,124+453+522+715=2,814
Poetry – 33 (included in poetry post)

Total words: 2,814

Goals For Next Week:
Bring that total up – maybe try to add some bonus words.

EDITING:
27 pages
Yay! Back in the saddle with the editing.

Goal For Next Week:
Keep workin on Magickal Mayhem.

MARKETING:
*sigh* No Marketing. It just doesn’t seem to be a priority with me.

Goal For Next Week:
Submit two flash stories and one poem.

TECH & TRAINING:
Once again there was no training, and only a little bit of tech. I got the Roku device working, but I’m really not happy with it. The one we got for the basement you basically just had to plug it in, attach it to the TV and that was that.

This one I needed to set up an account and give it credit card/PayPal information “just in case” I wanted to buy something through it. Apparently, they don’t trust me when I say I’m only going to use it for Disney+ and only on free stuff.

AND there doesn’t appear to be an off switch, so we have to unplug it when we’re not using it.

I don’t know if it counts as tech, but I did update the side-bars on my blogs, adding one in for the serial story.

Goal For Next Week:
Learn something new.

POETRY WEDNESDAY:
Only cheated a little last week. While I did use a form I’ve shared previously, I wrote a whole new post to go with it and added in an extra couple of examples. Upon double-checking my previous research for the Cinquain, I discovered there are two distinctly different formats to it, so I did the American Cinquain last week and this week I'll do the French one.

Goal For Next Week:
Give the French Cinquain a try.

CRAFTING:
I didn’t have a whole lot of time for crafting last week. The granddaughter was more interested in the pool than the glue gun. But I did get a little work done on the pillow cases I’d stamped for my pioneer outing. The hardest part is figuring on the colours, so I printed out a couple of pages of pansies as a guide.

Goal For Next Week:
Work on the cancer afghan for my sister-in-law. Get the sewing machine working and finish my skirt and blouse.

WHAT I’M READING:
Did not get my Goodreads account updated. I suspect that when I do it’s not going to be 100% accurate because I wasn’t very good at writing down titles. And the dates are going to be iffy at best.

As for reading . . . I started reading The Lost Girl Found. by Maisey Yates, but then I found a copy of High Noon, by Nora Roberts at a thrift store, so I read that instead. But it took me the entire week, so I’d call that progress.

Goal For Next Week:
Update my Goodreads account!

GOAL REVIEW:

Once again I didn’t get as much writing done as I’d hoped to, but I did get back to my editing. I did clean off my desk a bit, but I still need to deal with my shredding. And have I mentioned the dust piling up in my office?

No gardening at all – there’s not really much garden to work with. And I did a wee bit better on the crafting.

But this s a brand new week, and I only have up from here to go, right?

Happy writing.

The Faster I Go, the Behinder I Get

The more you let yourself be distracted from where you are going, the more you are the person that you are. It's not so much like getting lost as it is like getting found.
— William Stafford

Don't get sidetracked. If you do get sidetracked, get back on track as soon as possible. Ultimately sidetracking kills you.
— Donald J. Trump

The major problem of life is learning how to handle the costly interruptions. The door that slams shut, the plan that got sidetracked, the marriage that failed. Or that lovely poem that didn't get written because someone knocked on the door.
— Martin Luther King Jr.

Ah, yes. Getting sidetracked. Well, I didn’t so much get side tracked last week, as I went off the rails completely to make something other than writing my priority. Namely, embellishing a dress for my granddaughter with embroidery. So it’s going to be a sad and pathetic wordage report today.

The daughter gave me the dress for the granddaughter earlier in the year, with the request that I spiff it up with some embroidery. It was a rather old fashioned style, made out of a thin, unbleached cotton, so the thought was to do some old fashioned style embroidery.

It took me forever to settle on a design because embroidery is like a tattoo – once it’s on there, it’s there to stay. Oh, sure, there are ways to remove it, but the canvass is never the same again.

I’ll save the details of what I went through for the dress for tomorrow’s post on the other blog, but suffice it to say I had several late nights and pretty much everything fell to the wayside. I had a goal, and it had nothing to do with writing, I needed to get the dress done by Easter.

I achieved my goal, the dress was finished yesterday, and despite the fact that I’ve received no feedback regarding it, I’m very proud of what I did. And the fact that it was done on time was a minor miracle itself.

Now I get to play the catching up game. I fell behind on my three-minute words, which means I’ve also fallen behind on the next installment of The Cave story. I’ve also fallen behind on the PAD challenge, so I have a few poems to write.

But hey, at least I have a new goal for the week, right?

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WORDAGE REPORT

Not much to see here, I’m afraid. No Monday post again, although I did manage the poetry post for Wednesday and the Friday serial installment, so I guess the week wasn’t a total loss. It helps that I’m eager to get back in the saddle again. And next week’s report should be awesome because it’ll include the catching up words. :-)

NEW WORDS:
Blog Posts – 1311+404+903=2,618

Poetry
0
Total words: 3,257 words

Three minute words – 90+102+112+124=428

Goals For Next Week:
Catch up on the words I missed last week, and forage ahead on this week’s words.

EDITING:
Seriously? I didn’t even take a break from sewing long enough to write a poem, editing was out of the question.

Goal For Next Week:
Get back to work on Magickal Mayhem.

MARKETING MONDAY:
*insert maniacal laugher here*.

Still no word on anything I’ve sent out previously – the wheels of publishing work very slowly.

Goal For Next Week:
Submit two flash stories and one poem.

TECHNO TUESDAY:
No. Just . . . no.

Goal For Next Week:
Set up Paperwhite

POETRY WEDNESDAY:
It seemed like a good idea in theory, too bad I haven’t been sticking to it.

Goal For Next Week:
Catch up on the PAD challenge

CRAFTING:
Well, at least something went right. I got the granddaughter’s dress done. But for all that time and effort, I’m thinking the designs I went with weren’t exactly what the daughter had in mind. But it is what it is, and I’m happy with how it turned out.

Goal For Next Week:
Find something else to embroider.

WHAT I’M READING:
Well, a sewing blitz is one way to cut back on the reading. I finished Island of Glass, by Nora Roberts, and took the entire week to read Blood Brothers, also by Nora Roberts. I was also asked to beta-read a novella for a friend. I’m not sure if I’m allowed to talk about it or not yet, but you can be sure I’ll be letting you know when it’s available to buy – it was brilliantly funny (as all his work is).

I did receive all those books I ordered the previous week, and they’re all stacked up on the dining room table. I wasn’t even tempted to crack any of them open – reading was only for the breaks in the sewing.

Goal For Next Week:
Keep the reading under control

GOAL REVIEW:
The only real win last week was getting my blog posts up and finishing the granddaughter’s dress. The rest . . . not so much

I kept up with the three-minute words long enough to get the week’s serial installment done, but that was pretty much it. However, I do have an idea of what’s going to happen next.

The poetry . . . yeah. By the beginning of the week I’d pretty much given up on the poetry. Sometimes a poem will come quickly, most of the time they do not.

Barring any disasters, I have no where to go but up, right?

Happy writing.

Facing Facts

Get your facts first, then you can distort them as you please.
— Mark Twain

Face the facts of being what you are, for that is what changes what you are.
— Soren Kierkegaard

People will generally accept facts as truth only if the facts agree with what they already believe.
— Andy Rooney

It’s a funny thing. When I first came up with the title for this post, I was facing the fact that I was in a writing slump. However, since then I kinda pulled myself out of it. Go figure, eh?

It wasn’t that I was lacking in ideas, I was just lacking in the motivation to do anything with them. One of the reasons for that was that I was in another of my reading binges. While a writer should do a certain amount of reading, I was doing an excessive amount. Not quite as bad as last year where I spent the first couple of months doing nothing but read, but bad enough.

And once again I put the blame squarely at the feet of Nora Roberts. I don’t know what it is about her books, but there are about a dozen of them that I have read and reread and I still can’t seem to put them down once I pick them up. But I’ve been trying to force myself to slow the reading down. The books aren’t going anywhere and I have all the time in the world to read them.

I actually made it three whole days without picking up a Nora Roberts book. Of course I made up for it by spending a little more time with my Kindle, but it was easier to pull myself away from. One thing for sure, I will be staying away from the Nora Roberts trilogies for now. My binging resistance is pretty low as it is, I’d never be able to resist binging on the trilogies.

The other reason for the writing slump is that I was fighting off some kind of bug that was making me super tired and head-achy. It was really hard to focus. It didn’t matter if I was writing long hand or on the computer, I just couldn’t seem to concentrate on what I was doing.

So, thinking the tiredness might be a blood sugar thing, I paid better attention to what I was eating (ie, controlling the snacking). I also cut out coffee, not that I take sugar in my coffee, but I’ve had issues with it in the past.

I don’t know if it was that or the bug just ran its course, but whatever it was, I’m finally feeling a little more alert – less tired and better able to focus. So while the first half of the week was a write-off (no pun intended), I did much better for the last half of the week.

Of course maybe it was all just mind over matter. :-)

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Wordage Report

I probably still did more reading than anything else, but the good news is that I did get other things accomplished. And this included a time-consuming family obligation and dealing with a sick cat.

I got Monday’s post done, but still nothing on Wednesday yet. To be honest, I didn’t even give Wednesday a passing thought. And if you look at the word counts on my three minute words you’ll notice one of them is more like a ten minute word. I really wanted to end Friday’s post on a cliff hanger so I just kept going.

NEW WORDS:
Blog Posts – 878+506+1024=2,408

Three minute words – 121+106+100+262+101+119+118=927
Total words: 2,408 words

EDITING:
Be still my heart. I actually took a long look at An Elemental Spirit, and I was surprised to see that it wasn’t as bad as I thought it was. I guess I must have done a bit of editing on it after it was done. And I included lots of notes in the folder as well. The only downside is that I forgot this is one of the books where I was going to start each chapter with a journal entry. Or maybe I didn’t forget, maybe I just blocked it out.

At any rate, that’s where I’m going to start, with the journal entries. Both An Elemental Fire and An Elemental Water start each chapter with journal entries, and I remember spending as much time on them as I was on the actual chapters, just so they’d fit. But these will be a little different because they’re not journal entries per se, but excerpts from historical documents.

MARKETING MONDAY:
I received numerous links through my email from groups I belong to or newsletters I’ve signed up for and I checked out several only to find that for one reason or another, my work does not suit their publications. I might be able to tweek one or two of them to fit, but that’s still no guarantee.

In any case, one of the markets was a call for stories about monsters. I recalled one of my NaNo stories was about a were-alligator, but unfortunately I had no idea which one. My stories all had titles like: Story 1, Story 2, Story 3, etc. So I spent considerable time making a list of what these stories were about, which will be helpful going forward.

TECHNO TUESDAY:
Tuesday I checked out some online courses. Does that count? That was also the day I had to deal with the sick cat. Hopefully, next Tuesday will be more technically successful.

WHAT I’M READING:
I read Sacred Sins and Brazen Virtue, by Nora Roberts, and just started Carnal Innocence, also by Nora Roberts. See? Slowing down.

On the Kindle I finished Wings of Stone, by J.D. Monroe, and started A Mate For the Christmas Dragon, by Zoe Chant.

GOALS
Last Week’s Results:
For crafting I got about a foot done on my afghan, and I’m ready to start the second set of stripes. I actually did take a look at my Christmas story and moved a few things around so I can start expanding, but that’s as far as I got. Still no Wednesday post. While I didn’t get any of the edits/rewrites done on Elemental Spirit, I did get things organized so I can dive right in.

Goals For the Week Ahead:
1. Spend time crafting every day.
2. Work on the Christmas story
3. Come up with a Wednesday post
4. Start the edits/rewrites on Elemental Spirit

Have a happy writing week.