Mary's Writing Space

 By this, I mean the version of it that was always meant to be. LONG story. I've always talked about how I got burned out on publishing and I've been trying to reconnect with my writing and reclaim that joy I've been missing so much. Well, on Thursday, something pretty major happened that has unlocked everything for me. For over 20 years, my best friend Jaime was my co-author on the Midnight Daze series. When she first became involved, it was fanfiction. It was a wild mashup of The Monkees, Smallville , Supernatural , and pretty much every movie, TV show, book, and song we ever loved. Over the years, it evolved into something way bigger. It consumed our lives. We bought into the notion that it needed to be published, so we ground away at it, polishing and polishing until that damned burnout set in. And so began the whole "Writer Reset" phase. She turned the series back over to me, minus her characters, and we both set out to try and reinvent what we'd created...

 Yesterday morning, I woke up with a scene running through my head. Nothing really unusual for me, except it hasn't been happening as much as it used to. So this time I decided to grab onto it before it faded into the void. I got up, did my usual morning stuff, grabbed my coffee, sat back in bed, and scribbled in my morning pages...but then I fired up the laptop and hopped on Ellipsus. And started WRITING. It felt so damn good! It was so much fun! Now, the experience wasn't 100% perfect. A few paragraphs in, I started experiencing a few irritations. Ellipsus is cool, but I discovered there were a few things I didn't like. The font that went with my chosen theme looked weird in italics. So I figured out how to change the font and kept it moving. But then two more weird things happened. First, when I typed *** to switch POVs, it changed it to a line. No biggie, I thought, I'll fix it later. But then...it also changed back to the original font. WTF? Ugh! So I ended up expo...

 I brought my thinking book with me to work today. It's a heavy little booger. But I like having it with me. It got me thinking about everything I'm using and want to use for my writing--notebooks, software, apps, ma brain...lol I would love to have it all in one place, but that's impossible, of course. I need different things to function in different ways. I made a list in the thinking book of everything I've currently got going, which then led me to start this blog post. So, here goes: I have two A5 ring binders, one I bought from Amazon that has skinny rings and a Moterm I got from Jaime that has bigger rings. I was using the skinny one as kind of an all-in-one writing binder, but I decided to move the reference materials and workbooks to the Moterm since it has more room. I'm thinking about resetting the skinny one as either a series bible or some other form of story note-keeping. Next is my A5 Vera Bradley spiral notebook. It's currently housing the few act...

Yesterday, Jaime and I FINALLY had a writing meeting after so many months! Well, it was more of a bestie hangout day. We didn't just discuss writing, we caught up on EVERYTHING. Which was awesome. She surprised me with my Mother's Day present from Alex--the Hobonichi Weeks cover she'd bought for herself when she bought mine for my birthday! He bought it from her for me! I had been planning on buying it when I had the money. So sweet! I have to say, yesterday was one of the best days I've had in a long time. In addition to the meeting/hangout, this stuff happened: When I paid my rent, I found out I have a huge credit on my account, so next month I'm only going to owe about 1/4 of what I usually pay! This is a huge blessing, considering we're on semester break right now, so that future paycheck is going to suck! Right before the meeting, I attended part of the livestream of the GNTC graduation ceremony. My main student whom I've been tutoring all semester grad...

 Yesterday morning, I didn't get to do my morning pages in my journal. It took me forever to wake up, and by the time I was fully awake, my attention got hijacked. I ended up getting dressed, making a breakfast run to McDonald's, then going to work. While there, I got the idea to turn my MP entry into a blog post, and while I was at it give an update on how the whole morning pages thing is going. So I started this post but never finished it. When I got home, I decided to just go ahead and do a journal entry and call it an "afternoon page." But I didn't want to just delete this post; I still wanted to do the update. So here I am, and I've decided to throw in an overall writing update while I'm at it. I'm still going strong as far as doing MPs every day. I haven't missed a single day since I started back in September. That is a real accomplishment for me! But lemme tell ya, the reason I haven't missed is bc I am VERY lenient with myself. Many, ma...

I said I was going to take a break, then I went ahead and jumped into this one! 😂 Stephen King once said something about writing notebooks being a place where "ideas go to die." While I kinda get what he meant--you write something down, but if you never go back to it, the idea dies--I also feel like notebooks are vital to writing. He also said something about "the best ideas stick with you," and that's true to an extent--look at how long I've been working with the same basic idea for my stories!--but when it comes to remembering details, brainstorming, catching scenes and tidbits, stuff like that--you have to have some place to capture those ideas and work thru them. Therefore, no offense to the great King, but I will continue to use a notebook, thank you very much. Having said that, my previous writing notebooks have been hit or miss for various reasons. I'd often overcomplicate them or get hung up on aesthetics vs. function. It took me years to find t...

 I recently watched this video  by Sarra Cannon about Google Docs. She's used it for years for her writing and swears by it. After watching this video, I've been seriously considering making the switch from Microslop--I mean Microsoft--Word to this bc it looks so freaking cool, plus it would solve some problems. Why did I just call Microsoft "Microslop"? Bc they have been fixing what was never broken and shoving AI shit into every crevice they can find. They even renamed Office "Microsoft 365 Copilot App." UGH! They had already done away with the "Office" name before this, but no one noticed bc they still used it. But several YouTube videos brought it to my attention, so that's how I know now. It's the height of stupidity! I hate it! You can't even start a new document in Word without that shit popping up. And if you try to turn it off, the next update turns it back on again--IF you get updates. My home computers are Windows 10 and cann...

This was inspired by a video from Earthy Sam about her planner system. She's like me in that she struggles to downsize what she uses, but her brain can't work with just one planner or notebook. I figured I'd turn what was going to be a ridiculously long comment into my own post! So, here's my current lineup. 1. Hobonichi Weeks, whom I have named "Nichi"--an idea I got from Rebel with a Plan (highly recommend this channel for anyone with ADHD or any kind of neurodivergence and/or going thru perimenopause). I'm currently carrying her separately from the Moterm cover my bestie gave me with her, using the cover as a wallet. Sometimes I like having my planner and wallet together, sometimes I don't. Nichi is my main planner/bullet journal/whenever journal. I do memory keeping in her, but I will also write down appointments and to-do lists as needed. 2. Wallet notebook--I recently discovered a TN in my stash that is actually Weeks size, so I decided to try ...

 This is another Week 1 task from The Artist's Way. For details, see my previous posts. For this task, I'm going to be listing five imaginary lives, then picking one of them and doing something related to it. Here goes! 1. Rock or pop star--if I pick this one, I'll write a song! Tbh, I've been leaning heavily toward this one in my head! 2. Detective--maybe I could listen to a podcast or watch a video of a true crime story and try to figure out whodunit? 3. Scuba diver--research the effects of the bends and how to prevent them 4. Actress--audition for a part in a movie 5. Psychic--do a tarot reading Ooh, now that I've written these out, I'm not sure which one I'm going to pick! I thought I'd made up my mind about the rock/pop star, but now I'm thinking about actually doing all of them! I'll have to think about it and come back to this one! I just copied these into my writing notebook so I can read over them and decide whenever I want. I'll ke...

This is one of the Tasks in Week 1 of The Artist's Way  by Julia Cameron. Check out my previous post and other previous posts for details. For this task, I'm going to write about three "champions" of my creative self-worth and the compliments and/or encouragements they gave me along the way. At the end, I'll pick one of those compliments or encouragements and write it out on a card or sticky note, decorate it, and put it somewhere I can see it every day. Of course, my first and biggest champion has to be my best friend. We've known each other since high school. She is also a writer, and for most of our adult lives, she was my co-author on the Midnight Daze  series. My fondest memories are of the times we spent locked away in her office or bedroom, blissfully ignoring the world while we played with our characters, stayed up all night throwing ideas at each other (DANCING BUMBLEBEE!!! 🐝😉🤣), and wrote whatever the hell we wanted. Even though we're no longe...

 I've been doing a lot of thinking on paper since yesterday. Been working on getting my shit together. One thing I did this morning was (re)set up a Thinking Book, which is an idea I got from Rachelle in Theory on YouTube. She has several videos about this concept, but I just linked the most recent one, which actually walks you thru setting one up. I previously thought I was going to use the Vera Bradley spiral-bound notebook I got for my birthday, but I discovered the pages tore out too easily. This morning, though, I decided to break out the B6 Stalogy I won in a giveaway earlier this year. I've been looking for a use for that one since I got it! When I first got it, I tried using it as a bullet journal, but that didn't really work. This is going to be a much better use for it. My brain already feels a little lighter since I've done some brain dumping in it. Plus I ended up having a brilliant idea, which I will get to shortly. First, a brief rundown of the concept of...

 Since my last post was about the Rough Draft Challenge, I figured I'll post a little update on how that went for me. I also want to get into some thoughts about the book The Artist's Way  by Julia Cameron, since that's what my bestie and I have been reading and (for me kinda sorta) following along with as part of our writing meetings. And of course I want to update about my writing progress. Let's just get that last part out of the way first. Since the last time I posted, I think I've written one other scene in LightShadows . I've had random scenes run thru my head here and there, but I haven't written those down. Just been letting them play for now. As for the Rough Draft Challenge, that was a lot of fun. I put no pressure on myself whatsoever to "win" it or anything. I just participated. Along the way, I lost track of tracking as I usually do, but I didn't let that bother me. In the end, I called it a win bc I accomplished my overall goal of...

 I'm participating in Sarra Cannon's Rough Draft Challenge. For all the details, check out this video:  How to Join the Rough Draft Challenge I love this challenge because it's the exact opposite of the old NaNoWriMo. For those of you who might somehow stumble across this blog and wonder what the hell I'm talking about, NaNoWriMo was short for National Novel Writing Month, which was a challenge that started about 20-25 years ago, I think. Not sure about the exact history, but what I do know is the organization is now defunct thanks to some pretty bad controversies that happened last year and a couple years before. If you want to go down that rabbit hole, here:  The Tragic Downfall of NaNoWriMo  Otherwise just know that it was bad, and while the spirit of NaNo as a challenge was cool and all, there was a lot of pressure involved that I never liked, namely the pressure to write 50,000 words in a month. I don't do word counts. I suck at tracking. Therefore I always str...

To anyone going "What the hell is a writing meeting?" (which might be one person lol), allow me to explain. When my bestie Jaime and I were writing the Midnight Daze series together, we would meet once or twice a month to work on it in person. Well, we stopped doing that when we stopped writing together, obviously. Technically it fell by the wayside before that, but the point is, we had stopped meeting in person to discuss our writing. Until last month. That's when Jaime had the awesomest idea--we could start meeting again, not to work on MD together, but to just talk about our individual writing projects, bounce ideas off each other, and read through The Artist's Way  by Julia Cameron, doing some of the exercises. Just reigniting our creative sparks and encouraging/supporting each other in our writing endeavors. So that's what we did. And it has been SO fucking cool so far. We've only done two meetings, but those two meetings were so much fun, and they have ...

Before I get into this, wow! I just saw that my last post has a comment on it! I'm so sorry I didn't see it till now, but thank you to that person! As you can tell by how long it's been since my last post, I have still been struggling a lot to get back into my writing. Progress has been extremely slow, but I think the ice has finally started breaking for me these past few weeks. On Friday, I watched a video that taught me a new word: paracosm . It's a fictional world you create for yourself that over time becomes your way of coping with reality. You filter your daily stresses and experiences through the lens of that paracosm to help you process things and deal with the harshness of life.  The video  was about Audra Winter, a 22-year-old autistic writer who caused a huge uproar in the writing community when she self-published the first book in a series she's been "writing" since age 12. She'd been marketing herself like crazy for the past few years, hyp...

 Ok, so it's probably more like 3.56789, but who cares at this point? It's pretty much just me here. If anyone actually reads this, cool, but I'm not expecting anyone to. I just felt the urge to blog today. I thought about scrapping the previous posts and starting over yet again, but I decided not to bc those posts are pretty good. They also show how long I've been struggling with this issue of getting back into my writing just for fun. Speaking of which, I decided my word for 2025 is going to be (EN)JOY . I'm tired of focusing on what I need to fix in my life. Still gonna try to fix things like my health, but when it comes to my writing, reading, and anything involving fun, I really want to focus on actually enjoying them rather than worrying about keeping track of them. Like who cares how many books I read this year or when or how long I did a writing session or wtf ever. I just want to enjoy the moments while I'm in them. That's it. So, remember that Writ...

 I have a draft post on here from September 2023! That just shows how well my Writer Reset went. lol So yeah, this is actually my second attempt at resetting my Writer Reset! 🤣 Here goes! Obviously, the first one fizzled out. I was going to try again in September, apparently, but seeing as I never went back and finished the post, let alone published it, I'd say that didn't happen. Oh well, it's okay. Either way, I came here to start over again anyway! So here I am! In general, the same problem I was having before reared its ugly head again. No matter how much I tried to convince myself I was not going to ever publish again and my writing is now simply and purely for fun, there was still that little nagging voice in the back of my head going, "Well, you still need to do the writing! Why aren't you doing it? What happened to wanting to write so bad? Huh?" Shut UP, stupid nagging voice! 😝 Anyway, I think I finally figured out what my problem was this whole time...