Writing Days 7/8

Stuck. Stuck. Stuck. I absolutely hate knowing what I want to say and not being able to come up with the words to say it. It is one of the MOST frustrating things in the world to sit down to write and the words just refuse to come. 63 words was all I could manage to pull out of my stubborn self today.

On a positive note, I finished my grant proposal yesterday outlining a cross-curricular media literacy and production program for which I have been designing the curriculum for about a year now. The whole program is put together, I have found a funding source I believe would be perfect to pay for all the equipment purchases - now, of course, all I have to find is a school willing to give me a job with a faculty who are down for some major collaboration, and who will take a chance on the implementation of such a program. Ah, to dream the impossible dream.

Also, I am readying myself to send my children's book out into the great unknown. I am so in love with this book. I hope I can find it a good home somewhere.

As far as the novel goes, tomorrow is another day, dear Scarlet. Since I struggled with writing today, I did some minor revisions and made some expansion/clarification note on the manuscript to look during later revisions. I plan on getting up early and hitting it hard in the morning. Hopefully, I will be able to power through this block using pure unadulterated will power.

Good day and Good Writing!

Today's stats -

NIP - WTA - pages: 32; word count: 7813

Writing Day 6

Today has been both interesting and productive. I attended the last meeting of my writing class, and I was fortunate to have both an excellent instructor and a great group of peers with whom to work for the past eight weeks. My children's book is "in the can" so to speak, and I am ready to start sending out manuscripts later this week! Very excited about that!

On the novel front, I finished chapter 4 (transcribing all my longhand work onto Word and writing the concluding paragraph) and am ready to move on to chapter five tomorrow. Not too shabby, if I do say so myself.

The next chapter is a time period shift which is usually slower going than the present day stuff, but I am already kicking around some great ideas for this next section. So, my fingers are crossed that it will go at least somewhat smoothly.

On another topic, the deadline for my academic article, Poetry and the Common Core: The Great Non-debate, has passed, so I'm looking at receiving notification one way or the other in about 4-6 weeks. Again, keeping my fingers crossed the news will be good.

Plans for tomorrow (other than working on chapter five of the novel) are to finish a $5,000 educational grant proposal I have been working on for the past month. The grant is for the initial equipment funding for a cross-curricular media literacy and production program I have been developing for about six months. It is a project I am extremely passionate about, so the writing should go smoothly. All the statistical research, sustainability studies, and expansion potential worksheet is done. I just have to put it together and write it with enough appeal to convince the grantor to hand over that money. :)

All in all, it has been a GREAT day! (And I even managed to run a few errands and do a load of laundry.)

Today's writing inspiration comes from James Thurber - cartoonist, author, journalist, playwright, and celebrate wit. I chose it to remind me (especially going into this particularly tough chapter) that getting it written is more than half the battle. Revision is a necessary aspect of all writing, so it by no means has to be perfect the first time around. It just has to be written.

Good day and good writing to you all!






Novel stats for today -
NIP - WTA - pages: 33; word count: 7750