cornerofmadness

Honestly, today’s writerly ways brings nothing more than the idea of sitting down and finishing something. I am terrible at this sometimes. I can find a thousand different things to do, every one nothing more than a time waster. I can’t even tell you why. I want to write stories. I want to finish them. I want other people to read and enjoy them (well hopefully).

So why do I not finish things? One, I know is because I’m easily distracted by the newest shinest thing (most often the newest character to jump up and say ME ME ME). Two, I hate to say goodbye to my characters (but I’ve blogged about this one before) Three, I think I’m just lazy sometimes.

In the end I think we need to find out how it is we write and what motivates us to write. In that, we have the means to figure out how to get something done. For instance, I know I am a goal-oriented person. Witness Nano. I never have failed to make it to the finish line. So why can’t I do this the other 11 months of the year. Why do I have a half dozen unfinished nanos? (one of which is so close to finish I could probably do it in a night provided I just reread where I left off…)

Stephen King suggested make a word count goal for yourself per day. This doesn’t work for everyone naturally. Others like to do the ‘morning papers’ just to get something down. Me, I think I’d like the word count goal. I’m not sure yet what would be appropriate but I’m going to consider ir. I’m not sure what I’m going to do if I meet my goals. It better not be food or drink since I’ll be even fatter (and probably drunk) if I do. Maybe I’ll be better off with a punishment system. Write 300 words of original fiction daily or you have to dust something in this house. Hmmmm that could work.

Thoughts? How do you drive yourself to finish?

I DID finish my story, A Wolf in the Fold for Circlet Press’s Like Heaven or Hell anthology. It might be too dark in places but I finished it. I sent it in (with only days to spare). Now to finish my space pirate story (at least I have til May on that one. Bless Dreamspinner press and their open calls with lots of time to write. Btw go check them out. They have their entire year’s worth of open calls up).

I did promise I would pimp writers_toybox but leni_ba did it so much better than I would have so I shall just link you to hers right here. It is geared to Jossverse stuff but some of it will be far more universal.

In the fandom side of things, I finished eight or nine of my prompts and nearly have one more finished (it would be finished if I had seen it was supposed to be riza/roy not roy/riza and since I don’t know this person they might actually care about the order). I’ve made no progress on either big bang. Damn it.

Yearly word count –

12239 / 125000 words. 10% done!

Saiyuki Big Bang (let’s see if shame at no progress will motivate me)

9145 / 15000 words. 61% done!


FMA Big Bang (technically I’m over my 21K that I needed to get to so I bumped it up to 28K since that might be about where it ends up)

23845 / 28000 words. 85% done!

I know some of you have joy this week. Me, stayed the same. I'm beginning to think that will be my lot in life because now that I found out I can go swim, I'm not sure I can because of my shoulder. boo hoo for me.

So no exercise types or much of anything else this week except for this: weight watcher's new complete cookbook, just another weapon in the battle of the bulge.

It's interesting, really, how we perceive weight. We battle it. Such an aggressive concept and well maybe that's the best way to think about it. Carrie Fisher is now the new spokeswoman for Jenny Craig and she says something to the effect of 'the world is a hostile place for a fat person.' (well the world is hostile in general but yes, I think this is true) We get hostile about our own appearance. We get hostile when medical professionals point out all the things that can go wrong with our health. You get the picture.

For me, it's about the health as much as anything and I think that's why I keep putting in recipes here (well besides I'm a lazy ass and don't want to exercise). We need to eat well and that's what I'm trying to give us here, something healthy to eat. The ancients and Asian medicine has known this for centuries. Just a few samples here:

Let food be thy medicine, thy medicine shall be thy food. ~Hippocrates

Leave your drugs in the chemist's pot if you can heal the patient with food. ~Hippocrates

When diet is wrong medicine is of no use.
When diet is correct medicine is of no need.
~Ayurvedic Proverb

He that takes medicine and neglects diet, wastes the skill of the physician. ~Chinese Proverb


So where does that leave us? Basically, we need to take control of our kitchens. I know not everyone on my list cooks and I'm not going to preach that you learn (Okay you should). However, the only way to keep control of what is going into your body is to make the food yourself. PRocessed foods, frozen foods, stuff at restaurants, there is no way of controlling the fat, salt etc going into these. Even if you DO cook, our food has gotten way less healthy. It's estimated that chicken, for example has 300% more fat in it than 30 years ago when I was a kid. Scary.

So what do we do? Our best I guess. Read the labels, notice how small they make them now that they know more people are reading them? Make choices. I'm not even saying buy organic since that is so poorly controlled and over priced but if's not too bad, give it a try (like today my organic carrots were only 20 cents more than regular so I bought them). There is no reason healthy food should taste like unflavored tofu blobs. Look online, in books, in what I share and find healthy tasty (and often easy) things to make.

If you don't want to cook, there are still things you can do. We can all look up Eat This Not That online or get the books. I have the one 'for the market place' since I DO mostly cook. They have weekly suggestions and make menus transparent for most of the big chain eateries. The drawback to the Eat this not that are triple fold, too often for my taste they compare apples to oranges (dude, if you're telling me my chocolate shake is unhealthy compare it to another chocolate shake not flavored water or some shit) and well, after a while reading their columns you become afraid to eat anything.

( Red Cabbage with ginger )

p.s if you want me to look up things like pork or fish just ask me. I don't normally eat those things but I have tons of cook books around. I might not prescribe to any one diet plan but I've got the low cal cooking knocked.