Mama has her contract (kinda)!

I'm sorry I've been missing lately - it's been mad around here with end of year work for Uni, a photog shoot that just wouldn't line up with everyone that wanted to be there (and I can't post my part in it because it's 'ghostcamera' work - a bit like ghostwriting, just I loaned body pieces (my back specifically, because of my biohazard tattoo) and other fun stuff.

BUT - got my grades back this week and found out I got 3 B's and 2 D's (where the 2 D's are appealable because you can see where I was coping with my head injury (badly), or at least explainable), giving me a high 2:2 (C) for the year overall. Worse than 1st year, but in 1st year, I didn't have memory problems and serious trauma based writers 'block'.

And then, the week before we went off for the year, I wrote a book proposal, based on some of the stuff I'm studying right now (linguistics, forensics and some other stuff) and discovered I'd hit onto a great idea.
This morning I got my partial request back - with a note saying that they would want to see the rest once they'd evaluated this part unless my query didn't live up to the reality.
Contract for me!
And I'm back to blog. So...how have you been?

How Do You Blast Through Writer's Block?

I know that writers tend to fall into two camps: those that believe in writer's block, and those that do not. I've always fallen into the "not" category because normally I recognize that my block isn't really a block from outside of my mind... it's totally self-inflicted.

Someone (was it Linda? Joshilyn? Carolyn?) said that it's what happens when your inner critic is yelling and you can't shut her up. (Or him, I think my inner critic has a brother... I don't like him any more than I like his sister.) So the trick is to make your words (writing) louder and faster so that they can't keep up.

This is accomplished by just sitting your butt in the chair, putting your hands on the keyboard (BICHOK) and writing. It's not easy for those of us who want to write good well every time we sit down. But it's what Anne Lamott would call a "shitty first draft". Sometimes it's a draft that goes no where. There's a great internal sigh of relief when I write something truly gross and horrible and then I hit delete on the whole file. Somehow just writing it down and getting it out of my brain and onto my computer is like some new-age Pensieve.

Then hitting delete can just erase that horrible writing from my life... and free me up to write The Good Stuff.

Wordclay Writing Center offers five tips on breaking through that "block". I found the tips using StumbleUpon, a Firefox add-on that lets you pre-set some interests (writing, horses, parenting.. etc..) and then you can Stumble around the internet and it will bring you to sites that match your interests. If you see one you like, you can click the "I like it!" icon in your toolbar. Hey, if you use Stumble you could even "vote" for Mama Needs A Book Contract!