Surprise...from Carmen!

My first day back at school I had a nice surprise...Carmen Ang came to visit me after her first official day at university and she brought me an autographed copy of her Chicken Soup for the Soul book! This weekend, the local newspaper wrote a story about her too, so it's nice to see her getting some attention for her writing. I'm always happy to see my students succeed...definitely a great way to start the school year!

Keeping the WOOLF at the door!

I recently read how VIRGINIA WOOLF managed to deal with depression and the rejection that ultimately comes with being a writer. It all comes down to one word...CONSISTENCY! No matter what she felt like, no matter whether she wanted to put the words down or not, even if she was writing page after page of garbage--she kept going! She trusted in the power of consistency. If you're writing garbage, you'll soon write yourself out of it. Keep going!

I've been in SINGAPORE for the last month to visit family and enjoy a family vacation, but while I was there, I made sure to get up early and get down pages of writing before mostly anyone else was awake (Pop, my father-in-law tends to be the first at 5:15 most days!).

But the results of my consistent writing during a vacation surprised even me. First of all, I took ideas I'd sketched out for a new chapter book series for girls and wrote the entire first book of that series--6000 words, roughly 24 typed pages! Even more amazing, I worked on my latest novel, and pumped out 27000 words for it--more than 100 pages! I even started a new thriller that I more or less mapped out and wrote the prologue and first chapter for! I jotted down ideas for my tutoring business, created new business ideas that involve writing as well, played with a bit of poetry, read a few great novels by writers I love--all within the first 24 days of my vacation.

And I still got to do snorkeling, fishing, zip-lining, downhill lugeing, roller coaster rides, a tour of a cultural village during a four-day side trip to Sabah, and a full exploration of Universal Studios Singapore with my family. Looking back at my journal, I see that there were many days I felt exhausted, when I didn't want to wake up and get those pages down...but out of 24 days, there were only three where I absolutely could not. I felt a little guilty about those three, but I usually came back the next day with a renewed vigor and pumped out enough pages to make up for it. My average page count while on vacation? 5 and a half pages (1375 words). My goal at the beginning? 3 pages per day or 750 words. After all of that, there's only one thing left to say...

Thank you, VIRGINIA!