Blowing my own horn?

"Believe in yourself! Have faith in your abilities! Without a humble but reasonable confidence in your own powers you cannot be successful or happy." ~~ Norman Vincent Peale


Today has been a strange one.

I sat in the usual morning traffic pile-up for an hour and half, quite calm and peaceful, coffee in one hand, the other on the steering wheel of the car, watching the occupants in the other cars. Romeo plot bunny was having great fun, and by the time I got to work he had noted down at least eight possible plot ideas.


To say that I love writing is an understatement.  I not only love it, I enjoy it thoroughly, to the point that I can become totally absorbed in the story, and everything else fades around me, while I am busy writing.  The writing part is fun. It's what comes after the writing that's not fun.

And for me it had not yet begun, really.

We were taught as children to be humble, not to blow your own horn, to avoid boasting. Now suddenly, you have to promote yourself and your work? You have to sell yourself?

Mental meltdown.

I think I am going to need a lot of caffiene and nicotine before I can get the two concepts to live together in my mind.  Maybe they can have rooms on either side of Romeo's. He can keep them together but apart.

Its almost midnight, and I think I am going insane.  Let me rather go try and get my two lovers out of the mess that they are in at the moment... an hour of writing before bed should get me sane again.

Where to start?

Once upon a time... Wait. I won't bore you like that!

Great was my excitement when AudioLark decided to accept my very first romantic short as their Christmas promotional piece. And great was my trepidation when someone said, "Well, it's about time you get a blog going."

Now Romeo plot bunny works overtime in my head. He is constantly scribbling down story ideas on my mental whiteboard, for me to go over later. But blogging?

I shuddered, I spluttered, I even tried to come up with some great excuses not to do it. I spent a week playing with the layout, finally tonight  I erased all the fancy doodats I put in, and got the courage together to just write something.

In my search for doodats I came across the legend of Cupid and Psyche, and Romeo was ecstatic. Several possible plots in that one! But that will have to wait.

First I have to find a home for my first full length novel, African Sunrise. The poor baby is still doing the submission rounds, and my nails are bitten to the quick. The followup, Lion's Den is almost complete, but going slowly at the moment, as life do tend to hand one a couple of lemons, in the way of adult responsibilities.

I wish someone told me this before I started to write. Would it have stopped me? I doubt it. Writing is something I have wanted to do since I was in grade school.  I was one of those horrible students who, when the teacher asked for a two page essay, ended up handing in four. It was about the only part of school I liked.

Maybe I would find blogging as much fun as writing, in the end!

Thought of the day:

If life hands you lemons, forget about lemonade. Make a lemon meringue pie!