For the first time in literally years, I woke up in the wee morning hours with book-stuff running around my head, enough so that I had to turn on the light and write it all down before I could go back to sleep.  That's kind of cool.  :-)  And a sure sign that-- even though some people might think the stress would be higher now that I've utterly "failed", lost so much and moved in with my folks-- instead of being stressed, I'm finally recovering.  Which all feels very good.

I woke up with a title that I really like for the non-fiction book that I've been calling "my beliefs book" for the last couple years: "Do It Yourself Happiness".  With the sub-title: "The hardest DIY project you'll ever take on, but worth it".  :-)

Heaven only knows if I'll stick with the title, but I thought it was way cool, because that's the premise of the whole book.  We don't need therapists or coaches, seminars or classes, or anything that costs money (beyond the price of my book. *smile*) to find happiness.  All we need is an understanding of the way our buried beliefs run our lives and make us unhappy, plus methods for finding the buried beliefs and fixing them.

The whole process is really simple, and worked great for me... I've never been happier... but it's also the hardest thing I've ever done... and worth it.  :-)

So, I don't know how far I'll get today on actually starting anything for the book, but it's really nice to finally feel some momentum, and being able to have the thought that the first draft is a do-able project.

Wow!  I'm getting there.  :-)

I am so tickled!  Adrienne Giordano's second book, "A Just Deception", is about to be released from Carina Press and she passed along the finalized copy and see what it says in the acknowledgements:

I must, must, must acknowledge Jackie Powers and her wonderful insight when working through early characterization issues. Your advice helped me dig deep and I’m so grateful.

She wanted to surprise me, and I was surpirsed, and gratified.

Thanks, Adrienne!  I had a great time talking with you, I didn't expect this, and I'm really looking forward to reading the final draft.  :-)

Wow!!  **grin**

I realized a while back that I have this blog categorized in my head as my "fiction writing blog", so if I'm not writing fiction, I tend to not post here.  Then I decided the other day that this needs to be my "writing" blog and to not limit myself to "fiction". 

Meaning that I should start talking about what's kept me up day and night, and prevented me from doing many, many of the things I should have been doing.

So, where have I been for the last six months, and what have I been doing?

I've been writing a non-fiction book:

Is that enough to account for the majority of the last six months?  175,000 words.  500 pages.

I'm glad to have it this far done, but it's only a raw draft.  Now the chore is to make something coherent of it.  Which, of course, should prove as interesting (in the Oriental curse sense of the word) as any fiction I've written.

It'll eventually be a book on how to take control of your life from your subconscious and your limiting beliefs.  It won't be a cure-all or make-a-million-dollars-this-week book.  For anyone who actually does the exercises, when they're done with the book, they will be consciously running their life, which makes it tremendously more likely that their conscious goals will actually be realized... whether it be a cure or a million dollars, or just plain being able to say "I want to do X" and not have their subconscious sabotage them every step of the way.  :-)

I'm reading contest entries this afternoon (yes, they're waaaayyy late, I know), and I found myself writing the following, then I had to go take my kid someplace. As I drove, I thought about what I'd written, and I realized that I'd never thought about it that way before, and it seemed fairly profound, so I thought I'd share it.

Historical entry page 7:

Ben took a deep breath and slowly exhaled. He preferred the backwoods of the colonies to this dangerous jungle of London’s upper society. At least there, he could shoot his predators.

{{This is good, but totally out of character for who he’s been presented as so far.

Up until now, nothing has been mentioned of ‘backwoods’ or ‘shooting’, so I-as-reader assumed he was American upper-crust. If he’s not, it needs to be mentioned waaaaay before this.

Don’t make the reader go back and re-evaluate the characters!!  It annoys them!

You need to build the character from one point to the next, not contradict the character from one point to the next.

The reader’s assumptions about the character are often based on the words that aren't on the page even more than the words that are on the page.

If he’s not American upper-crust, then he’d be doing a lot of thinking of how he should act and re-act. If living the life of the British upper-crust comes naturally, then he wouldn't need to think about how to act or re-act, so he wouldn’t be thinking about it, so the words wouldn’t be on the page. (Read more)