Julia Mozingo Author

Even though 2012 has already begun, it’s not too late to begin work to create the write habit, a writing habit.

Writing is one facet of a writer’s life, our complex lives, and as such, should be incorporated into our daily lives without a second thought. Just like bathing, combing our hair, making the bed, eating meals, and brushing our teeth.

We still have fifteen days left in January.  I’d like to challenge those writers struggling to find time for writing in their busy lives to take at least one baby step daily toward your writing dream. Make writing a daily habit. I’ve often heard that doing something for twenty-one days in a row creates a habit. Let’s work to create the writing habit as a part of our everyday lives. Start today.

City Reservoir

Today’s weather was a surprise of warmth, low seventies. So I drove to the local reservoir with a spiral notebook and pen in hand.  I spent a couple of hours with nature … and a writing friend. I wrote phrases about the environment that included the senses —
what I heard, saw, smelled, tasted, and felt (physically and emotionally).

I thought about my current work in progress, a YA novel, while doing laundry this morning and changing the sheets, mindless repetitive work, that left my mind ample opportunity to wander.  New ideas — possibilities for my story — popped into my head, so I quickly jotted them down before I forgot them. Details from a news story last night and repeated this morning stuck like magnetic filings in my mind and swirled with my story ideas, yielding ideas and situations for a sequel to the novel I’m currently working on. I jotted those notes, too, and quickly researched the topic on the Internet, copied URLs, printed xps files, and bought and downloaded a book on the topic for my e-reader.  All saved for easy access later.

Each of these actions individually comprise baby steps, but clumped together add up to more.

I dare you to accept the challenge to build a daily writing habit. <VBG>

How do you build and strengthen your writing habit?  What small step or steps are you taking that move you closer to your writing dream?

Share your techniques, your baby steps, and how you’re building your daily writing habit.  I want to know.

Wow! There are so many good books out there to read that I find many books I want to read, but feel I have so little time to read them all. However, when I look back at what I’ve read this summer–read the past six weeks–I see that I’ve made a dent in my TBR (To Be Read) stack, rather stacks. Yes, plural. And the stacks continue to grow as I find more books I want to read. But if I don’t start, I’ll never finish. So this is where I started this summer.

I read Linda Howard’s Dream Man, Susan Andersen’s Obsessed, Heather Graham’s Ghost Walk, all adult books.

Then I signed up for the Oklahoma Fall Arts Institutes to study writing with Sharon Darrow in a workshop called “Becoming the Author: Writing for Children and Young Adults.” So I ordered and read her books–Old Thunder and Miss Raney, Through the Tempests Dark and Wild, Trash, and The Painters of Lexieville. Wow! Talk about voice! The last two, the young adult books, showed me life as I’d never really thought about it. I found the books very interesting and powerful. I’ll never think of the name Patricia the same as I did before without remembering Pert’s mother calling her Pertricia. Wonderful!

After reading those, I delved into action adventure novels and read Meredith Fletcher’s work — Double-Cross, Look-Alike, and her contributions to two anthologies Upgrade in Smokescreen and The Get-Away Girl in Femme Fatale. Really fast reads with strong characters.

Following those, I read Xxx, a novelization by Mel Odom and decided to read more of his work. So currently, I’m reading Mel Odom’s Paid in Blood. See picture above. I’m halfway through the book. It, too, is a fast read. I’m amazed at the skillful weaving of the multiple viewpoints and the individual story lines. There’s never a boring part. I love the “little” bullets of narrative info. Quick in and quick out keeps the pacing moving. And each scene’s end is a grabber. Talk about not being able to put the book down. Mel sure makes it tough on a reader … hard to put the book down to go to bed at night, but even tougher to get up the next morning if the reader stays up late reading. Reads like this sure make me want to retire from the work force so I can read all day and night.

Next on my TBR stack will be two more Mel Odom books, Angel “Image” and Snowday, a young adult novel.

For now, ready or not, I’ve got to get back to the day job of being an elementary teacher. Duty calls!