#ROW80 - Patience

Well, I got better as far as my sniffles go.  I'd like to say that the goals came easily as a result, but they didn't.  Life through the curve-ball.  This time, in the form of a car accident.  I was rear ended.  But it wasn't serious (don't you worry).  There's some minor body damage, but no injuries except for the other driver's pride.  That, and my time.  If you've ever been in one of these things, you know how much of a pain the whole insurance process can be.  Not time-friendly, to say the least.  Anyway, here's a look at the goals:

• Lesson Learned - Patience is the name of this game.  Good stuff seems to happen of its own accord, in its own time.  Usually it seems to have no link to what you've actually be doing.  More on this in a bit.
• WIP Pages - 6/6.  The number looks more mundane than the execution though.  I'm in the final throes of this novel, and so two consecutive days I had two page days.  Battle scenes tend to go quickly.  But then events conspired to take away three days of writing in a row.  I buckled down the last two of the week to eek out the goal.
• Blogging - 3/3 on both blogs.  Need to sit down and write my monthly personal post.  I have a good Depression anecdote to relate there.  On the blogs, I may have used a bit of a cheap trick to squeeze in the goal this week.  I had a couple of short "filler" posts.  That is, they usually link another article and only include maybe a couple paragraphs discussing my thoughts.  It's more like a glorified comment, but a good change of pace every now and then.  In bonus points, I had a guest post go up this week.

Pretty solid work.  Not as easy as I'd hoped.  It was more like a burst of creativity that was snuffed by life, and then leveled back out into the usual slow burn.  Bursts are nice when they happen, though I wish I could have capitalized on it to get through this ending.  

I need to pay attention to my lesson, though.  Patience.  Totally not one of my virtues.  Yet completely key to this whole indie author thing.  So many of the successful indies are slow to take off, and then BAM, lightning strikes.  In reality, you could probably trace it to small steps of success, and I've had a lot of those these last few weeks.  

I went up with a favorable review on one book blog recent, and I have another one coming.  Also, my mother informed me last night that one of the English teachers at her school is reviewing my book to see if it is "appropriate" enough to add into their collection at school.  I don't see why not.  I purposefully strive to keep things mostly PG-13 in my stories.  My theory is that vulgarity needs to be used sparingly (in most genres) to remain effective.  Otherwise, you're just being crass (and a poor writer, shock jock style).

In any case, these are all really great steps.  And it takes time for word of mouth to percolate.  You go several weeks without anything "happening," only to find out that it really has been.

Patience.  This is not a sprint, it's a marathon.  Writing is my dream career.  Not a short, 6 month contract job, but a career.  Something that I want to do for the next 30+ years.  I took me about 10 years to get to the point where I could write something worth a fig, and even now I have plenty to learn... Patience.  And perseverance.  You only fail when you stop learning.

We'll end with a look at the word counts:

• Project Fiction: 2,272
• Since last check in: 5,544
• Grand Total for Round 4: 14,690