Sunday, November 16, 2008

Life of a Writer

I had the opportunity to pretend I was a real writer this weekend. It was glorious. I took a personal day on Friday so I could work on my book. If only I really could stay at home all day, write about life and make a living doing so. A girl can dream!

Surprisingly, I got a lot accomplished. I worked some on Friday and for six solid hours yesterday, minus the unscheduled nap. As of midnight last night, I'm completely done editing and have no plans to do any more. If you find any mistakes in your book (should you decide to buy one from me), know that I did everything I could to prevent that. But a girl's gotta move on. My self-imposed deadline of Christmas is rapidly approaching!

Within the next few days, I plan to figure out the Bibliography page. I did a little research online tonight and realized it's been a really long time since I've had to do anything so formal. Since this book isn't "officially" getting published, I don't know how "proper" I have to be, but for excellence sake, I'd like it done right.

Then I can begin the process of getting everything placed into Blurb's template. That's going to be one of the more challenging aspects, but it'll all be worth while.

----------------------------------------

The thing about hanging out with a writer is that often I'll write about you. Or, at least, parts of your experiences are my experiences as well, so you never know what I might write about. That being said...

Today, I got the chance to work out with my good friend Amy V. at the Y. We're helping each other out. She's a Cardio Queen and has been encouraging me in that area. Actually her exact words, "If I'm going to lift weights, then you have to do cardio." Fair deal. Especially since I really need to add that aspect into my routine.

I was SO proud of myself today. I did a preset workout on the treadmill for 20 minutes; complete with 'hills' and various speeds. I was thinking of moving to a different machine, but perhaps my endorphins kicked in, and I decided to do another 20 minutes. This time however, I didn't choose an incline, but instead I started at a faster pace. Then, from out of nowhere I said, "Self, why don't you try to run for a minute". Instead of my usual self of making excuses and such, I immediately increased the mph and RAN for a full MINUTE! I took it back down and walked for a few minutes, then decided to run as fast as I could for another minute. I know that seems like nothing, but three months ago I was a couch potato! Now look what I've done and accomplished. I can't tell you how proud I am of myself!

Amy and I then headed to the weight room. Recently I increased my reps to three sets of 8 instead of two. Again, I know that doesn't seem like much, but trust me, I have to push myself to finish that last set. I'm SO proud of Amy. She's just getting into lifting but I can tell she's been bitten by the bug! We talked to one another the whole time, which drastically reduces the pain we feel. She even showed me how to do some of the machines that I'm not trained on, which was a nice change of pace. I believe I'm going to add those to my workout.

40 minutes of cardio? CHECK
60 minutes of lifting weights? CHECK
A really productive workout? Priceless

8 comments:

Kate said...

Hey Girl! Is this you? (Meredith)

Poet4Him77 said...

Yes ma'am!

~Amanda~ said...

Hey Meredith~I haven't ignored your request about the music, I just haven't been on here much b/c of all the morning sickness. You can go to www.myflashfetish.com and register for free and then start typing in what music you are looking for either by the name of the song or by the artist. You can then "add" it to a playlist and then pick what kind of playlist you want and then save it to get a code. If you want to put it on your blog then you can pick the option on blogger to add an "html code" to your page and then just copy and paste that code to your page and save it. I hope you can figure all that out. If you have any problems, let me know and I'll see if I can help in some way. Happy music hunting!! :)

d$ said...

So, are you self-publishing? How many copies are you printing, and how much shall they be expected to cost? Let me know--I am officially reserving a copy for my very own.

Poet4Him77 said...

Amanda,

So sorry about your morning sickness. I hope it receeds soon. But hey, you're growing a human; I'm sure that's not easily done! Take it easy and allow the little one to grow and flourish. I'm excited for you!

Thanks for the info about the music! I'll let you know if I have any questions. I appreciate your help!

Poet4Him77 said...

Dave,

Yes, well, I'm using Blurb. I've heard a lot of good things about them and a friend of a friend just had her second book "published" through them and it looks EXACTLY like what I have pictured in my head, so that gives me great hope!

I'm not sure of the cost yet. I debated about soft or hardcover, but I figure, this is a dream fulfilled, it needs to be done right. So, it'll depends on how many pages I end up with. I've done A LOT of editing, so I'm thinking it'll be around $50. Is that too much? If I order 10 or more, then I can get a 10% discount. Think others will want to order one too?

~Amanda~ said...

I would love to order a copy of your book. I think you are a great writer!! Then when you get big and famous, I can say "I knew her when her first book was published!" ..LOL! :)

Poet4Him77 said...

Thanks, Amanda! That means a lot to me! Any talent I have is totally from God. I'm hoping many are encouraged by my book. It's a collection of things I've written over the past couple of years. I have a friend who organized them into categories, so it's going to be more like a devotional book. I'm excited to see what God's going to do with it!