7 May 2021

 Song mood: Alone by Heart.

I'm at my Mum's apartment. I decided to drive up to Fargo to hang out with her and my sister. The drive took a lot out of me. My hips, shoulders and knees hurt. I didn't exercise as much this week and I can feel it now. So I'm going to work on Tai Chi when I get back. More than ever I need to return to the world of martial arts.

The two biggest things after the second shot are joint pain and headaches. After that is my shortness of breath. This next week I will need to exercise and improve my health.

For my writing, I will focus on doing. Just doing the thing I know how to do, write a scene. I will work on prewriting, writing scenes and editing. 

For the scene that I wrote yesterday and posted on my other website, there were things that I wanted to change like word repetitions but had stuff to do in preparation for this trip. So it was a lesson in learning to live with imperfections. I may go back and do slight edits for the ebook and paperback editions and I may not. The story for the website, well the next several projects will be a learning curve of projects. I have to learn to live with my imperfections because that is the only way I will ever produce things.

I equate writing creativity with autistic child. You can tell him don't run. Say it about a hundred times. There is peace for about five minutes and then guess what? He runs. The next thing you know, you're chasing him down twenty blocks and then he says he's sorry. In writing, you have this image and it's really cool. You start writing what you think the image is and then the next thing you know, it's something completely different from what you imagined. The scene just ran twenty blocks from where you wanted it, and that's okay. The kid with autism is a great kid. The scene that you wrote may not be what you pictured, but guess what? It's a great scene because it's written. Take a few breathes and write next scene too.

I realized that I need to write and write a lot. I can guess where my life is going next. I need to produce story after story until they sell and then, never quit after that. Because if I am ever fortunate to bend a knee for a woman, then I'm taking her to Paris. And if I do that, I would want to take her to a three star Michelin restaurant instead of living off of baguettes. Though personally, both French and English baguettes are to die for and if I was by myself, could totally live off them. But my point is, the only way to supplement or boost my income is by writing a lot of stories and selling a handful of copies per story.

I finished listening to The Crow's Trap by Ann Cleeves. I thought it was excellent. The woman who plays Vera, plays her to a tee. Just reading the book and watching the show, I amazed of how close the actress is to the character in the novel. This book keeps you guessing to the very end. Though it did the one thing that I don't like as much, it did unreliable narrator. Though it's not in first person, it does have a POV character that's not reliable, but you don't know until the end. Agatha Christie does that a lot. Though her's is in first person. But maybe with mysteries that is acceptable. I will stick with the way Georges Simenon handles mystery with Inspector Maigret. Just the facts, mam.

I think I finally trained the Instagram search function back to normal. Instagram and Facebook believe that if you are a single male that all you want to do is watch porn. I liked one photo of a woman cosplaying Velma on IG. Velma is more of a private or bedroom cosplay for me. After liking this photo, when I went to my search function on IG, it was filled with scantily clad women with large breasts. On IG, I'm more interested in a tiny house in the middle of a forest or half up a mountain or cafe racer style motorcycles. I'm interested in seeing pictures of places of beauty. Because ultimately, it's tiny houses, motorcycles and exotic places that will motivate me to write.

Anyway. This is me on a Friday night at my mum's.