eTreasures Twelve Day Blog Tour Contest

Come join us for the eTreasures Twelve Day Blog Tour to hear thoughts about Christmas from some of eTreasures' Authors and your chance to win free eBooks. There are multiple ways to win. Go to the opening post for details.

The tour began on December 14th with words from Pembroke Sinclair and a chance to win Bride and Dark Secrets Anthology, which includes my Seduced by Darkness novella.

On December December 15th, we put a little scare in your holiday with Christopher Hivner and a chance to win The Spaces Between Your Screams.

Yesterday, the tour continued with some words from me and a chance to win Sweet Hearts In Bloom Anthology, which includes Escape to Love.

I'm sure there are more authors and some great prizes ahead of us in this twelve day tour. Come join us in the fun and grab your chance for freebies. Visit main blog for latest postings.

Exercising Your 'Writing' Muscles

How important is it to exercise your 'writing' muscles?

Feeling a little out of sync lately, I'm wondering if I've fallen out of shape. I haven't been writing every day. I've discovered a few idea germs, but haven't found the right spark.

So, first, I ask you, what do you do when you are in-between projects, or taking a break from an ongoing project? Do you take a complete break? Busy yourself with playtime writing and exercises? Blog or write to a friend?

One exercise I do frequently, but not as much as I should, is the ten minute writing section. You write whatever comes to mind, not stopping until the end of the full ten minutes is up. To be honest, this is where most of my ideas germinate, but not all sessions produce a spark. The 'left behind' are always great for later motivation, and occasionally you'll find that spark the second or third time around.

There are many different kinds of exercises out in cyberspace and in how-to books. Some target your emotions and life, others work on character building and world building, and still others throw your character into situations to see how they react. I've tried a few, but felt I was wasting precious writing time.

I'm here to say, I'm rethinking the issue. You may end up writing words never destined to be published, but then again you may discover a missing scene you hadn't come up with yet. Besides, if you are stuck and feeling out of sync - not writing at all - what's the harm in doing some exercises?

I'd love to hear from some of you writers out there. Do you exercise when not working on a project? Do you consider your project your exercise? What exercises have you used? What exercises do you recommend?

Notice to all writers (or readers): If you are interesting in guest blogging/interviewing to help promote your work or to simply entertain/inform, email me (chergreen@chergreen.com) and we'll set something up.

Have a great week all!

Technical Difficulties

Yes, once again, I'm having technical difficulties here at Footsteps of a Writer, and of course at my other blog.

Warning - Never, ever, paste an image onto your blogger blog.

It took me a good while to figure out what was causing my problem, but finally found the issue. On Thanksgiving, I pasted rather than uploaded the images on the blog(s). This caused the html coding to be extremely long, which caused my feed to be too big, which made bother feed burner and twitter to quit using the feed. Leave it to me to cause such a problem, right?

The worst part is I made many changes elsewhere before I discovered the true problem. So, now the feed to my blog is not the same. Anyone subscribed will have to re-subscribe - I believe. Now, I may be totally wrong in this, but if you continue to not receive updates and such, you will need to re-subscribe. I am so sorry for any inconvenience this may cause for anyone.

Thank you all for your support.

After posting this, I discovered another problem which may be of interest to anyone using Feedburner.com. Google bought them out, seems like a while back, but now I can't get to my account. So, I believe anyone signed up with continue to get their email updates.

I would appreciate it if you would delete that subscription and sign up through the new link on the blog. This gives me the ability to control the output on this end. Again, I do apologize for all the inconvenience.

Finding Motivation

With the holidays in high gear at the post office, and carriers leaving the work crew, I'm finding it very difficult to find time to write.

As I write this post, I've just completed another nine hour work day.

How someone working these types of hours ever accomplishes his/her dream is beyond me. So how does one find motivation to write, and the energy to think about the story?

Here's a quote from Stephen King, "Read four hours a day and write four hours a day. If you cannot find the time for that, you can't expect to become a good writer."

You all know how much I look up to this man, but I can't say I totally agree with this statement, nor can I say I disagree. Take out the 'four hours a day' and you have something. All writers must read and write. The more you do these two things the better you will become.

With that said, how can you motivate yourself to continue when you are not able to fit one or either into your daily routine?

The answer - you fit it into your daily routine. The motivation comes from just how determined you really are to succeed. No whining, just do it. (Okay, you can see I'm trying to motivate myself, right?)

But seriously, you can Google all you want on how to find the time, and get advice from whoever, but it is 'You' in the end who has to make it happen.

I wish you all the best in your writing careers. Let's take it one sentence at a time. See you at the finish line. I'll be the one crawling the last few yards. :)