In February my buddy, Luc Reid, asked for volunteers with whom he could work on some area where they wished to become more motivated.

I had three areas that came to mind:

1) Writing
2) Physical Health (e.g., diet and exercise)
3) Household Organization

I decided that the first thing I had to knock out was the household organization thing. At the time I started working with Luc, about 50% of my home was effectively unusable because of the “clutter.” It has been this way for years. But now, less than a month after Luc started working with me (an hour a week over the phone), I have 90% of my home available to be used as originally designed. The remaining 10% (the erstwhile family room) at least has a clear floor even if it does contain >200 neatly stacked boxes awaiting “defragmentation.”

Can I just say now that I am completely amazed that this happened so quickly. I thought it would take months.

[moment of appreciative silence]

So now I have the mental space to turn back to my writing.

I’m in the process of acquiring a Mac iBook so I can run Scrivener. I’ll be a proud owner of an iBook on 17 April one way or the other. The cool thing about Scrivener is that it will allow me to work with the bits and pieces I have on my “Queen of Alba” manuscript (QoA has been too daunting to deal with up to now).

However, my first priority is to write my “Children of Heaven” book, which takes place during the last years of Joseph Smith’s life, seen from the POV of three people who lived with him. I wrote a draft of this a couple of years ago, back before I knew how to write or half of the historical factoids. That original draft was important and necessary, but the book I will start writing now is as unlike that first draft as a newborn is unlike the blastula from whence it evolved.

Don’t need Scrivener to write “Children of Heaven.” I just need a healthy dose of “butt in chair.”

Yippie Ki Yea!

Tags: Writing