Writing About Writing

Another day off already?

            Well, not exactly. But I am taking a short break from working on Cauldron to do some clean up around the rental house here in Puerto Rico. And to prep for a lunch visit later today with some friends here in Orocovis. Yes, my wife and I have a life beyond looking at computer screens all day. (grin)

            Last Sunday after church we headed to Santa Isabel on the south coast of the island to shop at the Walmart there. About a 45 minute drive via twisty mountain roads to get there but beautiful. Generally cheaper at Wally World than the local grocery store, Selectos. To make it worth our while, we stocked up last week, or so we thought.

            Discovered we needed a few more items (of course!), so before heading to our friend’s house for lunch, we stopped to shop. We then had a lovely time with our friend, M and her sister, niece, and grandniece.

We visited M’s house four years ago, the year after Hurricane Maria. Her home had been severely damaged in the storm. A small work team from our church in Wichita came to Orocovis and assisted some friends here, putting a new roof on the home she’d grown up in. The experience was life-changing in a number of ways.

M's home getting a new roof, 2018.

This is one reason we knew moving to Puerto Rico was for us. The people are wonderful, the island is beautiful, and the weather is fantastic. I’m not too good with my Spanish yet, but I think it will improve over time. Everyone’s willing to help me learn! And we’ve been made to feel so very welcome.

M's home now, 2022. A beautiful remodel!

All that to say, I decided to take a day off from the novella. I know a lot of writers are on it seven days a week, but I’d decided ahead of time that I would write at least five days a week and not feel guilty about my days off. We’re here in PR to vacation as well, so we might take our weekends on different days than Saturday and Sunday.

Still, I had this itch to write today and so I decided to write about writing. I’d just finished this short novel by Dean Wesley Smith called Card Sharp Silver, a western time-travel tale, one of Dean’s favorite tropes. I couldn’t find it on Goodreads, so I did a web search for the title and came across his blog entries from 2020 when he wrote about his daily routine as professional writer writing a novel.

I liked that idea!

It’s what I’m doing now.

Now I shouldn’t have tried this so early in my career. I really have nothing of substance to teach other writers, I don’t think. Dean’s written over 200 books and been in the industry since the 1980s. He’s written dozens of media tie-in novels over the years, was traditionally published under a number of pen names, and now is a huge advocate for indie-publishing. I find a lot of inspiration from his posts. Disagree with a lot too, but heh.

Long and short of it is, good idea or not, I’m blogging about my daily progress with the goal of putting these posts together in an e-book titled, Writing: A Cauldron of Cats. Or something like that. (BTW, I’m writing this a week after the fact and back-dating the posts to reflect that day’s progress…like a journal written one week late.) Maybe I’ll publish this when it’s all done and sell it online. Or maybe I’ll give it away free to my newsletter subscribers.

          Another option is firing up my Patreon account again and start posting new content and stories for subscribers, including these posts. Hmm…that kinda sounds like a good idea. Maybe fellow writers and interested readers can benefit – at least a little bit! – from my meanderings.

Even if I’ve only been at this thing full time for a month.