Writing, Chaos, Order and a Whole Lot of Pens with @MeganSlayer #iamwriting #planning #posting #writing

 (By Luis Argerich from Buenos Aires, Argentina (Cross Pen) [CC BY 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)%5D, via Wikimedia Commons)

I love my writing utensils. Love them. I’ve got a pen collection that’s probably out of control. Why? Because when I go somewhere, I want a pen to commemorate being there. Also, they look pretty. I tend to use the ink up in them, too. With my luck, once I decided to display the pens, the one with the ink left in it would explode and I’d have a mess. But that’s my luck.

But this post isn’t about just my love of pens…although based on the photos I added, you’d think it might be. Grin.

I wanted to write today about something that may seem small and silly, but it’s pretty big for me.

(By André (Own work) [CC BY 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0) or GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html)%5D, via Wikimedia Commons)

I’m a stress writer. Yep. I admit it. I am. I tend to know what I want to write and have deadlines, but for whatever reason, I seem to wait until I’m down to the wire before I get things done. That doesn’t mean I’m sitting around doing nothing. No…I’m usually finishing up whatever it was I put off before this project.

It’s not a good thing to do, stress writing. I tend to create these crazy schedules for myself, then stress when I don’t feel like I’m meeting my own deadlines. It’s worse during National Novel Writing Month (NaNo). I usually have a project to finish BEFORE I can start the NaNo one and then I try to get both done y the end of November (that’s the month NaNo takes place in).

(By Europenpen (Own work) [CC BY-SA 4.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)%5D, via Wikimedia Commons)

Right now, I’m currently trying to wrap up a short for Changeling involving Christmas Magic. I won’t get into the gritty nitty, but it’s short and it’s HAWT. Before that, I finished another Christmas tale for another publisher. Because I love Christmas? Because the stories were begging to be written. Oh, and I’ve got another short planned for once the Changeling book is done. Have I lost my mind? Sometimes it feels like it.

I enjoy Christmas, don’t get me wrong. I love the joy, the togetherness and the fun of the holiday. But it’s July. It’s not entirely hard to think about snow (it’s been well into the 90s for temps here of late),  but I’m not really in the mindset to write Christmas. I won’t lie. When it’s Christmas time, then I’ve got all sorts of ideas for stories. It just happens to be too late or too early to turn them in (depending on who you ask). But the stories I just finished and am working on demanded to be written.

I don’t have big spreadsheets of what needs to be written and when. I might have a schedule that’s in my trusty notebook next to my laptop, but that’s got maybe a week or two out scheduling wise. I let the muse talk and pants my way through most of my stories. Don’t get me wrong. I don’t just write whatever pops into my head from the muse. That’s what ends up in the notebook where I can tweak it first. But it might be May and I’ll have the characters for a Christmas story show up. Or it might be Halloween and I want to write Valentines stories. Although, a mash-up of a Valentine Halloween might be fun.

So while I’m sure I rambled through this post, this is a clue into my writing world. There’s some order and some chaos, but it’s all mine and I own it. I might as well. 🙂