Kaycee Chronicles

I’m going to spend this entry venting, so I’ve attached this delicious picture for your viewing pleasure so that my rant doesn’t seem as annoying. I know, sometimes my cleverness amazes me also. 

Here we go. I’m so tired my brain is shorting out. My body’s telling me to take time and recharge and frankly there’s no extra time to complete that task, however necessary it might be. It’s frustrating because my creative energy is suffering as well as everything else. My car’s tranny is going out and it’s going to probably cost about six grand to fix. I don’t have six grand. No where close. What I do have is one thousand dollars a month in students loans and fourteen hundred a month on other bills such as car, insurance, etc. I have a Full Time job which I absolutely love. A part time job to help me make ends meet, and I’m studying full time for the CPA exams. All of this leaves me with no energy, let alone creative energy. I’m stressing about the exams because I’m afraid to not pass them. I don’t want to let my boss down or myself down by not passing and I sure as hell can’t afford the thousand dollars it costs to take the exam again. But the money or in this case, the lack of it, doesn’t really bother me. Do I wish I had more. Of course, but I’ve never let money or the lack of it ruin my moods or affect my attitude. The core of this is the stress and the fear of failure and the always being tired because there aren’t enough hours in the day. I’m doing my best and I guess that’s all I can do, but what if my best isn’t good enough? The boyfriend says to stop talking and thinking I’m going to fail because if I get hung up on that then I will, not because I’m not capable of passing but because I allowed my fear and doubt to get the best of me. It’s just so hard not to let it get the best of you. Everyone sees this happy go lucky exterior, no one sees inside me. I deal with my stress internally, I don’t like asking for help, and only when I’m about to burst do I vent. Is it healthy? I have no clue, probably not, but it’s the way I handle things and because I’m such an oddly unique person, I just go with it. I go with the flow. Or at least I try to. I just want to be able to take a week off and do NOTHING except read and write. It’s not possible, but a girl can dream can’t she? I know in the long run all this hard work will pay off, but for right now it’s super stressful especially when I’m barely making ends meet and have no money to fix my car. Yesterday was my day off. I got an entire day off and planned to spend it doing homework, reading, working on my writing, but two hours into the homework and feeling super frustrated because I wasn’t doing good and couldn’t concentrate,  I gave up and said okay I’ll eat and read and then work on writing. I ate and read, and the reading didn’t relax me as it normally does, I sat on the couch laptop in lap and did NOTHING. THe worst part is, I don’t and didn’t feel anymore relaxed or rejuvenated even after shutting my brain off for the entire day. I thought the brain short outs like that were supposed to recharge you, but I don’t feel recharged. Rather I feel guilty and exhausted and still have no desire to even look at my story. I don’t know what to do. I don’t have a choice, but to figure something out though. And I will. I always do. I just needed to vent it out a little bit. Thanks for listening. Hope the picture helped get you through my rant session. Here’s another for putting up with me. 

Until Next Time,

Kaycee

Escape from Reality, Succumb to Temptation

Today, my Golden Heart Journey has come to a close. I did not final in my category. Am I bummed? Of course, but it is what it is and I will continue to focus on my novel. I’m not sure if I entered it into the right category, but 20/20 hindsight will get you nowhere unless you use the information for future decisions. Do I think my story is bad? Not at all. I love my story. I get tons of compliments on it. Sam and Presley are a part of me. They’re real to me, and some day I just know someone will love them enough to give them a home. I’m not sure if I’m going to enter them into any contests anymore, I just want to focus on finishing the revisions and getting it sent off to Silhouette and hopefully they will offer a contract. I would very much like to focus on one of my other WIP’s and getting it contest ready. So while it’s not the happy ending to this journey I was hoping for, it is an ending with hope. There is always hope for me, because there is always a chance. My manuscript doesn’t have to be a GH finalist to get a contract. I know that. So I’m going to get right back on my horse, finish up my story and perhaps drink a glass of wine and eat a piece of chocolate to cheer me up. Thanks everyone who supported me during my Golden Heart Journey. Maybe next year will be my year. We’ll see. 

Until next time,

Escape from Reality, Succumb to Temptation

Kaycee

Ahh, the art of rewriting. I’m not so much a fan of it, but when it has to be done, it has to be done. It’s been mentioned more than once to me, that my hero ( in the first three chapters) is an asshole.

Well, of course that has to be changed. He’s an Alpha, not a jerk. So after work today I wrote out a new outline for my first three chapters in which I’ve rearranged the scenes and their content around. I’ve changed up the dialogue and the reactions.

I want Sam to be considered as a caring Alpha, he’ll do what he needs to, to complete his job, but he won’t stoop down to the level of harassment, which is what he was originally doing and which was not my intention.

The good news: I think the first chapters will be much stronger for it and I’m actually excited about making my story better which outweighs my dislike of rewriting and editing.

The bad news: It’s a little time consuming because instead of being able to move forward on my edits tonight like I wanted, I have spent all day taking care of the rewrite.

The good news: Once it’s done, I don’t think I’ll have to do another rewrite, rather just revisions and editing.

The bad news: I feel pressed for time even more now because although I still have a month until the Golden Heart deadline, but time flies and I’ve already been at this a week and haven’t gotten past chapter three revisions. 

Stay tuned as I keep you posted on my Golden Heart Journey!

Until next time,

Kaycee

Well,
I’ve done just about all I can for the night. I’m officially exhausted and off to bed, but wanted to let you all know that Day 2 of my Golden Heart Journey was another success. I read 3 lectures from Margie Lawson’s ECE course, fixed the -ing’s out of chapter two. 
and chatted with my various CP’s about ways to better pursue my revision Hell so that I may enter my MS into the Golden Heart as the very best it can be. So another productive day. Who knows? Maybe I’m getting good at this time management thing. God knows I’ll forever struggle with organization, but Project: Get Organized is well under way for both my home and work life and I’m going to try my hardest to get Project: Stay Organized to be a success.
It’s hard though, I won’t lie. My brains so flighty and spontaneous half the time that I always forget what I’m doing. If I can stay organized and keep my time managed well, then I shouldn’t have a problem meeting the Golden Heart deadline.
I shouldn’t and I hope.

Okay, so Sunday night I entered myself into the Golden Heart. I was super excited and nervous, but I though what the hell? I was already a finalist in the Maggie’s why not go for something even bigger?

Then I received a critique of my chapter one. Now mind you, this chapter one was different than the finalist chapter one because I’d changed some things around. Everything I thought I knew or didn’t know was thrown out the window and I was cast face first into a pile of mud as I struggled to figure out the truth behind one of the so-called “writing rules”

All day yesterday I drove myself crazy over the simple part of a word. -ING. Ugh. What do I do, I thought, because now I have half the people critiquing my work saying to use -ing to help vary my sentence structure and the other half telling me not to.

Not Fun!

Thanks to my WONDEFUL writing groups, I was able to get to the bottom of the “rule” and figure out that it’s okay to use -ing words in your story, just be careful how you use them and use them sparingly because you don’t want too much repetition. I think the “everything in moderation” rule comes into play with just about every writing rule I’ve come across.

So I grabbed out the copy of my old version of the story, used a friends critique and tightened that chapter 1 back to where it should be at least for now. Thank God for that!

I don’t think I would survive if I didn’t have all these wonderful fellow writers supporting me!

So that was Day 1 of my Golden Heart Journey. I’ll now be subsequently fixing chapter 2-5 to fix the whole -ing issue and then will be polishing the entire manuscript until the end of November when I have to submit my entry. Wish me luck!

Until Next Time,

Kaycee