Gotta love life as a writer with a day job! Things were going along smoothly for a while, then three weeks ago, two things happened. One of our volunteer drivers took a couple of vacations and the EMS gods made life a little more than interesting. I will say that I’ve now been on four CPR calls in the last month. For some agencies, that’s nothing. For us, that is more than usual.

However, that does not show a grand conspiracy as one local suggested. They figured all the heart attacks came from either the covid vaccine or chemtrails. But, with the law of averages, swings between extremes are normal, so I wouldn’t worry that there’s a fresh bout of something lurking around the corner ready to kill me.

I’d rather spend my time fretting about how I’m going to force myself to sit down and write each day.

As if life wasn’t already a juggling act, I took on a beta reading project. It’s helped me pay attention to some things in my writing, but the going has been slow. It’s a Christian Romance. Ironically, the writer apologized about it possibly not being my cup of tea because of the romance when the part giving me pause is the Christianity.

No offense, but protestants tend to reinvent the wheel and miss out many of the deeper meanings of Scripture. I have always struggled with private interpretation for that reason. Some may suggest that I’m just a blind sheep needing someone to tell me what the Bible means, but I’m not a Biblical scholar and no one person has a long enough lifetime to study everything necessary to fully understand Scripture.

Before I get off on a tangent about sola scriptura and its flaws, I’ll just leave the topic saying that I’m practicing extending the rules of SciFi worlds to contemporary romance since there are folks who will enjoy the story and benefit from it.

Call me a knit picker. That skill qualifies me as “detail oriented” on a resume and makes me dang good at most things I do. It comes down to how someone wants to view a particular trait and choose a term for it.

Meanings are nuanced. Everything from a slight difference in definition to the sound of a word affects a reader’s or listener’s perception and can create a favorable or unfavorable image. 

That being said, finding new ways to describe the same old gestures in writing is impossible without sounding dumb, wordy or confusing. No reviewer ever said, “I love the description of shrugs in this story!” So don’t lock yourself up over describing body language.

I recently found two reference guides on describing body language and emotions that I definitely plan to use as I go through my next novel. Several more are available through Amazon and other retailers. I leave it to you to go find what works for you.

Hopefully, I can get this beta read done this week. I look forward to getting back to my stuff. Lately, I’ve been coming up with new versions of old ideas and fleshing them out. Camp WriMo is coming up in April, and I will have my pick of projects to focus on, provided I can discipline myself.

Besides that, I may start looking into YouTube videos. A couple people have told me I should start a channel based on my in-person performances around town, but if you’ve watched my Facebook Live videos, I suck and I can’t stand the sound of my voice. Maybe recording and editing will make me seem a little more polished, I don’t know, and I won’t know until I try.

So that is how it stands for now, folks. Catch you next time!