Holiday Wishes

This year I'm on deadline during the holidays, which means the tree is half-trimmed, only a few packages have been wrapped, and the cookies may not get baked at all. Oh, well. I can't regret any of that, when I'm so happily immersed in the lives of my characters. (Besides, fewer goodies around the house means we'll get a jump on our New Year's diet resolutions!)

Still, for your sake, I hope your preparations are moving along much better than mine are. LOL

One not-to-be-missed event is writing my Harlequin American Romance Authors blog entry.

My December appearance here never gets old—to me, anyway (smile)—even though I say some of the same things from year to year. How could I not? A blog post almost smack in the middle of December requires some very specific messages, don't you think?

The first is a huge thank you for your support of my books and for your letters and e-mails and social media posts throughout the year.

I look forward to staying in touch, both here at the blog and "out there" in cyber space.

Meanwhile, no matter what special days you celebrate, I wish you a safe, happy, and healthy holiday season.

See you next year!


All my best to you,

Barbara

~~~~~~

Barbara White Daille
THE RODEO MAN'S DAUGHTER (February 2012)
http://www.barbarawhitedaille.com
http://www.facebook.com/barbarawhitedaille https://twitter.com/BarbaraWDaille

The thing about technology...

Technology is a beautiful thing. I love my computer, couldn't live without the word processing program I use to do my writing, and—as my husband would no doubt be very quick to tell you—I am...oh, let's say...just a teeny bit captivated by e-mail. LOL

When you're a writer on a deadline, technology can be a wonderful thing. Or not.

Recently, I was plugging away at the work-in-progress when a new program I'd installed on the computer began acting up and my screen froze—and proceeded to freeze every ten minutes.

As I continued to plug away, the program began to spontaneously combust and shut itself down every five minutes.

Then, even though I had set the backup feature to do its thing every two minutes, I discovered it had decided not to do its thing at all. So I lost countless pages of writing.

And this program's designed to help make the writing process go smoothly! Grr...

But wait, there's more.

A few days later, I was deep into the best part of drafting a story, the part where thoughts burst into your brain so quickly, you can barely type fast enough to get them down before you lose them, and...and... The keyboard died. (sigh)

The computer settled down, finally, and that seemed the end of the catastrophes.

Although, today—I suppose just to make sure I didn't get too complacent—this blog post refused to go live....

Yes, technology is a beautiful thing, isn't it? When it works. LOL

Well, despite all the recent frustrations, the good news is that being on deadline means I'm due to have a new book out. (smile) That's just one of the many things I have to be thankful for in this week before Thanksgiving.

Another of them is you.

Thanks so much for stopping by. And, if you celebrate it, I hope you have a wonderful turkey day filled with family and friends and good food.

All my best to you,

Barbara

~~~~~~

Barbara White Daille
http://www.barbarawhitedaille.com

Clueless

I'm at a total loss this morning about what to blog about. Several things have gone through my mind, but nothing seems to stick or last much longer than one or two sentences. It must be spring fever. Or maybe it's just my brain taking a nap after meeting a string of deadlines. So instead of trying to make sense of much of any one thing, I'm going to list some of those things that have danced through my mind.

Did you know that April begins on the same day each year as July, and in Leap year it's the same as January?

The HAR covers have been fantastic! As fantastic as the stories inside!

Signs in my office:

• Nobody is born published
• PASSION: A powerful force that cannot be stopped
• SOMEDAY MY COWBOY WILL COME (given to me a week ago by one of the members in our local writers' group)

I spent a wonderful morning plotting with three friends and wish we could get together more often, if only for the company.

It seems as if April Fool's Day was only a couple of days ago, yet the month is already more than half gone.

Thank goodness Tax Day is done for another year!

If I could do this a week from today, I could blog about the local Renaissance Fair, which I love attending.

People who can't think of blog topics shouldn't be blogging. :)

Have a wonderful rest of the weekend!

Spring Break? Really?

I’m pulling an all-nighter. With no good reason to rise and shine early, I’ve been working late. Very late. Not only has my January 2011 release been bumped up three months earlier, but I’m working on changes to a proposal. Need I say more?

There are night people and day people, night owls and early birds. I’m of the late variety. I’ve been a night owl all my life, starting within days of my birth. Getting up early is almost an effort in futility. When working for those hourly wages, I’d much rather sleep in late, work a late shift, and return home to stay up even later, winding down after a few hours. On my own, it’s late to bed, late to rise. Sometimes it’s been possible, but rare. But it’s Spring Break Week here, and there are no grandkids needing to be taken to school. Hallelujah!

There’s a problem. Come Monday morning, we’ll be back to the 7:15 a.m. alarm going off. Now I know that isn’t early for many, but for those of us who are night owls, it’s painful. And because I’ve been crawling into bed near 6 a.m. for the past few days--or nights, depending on how you look at it--getting up an hour and fifteen minutes after closing my eyes isn’t going to cut it.

So tonight I’ll try to keep going. There’s always a chance of a short nap later this afternoon…if I’m lucky. It could mean sleeping through The Mentalist
this evening, but because I’ve only just begun watching it, a miss isn’t going to hurt too much. Easier, by far, than to continue on this schedule, come Monday.

We’ve asked this before, I think, but let’s take a poll. Night Owl? Do you enjoy the quiet after the moon has risen? Or Early Bird? Rising with or before the sun?

My Birthday Confession

Today is my birthday. That's reason enough to reflect on the past year, the past decade, or my entire adult life. Here I am at age 7, a good year in childhood because I was always looking forward to being age 10, which seemed sooooo mature. Believe it or not from this photo, I was a tomboy.

In many ways I'm not a very good adult. If I don't have to get up, I sleep late, especially because I stay up late. Way too late, actually. If there are "bad" foods to eat around the house, I will usually eat them. If there's a way to put something off, I'll find it. And don't even get me started on how I avoid exercise.

I think I just never developed any good discipline, which is ironic because I had fairly ordinary, motivated, depression-era parents who did get up early, worked hard, and served balanced meals.

Please don't tell my granddaughters, but their "Mimi" is a slacker. She would much rather run around the backyard, hide Easter eggs in January, go out for pizza, create something artistic, go for a drive or ride a carrousel than do laundry, clean house or run errands. You might say, "Well, of course. Everyone would rather do fun things than work." The problem is that I actually DO the fun things instead of work! (This is especially a problem when I'm on deadline for a book, which I am now, and I have to read eight more romance novels for the RITA first round judging. Oops.)

That's my big confession for my birthday. I'm hoping that I can finally improve over the next year. As of Feb. 21, 2011, I will reach one of those milestones that get you discounts at movie theaters and Early Bird Specials at restaurants. Doesn't it seem as if I should grow up sometime before I grow old? I think so, and I'm going to work on it. But only if it seems like fun.

Thanks for reading my confession, and if you're around or online, lend me some of your fortitude and encouragement this coming year. Best wishes, Victoria.

Writing Advice Day

Okay, I noticed that today was open for writing advice, so I have just one short piece of advice, mostly to myself. Stop getting online to Facebook, email, and the blog and get to writing. Write your required number of pages per day (mine is 7 to 10) and then goof off.

I swear, I have the self-discipline of a four year old! I thought when I got older I'd (1) Wake up early, and (2) Do things on schedule. After all, that's what all the "old" people (back then, almost any adult) I knew did. Apparently they learned something in life that I missed. I'm still planning projects I'll never finish and I sleep as late as I can. I wait to the last minute to do everything. Yes, I know I have some psychological issues, but nothing real serious. :-) If anyone has any advice on changing my slovenly work ethic, I'd be glad to hear it!