Discover a New World of Romance with Christine Columbus

 I signed a contract with The Wild Rose Press for my Sweetheart story. I took a ten-year break from writing and during that time we have been traveling, camping, and volunteering at NWR and state parks. Now, that I am not spending my day planning routes to make sure our 40-foot, 5th wheel camper doesn’t go under a low bridge and get stuck. I am using my free time to write. We are currently living in a stick and brick in Wilmington, NC and I have been working on edits in the river shack I also recently self published a Children’s Story. Living Things available on  Amazon .    

 I went on the haunted pub crawl while waiting To hear from The Wild Rose Press. Hopefully the news is better than the ghost  stories…

 When you don’t feel like writing anymore - Do you just try to power through putting random words on the page or shut the laptop and call it a day. Today, I switched my projects and went from my short story to a blog…but with 30 minutes left of writing time and guilt beginning to pile up…I need to get back to my story.   When I don’t know exactly where the story is going I get anxious. I want everything to fit together and I don’t want the characters to suffer.  Instead of placing the characters up a tree and throwing rocks at them…I want to make them happy and remove all the obstacles and stumbling blocks from their path. This attitude does not serve my goal or write and submit. Wish me luck at being mean to Clay and Mel.  

Normally, my goal would be a daily word count, to be published or hit a best seller list. But for 2023 my goal is to write, submit and repeat. I had a teacher tell me writing is 10% talent and 90% perseverance. For the first time in over six years I won’t be sleeping with wheels under my bed. We have rented an apartment in Wilmington for the next 13 months and the view is inspiring.

 32 years ago, I thought I would have money when… I didn’t need to buy formula…then it was diapers…I thought for sure when I no longer had daycare expenses…. And lately, I have been thinking when Covid is over… First time at a campground in 5 months…. And while we slept, thieves went through vehicles and the only thing they took were weapons and money…luckily we had neither. But another camper told me they got his loaded pistol, other lost weapons, money, cellphones… And then we went and got fuel, $4.37 a gallon…2 days later, the same station was $4.99 a gallon.

Today, I failed to trick myself into doing stretching or strengthening, but I did walk 4.5 miles. 😊 I generally walk 10,000 steps a day, but I break the steps up into 3 walks.  Which is very easy to do, but walking all 10,000 steps at once was a little more difficult.   I did use my creative power to create dinner…I add a can of dice tomatoes into the bullet mixer with can of tomato paste - and after a minute, I had spaghetti sauce. Of course I add ground beef, onions, celery and  angel hair pasta.  And for desert I added a packet of Emergen C to no-fat Greek plain yogurt.  So, five more days to use my creativity to find ways to trick myself into strengthening and stretching.  On today’s walk I passed by white pelicans, of course it was towards the end of my walk and I was too tired to enjoy the site.

Today I am starting my class assignment over, partially because I stopped halfway through the week and because I have decided instead of creatively blogging I am going to use my super power ‘creativity’ to improve my life. I want to lose fifteen pounds, increase my strength and flexibility. I am in my 60’s, so I know exactly what to do…but knowing and doing are two different things. And I am lazy. So, I am going to use (notice I didn’t use the word attempt this shows I am fully committed to this idea) I am going to use my creativity to get what I want.  A slightly smaller and stronger version of myself. Because today is Valentine’s Day and I wanted something sweet, (like dark chocolate hearts) - but instead of buying a bag of candy. I bought a box of Larabars, they are made with dates and nuts and of course the one I choose has chocolate chips and are 250 calories or 8 WW points…not a great creative choice because Dove dark chocolate hearts have 150 calories for 4 hearts or 8 WW points