Time away can be inspiring

Well, the Outer Banks was lovely again this year. I can't tell you how much I needed this unexpected trip down south. I've been putting in long hours trying to keep my head above water. Multiple author interviews, books reviews, work on the Musing Our Children project, and family commitments, have left me little time to do anything but work.

And we know that all work and no play is not a way to live life.

So, what did I do while I was playing around in the Outer Banks? I enjoyed my family because my online time was limited. We went to see Cinderella at The Lost Colony and Thaddeus Rex at the Roanoke Island Festival Park. Thaddeus Rex is a young entertainer who travels the country trying to inspire kids to read and write. He was awesome! We also lived at the beach because the weather was perfect for it.

You might be wondering right about now what all this stuff has to do with my writing?

Well, back to Thaddeus Rex for a minute. I spoke to him after the show and told him about the Musing Our Children Project. That's probably the first time I admitted face to face to a perfect stranger that I'm a writer. Scary and exciting all at the same time.

I read several months of trade journals and a book by Jamieson Wolf which I'll review hopefully this week at my blog. And then, I was inspired to start two new blogs and refocus my attention at my Aspiring Author blog to be more about me and my life as a wife, mother, and aspiring author than about the works of others.

My first new blog--The Book Connection--http://thebookconnectionccm.blogspot.com/, will be the place for me to post interviews with authors, editors, and publishers, along with the book reviews I do outside of those for the Muse.

The second is a blog about the Outer Banks of North Carolina. I figure it will be a mix of my travel experiences and a place to promote tourism in the area. Loving the Outer Banks (http://lovingtheouterbanks.blogspot.com/) is good for a couple reasons. I will contact businesses and organizations to feature them at my blog, which could help them generate revenue. But also, think of how great it will be if I do get to move down there one day and I already have a bunch of people who know who I am. Getting local work could be a lot easier. And, it will also help me plan my family's vacations to the area because I'll know more about what is going on down there.

And by refocusing my original blog to be more in tune with its original theme, I might get more readers there as well.

So, I see lots of pluses and no minuses right now.

I could never have gotten the inspiration to do these things if my head was still overcrowded with all the stuff I still had to work on and staying up late to try and accomplish it all.

Take some time away, even if it's just an escape to the park or a long walk, so you can think about your writing without your mind being cluttered with every single thing on your plate. Focus your mind only on what you want to accomplish with your writing. Think about what will get you to the point you want to be.

I bet you'll come up with some ideas just like I did. And isn't this the business where ideas are woven into bigger and better things?

Cheryl