Military service

People sometimes ask me if I ever served in the military, and the answer is "no". There was a time though when I considered it. Just after high school when I was trying to decide what to do with my life, I approached some Army recruiters who came over to my house and met with me. I was interested, but told them I needed to give it more consideration. After some days of thinking about it, I decided that I would go a different direction. About that time one of the recruiters called me back and asked me what I had decided. I told him that I'd decided not to do it. He said something like, "Well, you're never going to make it in life if you don't join up." That pretty much sealed the deal. I'm the kind of person who if someone tells me I can't do something, I go ahead and prove them wrong, which I've done.

That doesn't mean I've accomplished all I want to in my life. But the day is still young. I've got other people to prove things to, including me, and more causes to fight.

All that being said, my thoughts on this weekend are for those who gave their lives in defense of liberty. I honor all such men and women. To me, they are heroes. Other heroes to me are those who live to fight for freedom. One doesn't need to die to be a hero. One doesn't need to have joined the military to be a warrior in the cause of which I'm speaking. One only needs to stand up for the Constitution, to love liberty, to stand for our God-given rights, to not shut our mouths when confronted, but boldly make our points and defend them.

Writing challenges and how to overcome them

I found a solution to the schedule change dilemma I mentioned in my last post. I found a timer I could download and put on the desktop. I can set it for any length of time, so, what I've done is set it for 10-15 minutes. This allows me to wake up as I peruse Facebook or other things like that. When the timer goes off, I switch it to 30 minutes and do some kind of writing for that length of time. Now writing can mean revising a scene, posting on this blog, thinking about how to change a scene to incorporate all the info I need it to have--you know, anything to do with writing. I'll even use it to study a writing book. As long as I'm focused on writing.

As for finding more time in a day to write, I'm afraid I'm just out of luck. To be a writer when you have an eight hour job, you need to either write only for a short time per day, or abandon other things that need doing, such as keeping up the yard, working out, etc.

One idea I'm toying with is setting aside a specific night per week to write for a longer period of time, say two to three hours.