I'm super excited that it's the weekend, because it's the first weekend since I began work on the new story that will become the book. When I'm writing for me (as opposed to when I'm writing for work), I love the free time I can spend crafting scenes and dialogue, taking words from thin air and them going from keyboard to screen, or sometimes, flowing from pen to page. There's something about doing it the old-fashioned way, even when I transfer it to a Word doc later on. It reminds me of all those summers spent scribbling in notebooks when I was a kid.

When I think of those summers, there are a lot of times I'd do anything just to get back to that inhibition. You don't realize how much more open you are, and how much less outside brain clutter you allow in to crowd your mind, until you're an adult and the pace of life sometimes overloads your brain. There are times it will get to the point of what I call "brain fuzz." I know that I have to get better at partitioning my mind, so I can flip the switch a little more seamlessly from outside daily life to okay, this is personal writing time, nothing else gets in the way. I am possibly the most fidgety person in the world (or one of them, anyway, since I think it's hereditary), but when I'm in that zone, nothing else matters.

My favorite time of day to write used to be beginning anytime between midnight and 2:30 a.m., going til about 4:30 a.m. or whenever I couldn't keep my eyes open any longer. I messed up my sleeping habits but good during one part of high school. (Didn't matter, I still graduated top of class, didn't I? ;)) These days it's early morning, beginning when I first wake up, before I can let anything else distract me. Sipping coffee and getting beautifully lost inside of that world, and relishing the morning silence.

True story: I once declined a date because of something I was busy writing, and I didn't want to stop writing just then. I think karma sometimes pays me back for that one, but enough already. ;) (Kidding, kidding.) I'd taken a week off from work, and was for the first time, spending my holidays just hanging out in the city in which I lived (Ottawa, at the time), using that time to write. I remember how freeing it was, since it was only a couple of months after I'd finished my Master's degree, which I'd done part-time while working full-time. For about two years, up until then, all of my writing efforts and free time had been spent on course work and my Master's research paper. Right now, most of my writing efforts are spent on what I write for work, but I'm getting better at shifting my mind's focus from the work writing and letting myself get back into the personal writing world, without that distracted feeling of "I know there's something I should be doing right now."

Music-wise (because music is one of the best things to help with kicking my brain over into writing gear, something learned during j-skool), I've been on a Kings of Leon, Neverending White Lights, and The Trews kick lately. Some of it's older stuff, but that's okay. I go with what inspires the flow and gets me to that place where I can sit and write for hours.

Here's to an amazing weekend for everyone, and to living dreams.