Today’s blog topic is something of an umbrella for a lot of different things.  I’m working on losing the fat all over the place.  Baby fat from this latest pregnancy for one–and only two months before nationals!  I am really disappointed in the slacking off I’ve been doing.  Time to kick my butt!  I won’t be nearly near where I want to be by the end of July, but I’m hoping to at least lose 1 size!  Gotta start small…  I went to the gym this morning, and I feel great now!

The 2nd place I’m losing the fat is all negativity.  I need to be more positive about things, and surround myself with positive people.  I was reading a book lately that talked about internal positive thinking.  We’re very hard on ourselves, (especially moms with the guilt factor!)  I/You/We have to think more positively.  Think, yes, I can try this, or better yet, I will succeed!

Losing the fat/junk in my house.   Every year around March or so I start the spring cleaning process.  With all the kiddies and time constraints it takes awhile to get it done… so needless to say, I started in March but I’m still working on it.  A little at a time, but the closets are clean, there is less piles, kids toys have been cleaned out. 

Losing the fat in our diet!  From now on, this family will be eating healthier!  I usually do cook pretty healthy food, but lately with work deadlines and after school activities we’ve been eating out more.  Time to get back to home cooking!  Salad anyone?

Now how does all this relate to writing?  Simple, lose the fat on the following:  too much backstory, insignificant details, irrelevant plot points, mundane dialogue, long winded narrative.  Get that manuscript to work out! Beef up the action, sensory detail, intrigue, make your dialogue witty–make it move your story along.  Tone up those characters, you want them to make a difference, you want them to be strong, believable, realistic.  Do your characters have a well thought out and planned GMC? 

I’m also taking the advice of an author I met at RWA Nationals 2009.  She told me to stop working on this other stuff and really write.  If I wanted to get that book done, if I wanted this to truly be my career then I needed to concentrate on it.  Put my heart in it.  Now, that’s not to say I haven’t taken my career seriously up to this point.  I have.  But I’ve been working on smaller projects, doing a lot of side things, not really working on my dream which is to be a novelist.  Its taken  nearly a year for her advice to kick in.  But I’m there.  I’m ready.  I’ve recently signed with an agent, and I feel better about my writing career then I ever have before.  It’s time.

What types of changes are you making in your life right now?

Eliza Knight is the author of sizzling historical romance.  Visit her at www.elizaknight.com

Coming June 9, 2010 from Ellora’s cave.

The past three years have not been good for a number of our friends–well, I guess that depends on which one you ask LOL.

I think we are now up to four couples whose marriages have ended in the last three years. And I’m not talking the under five year percentage either. I’m talking the over 15 and close to twenty years married percentage. And we never saw any of them coming.

To be fair, we don’t live close to any but have been in constant contact and/or the occasional visits so no, we don’t know the day to day grind they went through, but still no mention during weekly telephone calls or anything.

The last one just happened a couple weeks ago and it still bothers me. I know things like this usually have a ‘build’ for quite awhile–that’s the part we don’t see but still, it makes you worried. Is Real romance still alive or does it fade out and fizzle as life progresses? Do we marry with the blind thought that yeah, I’d like to make babies with this guy for awhile or sure, she’ll do for now??

As writers, for the most part, we write about the new relationship, couples meeting for the first time or getting back together after long absences–the initial romance.  Not many write about ten, twenty years down the line.  Is that because the romance has worn off?  Do children, a mortgage and society’s pressures kill the romance, that electrical start to a couple.  Does it, for lack of a better word, really just fizzle out?

My husband and I are going on our 12th year of marriage and I’ll tell you right now, if he came up to me and said it was over, I would be totally blindsided. We’re not perfect, but still, we seem to work things out and accept each other for who we are etc etc etc. We have similiar thoughts and theories on raising our children, family etc and those haven’t changed (although I think this baseball season might affect that LOL as both boys are on house league and aiming for the rep league too, meaning most night this summer will be on a ball field)

I must say though, I’m not overly worried at the moment for me though, not when my husband comes up to me in the kitchen, turns me around, stares me straight in the eye and says, “I love you. No, I mean I really love you,” and gives me a big bear hug just before announcing the demise of the most recent friends’ marriage. I feel bad for them, I do, but I can’t help being thankful that romance, at least in my home, is still very much alive!