Cherry Lime Donuts and a New Month!

I woke up feeling a little bit relieved. I hit some milestones with word count, blog posts and even managed to hand in an assignment to my mentor on time.

Robyn made us egg bites with two pieces of toast, one covered in strawberry jam and the other with peanut butter. And she made the mandatory cup of tea, maybe the most important part.

I needed the morning off to recover from last week and to prepare for this coming week, so we watched an episode of ‘Paradise’ and then I noticed a new season of ‘Trigger Point’ was available on the CBC app. ‘Trigger Point’ centers around a team of explosive officers that go around defusing situations and bombs. It’s a good British thriller. If I am going to watch a police procedural I find I like the British ones over the American was as a rule. Up until now here in Canada, the US based shows are more prevalent. But the BBC and CBC have had decades of partnerships to deliver high quality BBC shows to Canadians.

Thinking about my time and energy reserves for this month, my thought process is to dial things back a bit. But then I saw an Advanced Settings course was starting on the 10^th of March and I could use some of that. Information Flow, Setting, Pacing and Character Depth are all interrelated.

And what’s the point of having a lifetime membership to these classes if I don’t take them?

So, of course I signed up for that. The advanced assignment can be quite challenging, but a challenge is what is going to get ne where I want to be. They key this month is going to be keeping on pace woth the 2026 words per day challenge. I can’t afford to get behind a single day this month. I find the first few days are key to how I perform. I am usually tired from the previous month and needed a day or two to recover.

But not this time.

Breaks cannot include missing my deadlines. Breaks can only mean a rest before completing the work. Between the mentor assignments, the word count challenge, the advanced assignments, and of course the heavier than usual workload of my 9-to-5 job at the animation studio, there is little room to maneuver.

Mid-afternoon we were invited over for tea and homemade cherry-lime donuts at our friend’s house. The cherry-lime combo was a new flavor experiment using a cherry oil. It was a lime first taste with a nice cherry finish. The donuts are baked instead of friend and were made with sour cream. This makes for a cake-like texture that stays moist and delicious even the next day. It’s always nice to stop in have a chat with those two.

This couple owns a grey and white cockatiel that usually flies over and sings ‘The Addam’s Family’ theme song for us. It usually tries to make love to my sock, we think it’s because my socks are also white and grey, but today it just hung out in its cage. Maybe it was tired or do birds get depressed? I have no idea about that.

After a short visit it was back home to get some work done, but not before throwing the ingredients for malt bread into the bread maker. I have been craving a slice of my malt bread for the last week but just haven’t had the time to make it.

Maybe my donut making friend inspired me.

I had a quick dinner of leftover chicken thighs with basmati rice; I didn’t want to waste precious time cooking tonight and we had leftover chicken from the other day to use up.

And now I have to figure out which of the work projects to tackle first. Do I work on the painting for work or do I get my 2026 words in for the day.

It comes down to when something is needed, I guess. A longwinded way of saying I need to triage the situation. The painting is a tomorrow thing. The deadline for the 2026 words is today.

So, my plan is to get my writing either done or close to done and then work on the painting if there is time remaining. Otherwise, I can get up early and work on the painting before anyone gets to work of logs in online. It’s a plan but you know what they say about the best laid plans… so yeah.

That means I need to write my blog but also start a story of some kind to get the required words written. And I don’t want them all to be blog words because my main writing goal is to create fiction, not blog posts, although blogging is still a skill I hope to get better at as well.

One thing that is starting to get me into a better mood is the sunshine, but also the warming up of our local temperatures. I love reading outdoors under our covered deck. And I’ve written quite a few stories out there as well. We usually have all kinds of potted plants and a flower garden down below as well. There is a big silver birch along the back fence, our backyard is south facing, that provides plenty of privacy from the neighbor and more shade for the deck.

I also enjoy our evening and luchtime walks a great deal more because we go Bronte Provincial Park and walk in nature under a canopy of trees that must be over a hundred years old. It’s popular with dog walkers, so always have canine interactions. We know the dog’s names, but I couldn’t tell you their owner’s names. Then there are the cyclists.

Mountain bikers really. They seem to feel they have the right of way, and the dogs and pedestrians are just a nuisance. I don’t think many of them know how to use their brakes. That being said, there are plenty of polite and accommodating cyclists who we wave at and see often.

I often like to watch YouTube, which should be no surprise to anyone reading this. One of the people I subscribe to is German born maker, Laura Kampf. I think I was drawn to her because she kinds of bodges things together and use scrap materials that others would just throw out. This might not be compelling on its own except that she often, not always, creates something elevatied out of that junk. And she does it without fancy tools or CNC cutters. It makes you feel like you could follow in her footsteps and make something interesting for yourself.

And I guess that is the point.

I like to watch people who create things most of all.

Alex Steele’s blacksmithing, Adam Savage’s props and cases, Blacktail studios tables, Alex Labs real life Ironman suit, Nerd Forge’s Norwegian nerdy builds, Colin Furze’s underground garage, Hacksmith’s crazy engineering builds, Kris Harbor’s Welch homestead carpentry and so many more.

And then there are the people living lifestyles that are completely different than my own. Self Reliance’s log cabin builds, Foresty Forest’s living in a van and hiking up mountains to The Chrome Project’s living in a van with two dogs.

I also enjoy watching guy trying to transform a Texas desert into a desert forest. Why? I have no idea other than I find it interesting.

I bought our little family tickets to go see the Mirvish production of ‘The Book of Mormon’ showing in April. One of our kiddos has moved away ti Halifax for work so I invieted my mother. She’s a big fan of plays and musicals, where as my father would just fall asleep during the performance. He’d rather be out golfing anyways. Point is, Mom doesn’t get to see as many performances as she’d probably like to and I knew she would up for an evening of entertainment in the big city.

It’s nice to do something for your mom now and again anyways and I don’t see as much since I moved away from the Niagara Region.

I don’t get back there as much as I used to, mainly because I have a family of my own and also because the traffic going to Niagara has become hellish at certain times of the day. I have it take me three hours to get there when it should have taken only thirty minutes. Thought my card was going to run out of gas!

One of the things on my list is to make a label to put on my laptop, it needs to say: By Page One!

The idea is to remember all the things that need to be on page one of story or novel to give the reader everything they need.

I have a few other labels stuck to the monitor side of my laptop. They read: Rule of Three, InfoFlow, Cycle! and Riposte!

The rule of three refers to how you deliver descriptions to a reader in grouping of three. It is the most information the average human mind can hold. Mystery writers use this to great effect when they want to put a clue in, but have you completely missed it. If the list details and hide one in the fourth or fifth position of a list of six you will skip over it.

InfoFlow is the timing of when you deliver information to the reader as well as the pacing of that information, how quicky the information is thrown at the reader.

Cycle refers to how professionals write fiction. You write 300-500 words and then cycle back to the beginning and add in details, then keep writing more. Rinse and repeat.

Riposte refers to snappy comebacks and dialogue. Think Humphrey Bogart.

I use the labels to remind me to use these techniques and idea when writing. I have to be careful that they don’t become invisible to my eyes. So, I consciously try to notice them whenever I am writing to keep them front of mind.

I said previously in the blog that I want to achieve my word count goals through fiction not blog writing, but here I have gone and done it again. This post has ballooned to over 1700 words already. Tonight, it turns out is a bad day to start a new story. I still have the overtime work to start after writing and starting a story usually means I write slow. The first fove-hundred words of a story can take me an hour to write and then after that I can increase to seven-hundred words and hour. If I am really into the story, I might up to telve-hundred or thirteen-hundred words an hour. Too long to get a story in tonight and get work done on the paintings.

Speaking of paintings, my wife, who is also an animation painters and art director, has been producing some amazingly beautiful artwork of her own the past week. She is feeling the freedom of being able to do what she wants and pick the colors she loves for the first time in a long time and her heart is absolutely singing with joy. It’s lovely form me to see her enjoying the creation of art again. Working for corporate studios can suck the creativity out of you after decades of micromanaging.

But the corporations are the ones with all the money to make the shows. It’s a trade off most of us are willing to make in order to live the life of an artist and still be able to raise a family.

I am still waiting to see how the Paramount / Warner Brothers merger might affect our industry. There are many good franchises that will be affected as well. Star Trek, the DCU, Game of Thrones, Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, and Looney Tunes.

Not to mention the threat of unregulated AI systems stealing art to replace human artists. Although, I still believe human beings want to their entertainment an art to be human generated. At least most of us will want that, there is always outliers who will adopt anything new.

But now it time for me to go be a visual artist. Time for overtime.

Good night all.