Litvinovsky and Barber

Last night I stayed up until 3 am writing a short story. I managed to write a little over 2700 words for the day. I was pushing myself last night because even though I was ready to stop writing multiple times I kept going. Kept pushing.

This might be one of the other pillars to making it as a writer. Some people refer to it as stick-to-it-ness. When you stay and keep pushing you are automatically passing about 90 percent of the rest of the aspirant writers out there. One of the hall marks of a professional is that they keep writing.

This challenge of 2026 words a day is training my brain and my muscles that effort is required. Therefore, it gets easier every day. Well, that’s not entirely true, is it? Anyone who has tried to make something difficult happen knows that it is a two-steps forward one-step back kind of deal with the occasional plateaus sprinkled in just to torment you.

Keep pushing.

Keep going.

We were out the door today by 10 am to have breakfast with some friends we hadn’t seen since November. It was great to catch up, even if it meant driving through the massive amount of snow we are getting today. I’ve shoveled the driveway twice already and just checked to see if it needs done again.

It does.

It’s supposed to snow all night and into the morning. Who needs a gym membership with weather like this?

We watched the final episode of ‘Steal’ today. I enjoy a good thriller and a good heist story. This show delivered a story. I think anyone would enjoy it. It didn’t have many of the headshaking scenes you see tv writers peening these days. Just a good solid story.

We also watched an episode of ‘The Night Manager’ based on the John Le Carre novel. There were a few of those hair scratching scenes in this episode mostly centered around the female antagonist. Some of her actions felt like they came out of nowhere and were out of character. Still, it’s been a good show overall. I mean spy stuff!

I did a bit of reading today and managed to read the final novella in Mick Herron’s ‘Standing by the Wall’. This story was of the same name and featured Jackson Lamb and most of the Slough House members. Overall, I enjoyed all the stories, which was no real surprise. Mick is a very talented writer.

I have started another streak challenge. I consider today day one of a reading streak. I will record it each day in my little planner as, “Read #1”. I enjoy reading but sometimes I think I need to make time for it. This will make me watch fewer distracting media and YouTube videos and pick up a book instead.

I hope.

I received my codes for the Lifetime Everything Subscription to WGM Publishing’s writing courses the other day.

Today I went through and added all the access codes to load the courses into my Teachable account. It was amazing to see how many courses there are offered in this subscription. Well over 600 courses all to do with writing or the business of writing, including putting on Kickstarters and copyright information.

The next five weeks I’ll be listening to the Mindset for 2026 lectures. There is a Sales Copy course, three weeks long, starting in February that I may take as well. It’s included in the subscription as well. It might be fun to go through making book covers, writing the copyright and sales copy for a story I have written.

One other thing I have started tracking in my little book is the number of days in a row I have played a game of chess. I often use chess as a mini break. It’s so easy these days to pop into a 10-minute online game. For some reason it rests the part of my brain that is used in artistic endeavors like painting, drawing and writing.

I’ve recently been enjoying a composer named Litvinovsky - Suite for Strings "Le Grand Cahier": X. L'Incendie is at 02:40. Has a bit of James Bond feel to it. Some of his other works remind me of the Lord of the Rings soundtracks as well. All beautiful music. I forgot how beautiful Barber’s Adagio for Strings is as well. I was listening to last night as I wrote some scenes.

One thing I haven’t been doing lately is doodling. It’s just one of those things I do on and off. I don’t think I and going to make streak out it. At least not yet. Doodling is more of a mental Zen-like break thing. It’s not for any purpose other than it’s relaxing. Some of those doodles end up being interior art in my books sure, but that is purely organic.

Alright, enough waffling. Time to go write the next scene in this short story.

Adios.