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One thing (of many) that I've had trouble with for a long time is focus. I'm a bit of a magpie at times, easily distracted by shiny objects. For instance, it took about ten minutes between writing that last sentence and this one. Lately, I've been working on getting myself focused for work and writing, and it hasn't been easy. I've found that meditation helps to a certain extent, if nothing else than to get me to calm down and take the edge off my anxiety. Generally, it goes focus --> lose focus --> get upset about losing focus --> get anxious about not focusing. Meditation is helping me go between the first two steps without making it all the way to step four. I also figured out that there are ways to break my concentration that I can avoid. Notifications drive me nuts - if my phone buzzes due to an email or text, I will HAVE to see what it is, even if I'm in the middle of something. Same with my work email - if I get the desktop alert of a new ema...

There has been a lot of discussion around writing circles with regards to how a bilingual person would use both of their languages. There are definitely not great ways of doing this, so I wanted to give an example from my own use of language(s) to see if that helps. English is my primary language, with Spanish as my secondary language. I generally think and dream in English, though occasionally a Spanish-language dream will come my way. I read and write in Spanish better than I speak it, though with practice I can get more comfortable. Having said all of that, there are certain things that are just easier in Spanish than they are in English. It could be because I heard my mother saying them all the time when I was a kid, and so it became more like a form of family slang than anything else, but some phrases are so much faster and snappier in Spanish than in English. It helps that, frequently, you don't actually pronounce all of the letters in Spanish - there are sort of blank sp...

I'm still here, I promise! So! One of my goals for this year is to spend some time each month with the characters from my attempted Nano, Novel Wars. A character sketch, in my opinion, is something that gives an author a better sense of who the character is, and how to best to present the character to the reader. I'm using a list  I found on Tumblr for this, as I think it gives a good background on some of the things that I may not normally think of. So, with no further ado, I present Maxine Murray, host of Novel Wars! How they present themselves - always put together very professionally, trying to look like an established member of the media. How they stand - very prim, straight backed, head up. How much space they take up when they’re sitting (Meaning do they ‘manspread’ or do they hunch into themselves?) - she's been trying to work on making herself take up more space, but she still defaults to keeping her arms tucked in and feet together when in public. Whether...