Head over to Wattpad for chapter thirteen, and please don't judge on the weird chapter illustration. The one I actually intend to use just isn't good enough for me (I think I'm losing my ability to draw) so I'm redoing it, again, and needed a placeholder for now. Hahaha! In my defense a teriyaki TV dinner DOES show up in this chapter! I'll try to post a blog with the actual illustration before long, and the Wattpad chapter and the final book will both have the proper illustration in them.

So I'm going to be taking a few weeks off because the High Holy Days are coming, if you follow the Jewish calendar (I'm Messianic, by the way. Feel free to ask questions. I know that throws people). I have a lot of commitments coming up with my congregation and I also like to take some time to myself this time of year to re-calibrate, so I figured now was a good time to let the site go quiet. I mean, it's not like anyone's here to notice, after all. It'll also save me trouble come the Holidays, not the Holy Days (har har) when things get super crazy, and hopefully I'll have everything ready to go ahead of time and won't have an unplanned hiatus then.

See you at the end of October.

Oh man, I'm super excited to post this chapter because, technically speaking, this was the first chapter of the story I ever wrote.

Obviously this isn't the exact same version; the drafting and rewrite process has run its course. But I kid you not; when I first came up with the idea of the Guardians trilogy this was the first scene I wrote with the characters: The San Antonio Split-Second Blackout. I knew I needed to go back and write the beginning, of course, but I needed to get a feel for the characters I had just created. Everyone in my family knew "Be the werewolf!" before they even knew the plot line.

Hmm, maybe I should get that on a T-shirt...

All that to say, beginnings are hard to write. I'm a pretty big stickler for writing in chronological order (and I'll blog about why sometime in the future), but I never truly write the start until I'm sure I'm going to finish. If you can't ever seem to get past page 1, maybe you should try starting on page 100 and come back. 

Just figure out what works for you. After all, what counts is that you have a beginning, middle, and end to your story when it's complete. Otherwise, it's not!

A short blog to go with a short chapter. The pressure is on--Bennie's got some major deadlines to meet!

Speaking of deadlines (I hope I haven't already spoken about this and forgotten), I was talking with my coworker about how we both actually like deadlines. I know a lot of people find them stressful, but really, they're only stressful when you leave the work to the last minute. They can actually be super useful tools in your personal life, when you have projects you want to do, but aren't being required to do, by school, or work.

If you have a habit of neglecting your own personal work because you don't have anyone waiting on it, set your own deadlines, and get a friend or family member to hold you accountable to them. A good resource for that is NaNoWriMo. I used NaNoWriMo unofficially to finish my third novel, back in 2011. If that's too much of a challenge for you just yet, aim for a chapter a week.

You can do it!