It's hard to believe it's already the 8th month of 2010. Staying busy really keeps the time sprinting by. Below are a couple updates, the titles for which can be applied to writing or underwear. Please enjoy them and the giant underwear rug I found a picture of.

Guilty of Stuffing.

The stuffy my regular work hours into Monday through Thursday so I can have a (mostly) full day of writing on Friday in addition to a typical writing block Saturday morning is working out wonderfully. It's not easy getting all 40 hours in a 4-day window, but it's definitely been worth it. Now, I find I am way more focused at work. And, therefore, my work -- web design, for those of you who didn't know it -- was tighter overall. Distractions seem less powerful since their effect is magnified. If I give in to one, it could mean the difference between making and not making my goal for the day. Before, a distraction would only make it to where I had some hours to recoup on the weekend or elsewhere. Also, there's the obvious benefit of having a whole (mostly) uninterrupted day to write. Without looking, I want to say I started this experiment about this time last month. Last Tuesday's critique of Forever By His Side's third chapter showed that the extra time really paid off. For the first time in a long time, most of the critiques reinforced that I was finally heading in the right direction. The flow of action was smoother. There were fewer dumb proofreading errors -- probably my greatest flaw as a writer. And the voice worked for the first time since I started writing the actual story. This success has heartened me to continue pushing myself to get those hours in.

Change is Good.

Next, I've been working on my site. I was introduced to an app -- new to me at the time -- on Facebook called NetworkedBlogs. I registered my blog and immediately got networked to others' blogs. Also immediately, I discovered that my blog is different than many other blogs. And, I fear, mostliy in a bad way. Where my blog is very much like a journal -- which is how is started out -- other blogs tend to have more interesting content outside of the lives and goings on of the writer him/herself. I also realized I didn't know what my blog was about. I started out assuming that my blog would be about me, but I found when I really looked at it, my blog is about better writing. My journey toward it and my desire to bring others along for the ride. Therefore, over the weekend, I changed the header. Not exactly big news but after having the same look for quite a while, any change seemed pretty drastic to me. The other benefit of changing the header to the larger "Better Writing" was that on NetworkedBlogs, the blogs are listed with tiny thumbnails and I needed something that could effectively be ready from a distance.

So welcome to August. This month, I'm going to begin to share more writing-related findings that come from other authors or other sources on the Internet and elsewhere. I'll keep posting my writing-related ramblings but I think adding in the other will add overall interest.