Future Profession?

So I am watching Ellen today (love her show), and she had on the author of the acclaimed Twilight series, Stephanie Meyer. (The Twilight series is fantastic, see my other blog about that.) Anyway, the author talked about how Twilight and the three other books in the series came to be. She had a dream, put that dream to paper and three months later, Twilight was finished. I have done that several times...have a dream and want to see how it would play out so I sit down and start writing. I just don't have the follow through. I write the dream and expand upon it, but can't get it going past the first few chapters. I have written up to 75 pages and then not gone any further. I probably have 8 to 10 started and just hanging, waiting for me to pick back up on the thread. So I wonder, if I really put myself into it, could I become what I want to be when my kids grow up? My dream would be to become an author.

Stephanie Meyer is a stay at home mom, with three kids ages 5, 2 and 1 at the time she wrote Twilight. She has had no formal writing training, no agent, no existing literary connections. She finished the book, looked at it and said that could really be a novel and Googled her way to getting it published. I think she said she sent out 15 or 16 letters, got 9 immediate rejections, 4 or 5 "send me the first three chapters" that turned into rejections, and ONE that said "okay let's talk." Four years, four more novels (three in the original series and one stand alone), and millions of books sold...

Not that anything I have written would come close to her series. It is critically acclaimed and the first book, Twilight, was made into a movie that is being released in November. She has sold millions of copies of her books and they have been translated into 38 languages. The stuff I have come up with is more of the same thing that you already have read, just with a slightly different person, place or thing. But I wonder if I could really make a living off of it, if I threw myself into it and got over my fear of failure and my fear of what my friends and family would think of what I had written.

Her story just goes to show you that if you persevere, anything is possible. So it makes me wonder...could I make a living doing that, too?

Diet Update

The first week of my new weight loss initiative (better than the dreaded word "diet"?) was pretty successful. I lost four pounds! Since then, I have made some bad choices...I knew I would, but I have made some good ones, too. So, I feel okay about it. I haven't lost any more weight, but I haven't gained any either. And some of my bad choices were pretty bad (McDonalds for lunch one day after shopping with my kids who don't have allergies and a friend)!

It has been difficult to find healthy choices for the evenings that I have running around to do. There were four or five nights out of the last seven where I could not eat dinner with my family. As a result, I have been eating later in the evenings. I know that is a weight loss initiative no-no. Eating after a certain time is no good, but what choice did I have when I was running out the door at dinner time? Eat at McDonalds? Not an option a second time in a week (one of the good choices I made this week - believe me I really had to talk myself out of that one). So I might grab a baggie of baby carrots to tide me over, but then when I come home at 9:00 I need to find something to eat. Not easy. I am going to have to find some lower carb options for eating that late at night. Baby carrots get boring after a while, especially when I really want the pretzels that are calling my name from the cabinet!