Wow!!!  It feels a little like I'm blowing the dust off this place and taking my plastic coverings off the furniture, but it is good to be home!

Let's jump in.

For anyone who is new, SpireSpire follows participants who have committed to a year-long process of achieving a scary, life-changing goal.  We get to watch the drama and struggle, they get accountability and strength to push through an achieve what they really want to do.

At the end of SpireSpire round ONE I said that I wasn't planning on doing a round two.  I'll admit it.  I was tired partially from writing a book and running Spire (and maybe a lot from being pregnant...as I STILL AM, good lord, how long does it take to incubate a human??) But I had these people with awesome dreams and goals that kept cropping up.  And who kept asking about Round 2.

And the more I thought about it, the more I thought about how much love I had for the SpireSpire project!  And how much of a difference it had made for people.  Yes, not everyone finished the year.  I didn't even achieve my being famous goal!  (What the heck.) but a book was written (and because of that book, I've been able to help other authors begin to write their books.)  And a musical was produced (and because of that musical, two wells were dug and two villages have water, and projects in turn were inspired by that musical.)  Music was created (which created a band, which is helping to breathe life into the music scene at a college campus), French was learned (which lead to a switch in majors, which is leading to a new fabulous woman in the field of linguistics.)  There are still ripples coming off of the first round of SpireSpire that I'm even having a hard time believing.

So what now?  I'm looking for participants, people who have large goals to achieve and need some accountability to achieve them.  In the past we've had a producer trying to find a way to to block, direct and produce a musical in 24 hrs., weight loss, language learning, an amateur writer looking to complete her first book, musicians creating music, artists creating shows, comedians looking to break into the movie business.  Did they all pan out?  Not everybody made it all the way through.  Life happens.  This is a big commitment and people make goals and don't keep them every day.  But you could.  It's possible.

Here's the basics:

You need to be able to write coherent sentences.  You're going to be blogging about your experiences of trying to achieve your goal once a week, so you need to be okay being introspective and honest while you're writing about how you're doing.

You need to have a large goal:  Here's what typical seems to succeed--choose something significant to you.  There's goals that are cool (like I would love to have my black belt) and then there are goals that bring me more in line with who I want to be as a person. (A storyteller.)  For me, a black belt would be a nice notch on my belt, but I'm not especially hard-wired as an athlete.  It's cool, but not integral to who I am as a person.  So your goal should be somewhere along the lines of "this is who I was meant to be."  Your goal should stretch your limits, but also be attainable.  My idea of writing a bestseller was not attainable (it required WAY too many steps that I wasn't in control of, AND merrily skipped over the fact that I had never finished a book EVER) while finishing my manuscript was.  Lastly, it should be measurable.  We should know in the end if you've achieved it, or not.  I'm pretty good at helping people figure this out, so if you have a basic idea, we can refine it together.

You need to be brave:  We'll be putting together plans and challenging each other to push our boundaries, step out of our comfort zone, get yourself out there and get it done.  Gotta have balls, otherwise you'll get bored and stuck.  Can you be creative when things don't go right?  The first scary step is right here:  Email me at {shay@spirespire.com} and put Round Two in the subject line.  At least, start the conversation even if you don't feel like you've got all your ducks in a row.  Part of my job is to listen and see if we can figure it out.  It might sound silly, but sending that one email may be what you really need to do right now.  

SO.  Think about it.  Start dreaming.  We're aiming for a launch date of February 15th or March 1st depending on participant schedules.  OR! Spread this post around, especially if you can think of a friend/sibling/mom/grandpa who would be perfect for something like this.  We're shooting for somewhere between 6 to 12 participants!

Do it!

Wow.  It's hard to believe that a year has gone by.  If you haven't yet read Christian's post on how his year went, you should.  Clicky-clicky.

I feel, first, that I have to apologize for my own spotty posting in the last month and a half.  Life has changed in ways that I can't even quite understand yet in a single year.  I'm a different person, in a different place, with different people, and with additional family members (one by marriage, and a few who are cooking in wombs currently.)

SpireSpire's goal originally was, for me, to be all famous and stuff.  I mean, not really, but kind of.  In a year!  My original goal was to be a best-selling author at this very moment.  I envisioned myself among the pantheon of people I admire, rolling in pirate doubloons and having my current hovel burned down before moving into my mansion that Oprah bought me.  Okay, not really, but kind of.  I don't think any of my dreams have much to do with "fame and fortune" as they have to do with "meaning and impact."

I desperately long for meaning.  I deeply long to have impact.  I want to know that I'm here for a reason and that my thoughts are valid and important.  I would say it is probably the deepest desire of my heart.  And sometimes, the lack of millions of people knowing my name lies to me and tells me that I don't have impact, and I'm not important.  I hope someday I'll get over needing to "sound cool" when people ask me what I've been up to lately, and I hope someday to find better questions to ask then to put someone else in that spot.  We all have value.  We all are impacting others...and sometimes in the search for more impact, we neglect where we actually CAN make a difference in the place that God has us...right now.

So, while major publishers are not clamoring for my book...as it's not edited yet, I am excited for the progress I've made this year.

First, I wrote a book!  I never ever ever ever (x infinity) would have ever thought that would be something I could say truthfully.  There's a story that people could read from start to finish, and hopefully be entertained by.  And I like it fairly well.  And I have ideas for other ones.  And I want to write more in the future...that's saying something.

I am incubating a human being.  I mean, that's pretty cool too!  Granted, the second "thing I did" (bow-chicka-wow-wow) kind of interfered with the first (scribble scribble scribble) in the form of MEGA morning sickness, but sometimes you gotta be like...hey, I'm growing a new organ for my tiny human to live in for a little while here, whilst growing the tiny human as well...I gotta give myself a break.

I ran a website that had posts on it for longer than two weeks.  That's pretty impressive for my own track record of blogging.

I hopefully helped to give a platform for a few other people to be all goal-achieving and such.  Technically, a 24 hr musical, CD's, a soon-to-be one woman show, a novel, and other life change occurred because of SpireSpire.  I'm not saying they wouldn't have without SpireSpire...but I can't help but think it might have helped somewhat.  Accountability is pretty good stuff.

I started a course for writers to write their own books in a year.  It's currently being guinea pigged (It's a verb!) by two lovely writer friends of mine who are helping me fine-tune before it becomes open to the public in January.

Plus I took care of a family, a house, my hubby switched jobs, taught voice lessons...and got to spend my days with the most hilarious, kind, empathetic, exuberant three year old on the planet.

I think most importantly, however, I got my bubble burst on writing.  When I imagined writing, it was surrounded in the romantic mist.  Tea was there.  Candles were there.  I had a whitewashed attic and wrote with a quill or something.  And my book immediately sold and came out perfect because I am oh so talented, didn't you know?  And I got interviews and movie deals...you might think I'm exaggerating.  I'm not.  I skipped the part about staring at a screen, and agonizing of your words (or when I thought of it, I imagined the great pathos of being a genius artist)...nope.  If I can press this into the brains of anyone who wants to be a writer...it is about as glamorous as garbage pick-up.  You sit in a chair.  You probably sit in a really stupid manner which means you probably cut off circulation to your legs and then collapse on the ground whenever you try to stand.  (true fact about Shay) Facebook and the internet will be singing its siren song in the background.  The refrigerator will be calling to you.  Heck, cleaning and laundry will sound better than what you're trying to do.  Sometimes you'll be really excited!  Sometimes nothing will come.  Learning how to craft story takes TIME and you will not be good at it right away.  You will write terrible sentences.  You will have a thousand other things to do that will feel more urgent or important.  Because, you see, YOU stay the same.  All the flaws, the bad habits, the desire to procrastinate, the house, the kids, the unromantic environment...they all come with you on this journey too.  I think I thought I would morph into someone new, someone who writes romantically and has access to an attic, and maybe just maybe, is a little bit more diligent about sitting down to write versus getting sucked into an entire season of 30Rock.

Well.  Here I am.  I haven't posted in two weeks.  Le Sigh.

Let's be perfectly frank here, I am really struggling with this whole goal thing right now.  Even more frankly, I'm struggling with being a competent human being.  Did anyone ever tell you that if you get migraines in "normal life" that they'll pretty much show up every day in "pregnant life"?  Okay, maybe not for everyone, but for the last two weeks that's been my life.  Oh, and migraines make me throw up, so it's been super cool.

I sound crabby.  I'm not really crabby, mostly.  Just tired.  And frustrated.  At this point in time, I wanted to have most of my large revisions done...well, originally I wanted to have sold a book and a million copies of it...haha.

I think what my big issue here is, is that this is one of my big issues.  Even as I've been starting to feel better the last couple of days (which I do, thank you, thank you, thank you Jesus) I still haven't touched my work.  I get very run on my emotions and "how I feel" and if I don't feel good, it's like I have a free card to be a lazy-butt and do nothing.  And I am extremely skilled at doing nothing.  And I mean, this goes back to me pretending to not feel good to get out of things or exaggerating my symptoms so people don't expect much out of me from a young age.  To an embarrassingly old age.

So I can see (if I look at how I've been running life (or not running life) from a cliff far above me) that I've fallen back into bad habits.  I was genuinely NOT feeling good.  I genuinely was exhausted and sleeping for most of my free time.  But now I'm not, and I'm still continuing to do nothing and be like "but I'm pregnant" in my own head.  The line between taking care of yourself and coddling yourself out of ever achieving your dreams has become blurred beyond distinction and I'm waaaay across the line right now.

Can I also just say that I'm married to a guy for whom this is not an issue?  Colin can be DYING of a flu or polio or something and still go clean the basement.  (True example from life.  Not kidding.)  He does not have that part of his brain that says, "I don't feel like it..."  I legitimately think it doesn't exist inside of his head. For someone whose brain says that about making toast or walking across the room or something...yeah, I pretty much feel like a giant wuss at all times.

So where does this leave me now?  The dream to write is still alive, I've just allowed the spoiled kid that lives inside of me to win for almost a month.  It's harder to get back on the wagon the longer you've been undisciplined...for whatever reason.  So I'm going to start by doing one thing a day to forward me back to what I need to do.  Transfer my files from my computer to my new one, write one sentence, one paragraph, edit a line, anything to gain any traction, any ground at all...

And to be perfectly frank, I'm going to be praying for help in this regard.  Galations 5:16-18 says this... (The Message version, if you've never really read the bible, I would highly recommend going to biblegateway.com and start reading the Book of John in the Message translation.)  

Galations 5: 16-18 My counsel is this: Live freely, animated and motivated by God's Spirit. Then you won't feed the compulsions of selfishness. For there is a root of sinful self-interest in us that is at odds with a free spirit, just as the free spirit is incompatible with selfishness. These two ways of life are antithetical, so that you cannot live at times one way and at times another way according to how you feel on any given day. 

Hello, root of sinful self-interest.  Hello, two parts of me that are at odds with one another.  One side of me loves others and the work that God set before me.  One side of me loves myself and does random crap that only makes me happy (and even then, not really...hours of facebook, pinterest and not doing much at all actually makes me depressed and cranky).  I'm ready to discipline myself again. I'm ready to let my spirit that's free to love others freely and free to do my work get back in the driver seat.  I'm ready to do my work.

Man.  I'm getting annoyed that I have to write this again.  I haven't done anything.  It's the same routine, I'm either taking care of Ena or I'm sick or sleeping.  But I'm so frigging close to having this manuscript done that I'm refusing to lie down and get bowled over by pregnancy hormones. 

However, my baby now has elbows!  I mean, that's pretty cool.  

Here's my plan, I think I have to go back to very.small.increments.  I don't want to just give up because I don't feel good, but I think inching forward is the only way at the minute.  So here's my goal.  A half a page a rewrites a day.  That's it.  I can squeeze that out before I collapse at night.  If I do more, great.  If not, at least I'm moving forward a little.  I'd rather have some momentum than nothing.

Okay loves, I know I'm being as boring as boring gets right now.  The girls are working hard on their spirecourse and SpireSpire version 2 is getting things set into motion.

Love,
Shay

Hi there!

Well!  I was talking about a whirlwind last week, and…well…it got even whirlwhind-ier.  Woo boy.

Shall I explain?  I’ll start off by saying that I found out that I am pregnant!  As of right now, I’m about 8 weeks.  And I found out about a week ago.  I’m a genius when it comes to paying attention to my cycle, apparently.  I thought I was going through the worst PMS possible (like, I distinctly remember looking at Colin and going, “I don’t know what’s wrong with me, because I pretty much want to RIP EVERYONE’S FACE OFF.”  He moved away from me quietly and took our child to bed, allowing me to have a moment.  Such a good husband.)

Anyways, so I’m SUPER happy.  To be perfectly frank, I’m an only child and have NO IDEA how siblings work (and Colin’s an only child, so we’re both like…eh?  Sharing?) but I desperately wanted Ena to have a sibling…and I kept seeing friend after friend (and via Facebook, distant acquaintance after distant acquaintance!) get pregnant and it was like even in the middle of being SO HAPPY for the other person, there was that stabby little part that wanted to tear out my own eyes every time I saw somebody looking less pregnant that my non-pregnant self being like Gee, I’m 28 weeks pregnant and haven’t even had to wear maternity pants! 

ANYways.  Now, because of 24hrmusical, which went swimmingly…I cannot even tell you how proud I am of Matthew and his team.  It was so professional, well done and came out so well.  AND AND AND, they raised enough money for a…hmm, I should probably let him tell you.  However, I was only there for 12 of the 24 hours because my pregnant self REBELLED hard.  I managed not to throw up until I got home (score!), and then pretty much slept literally all day and all night, waking up for a sum-total of three hours.  How I managed to stay up at all, I have no idea, because I’ve currently been sleeping almost 12 hours a night, plus a one to two hour nap.  Yes, I am the most boring woman alive right now.  What was I saying?  Yes.  Because of 24hrmusical, the cat got let out of the bag much earlier than intended.  So now I basically get a full month more of being like, ‘ergh, so sick,” on Facebook.  Right?  Yaaaay! 

Just kidding, mostly.  I’m very very happy and feel like our little family is finally becoming complete with the addition of this little one (I knew somebody was missing!) I’m also pretty blunt about pregnancy—it’s exciting warm fuzzies, but at least for me, I also feel like poop on a stick for a decently large chunk of time, and then when you really start showing and walk into Walgreens, there are women there whose only job is to accost innocent pregnant people with horror stories of labor or “Oooooh, honey, you should really have the doctor double check and make sure you don’t have twins in there.”  (What makes people do this?  Are they related to the people that cast DOOOOOOOM on couples that just got engaged?)

So, what’s going on with SpireSpire?  Well, tomorrow I get a huge chunk of time to work on my book, so I’m excited.  I’ve pretty much done nothing because every time I get a second where I’m not taking care of a toddler, I’m sleeping.  Not the most conducive to editing.  So, I’m looking forward to having a bunch of time tomorrow.

Maybe what I’m more excited about is that I started off two lovely friends of mine on their own journey with the very first incarnation of the SpireCourse for writers (a year-long course to help writers plot, write and self-edit a manuscript.)  I’m unbelievably excited for them both (and they’ll be blogging about it here and here.)  If this is of interest to you, we’re already gathering people for the second go-round in January, so shoot me your contact info at shay@spirespire.com or catch me on Facebook if you’d like to be on the mailing list for that.  I’m so blessed that I get to be a part of people’s journeys in this way, and doubly blessed that I’m gonna get to READ THEIR BOOKS when they’re done because their ideas are amazing and I’m so excited to see them in their finished form.  LOVE it.

Alright, enjoy this tip-over from summer to fall and start breaking out the scarves.

To read more of Shay's journey with her novel, click here.

Wanna hear my whirlwind?

So my husband was gone for a week down in New Orleans and one of my best friends came to visit.  We got to ride horses and see gardens and just generally hang out which pretty much made my life.  She left and my hubby came back home.

I’m trying to write the revision to the most difficult, needing to be revised section of my book.  In a week.  On top of that, the lovely ladies that are going to be starting to write their books, guided through by the first version of the Spirecourse start in about a week.

I am cast in the 24hrmusical, and so will be performing for the first time in quite literally…years.  COME SEE IT!

And to top everything off, I can finally reveal the news that we’ve been sitting on for a bit.  Colin is changing jobs.  AND our house is going back on the market after we took it off two months ago. 

And I’m still trying to be you know, a mom and stuff.

This job switch thing has been throwing me off-kilter.  We’re SUPER excited about the change and I think our new church home (Joy! Lutheran up in Gurnee, IL) is going to be a great fit for our whole family.  That and I can’t tell you how warm and welcoming they’ve been over there.  I’ll be glad to get into the building phase and can’t wait to get started.

But you have the flip side of leaving our current church home, and I have so many people I love out there, and kids that I’m going to miss seeing and that’s the church where Ena has grown up so far and she has all her big brothers and sisters…and it’s just hard.  And when I get sad…I read a lot.  And I get REALLY sleepy.  For as long as I can remember, this is just how my body reacts to grief.

Guess how conducive that is for getting stuff done?  It’s kind of a nasty cycle, because I sleep because I’m emotionally exhausted…and then I get stressed because I’m not doing the stuff I know I need/want to do to be accomplish-y, and the stress aggravates the tired and I wind up being a giant lazybones.  A giant GUILTY lazybones.

So this last week, I didn’t fight it very much.  And I tried not to feel guilty about it.  Sometimes, you just have to go with the flow and let yourself be where you are.  And then sometimes, it’s time to get moving.  That time is now.  I got about half-way through the first quarter of revisions before everything hit, and then…nothing.  So, I need to get going!  And I need to clean my house…mega-times.  The cat-fur lining my floors is starting to meow and the laundry has begun to walk downstairs on its own.

So, all of that to say, COME SEE THE 24hrMusical and watch me perform in a stupor of being incredibly tired.  It’ll be great!!!!

Whoo!  It feels like it’s been ages since I’ve wrote a SpireSpire!  It’s hard to believe that Kaylynn only left a few days ago and my hubby got back yesterday!  Can I tell you that I am grateful for that man?  My house decided to rebel in as many ways as possible and it was up to me to fix it.  I think the grossest one was that some various animal had decided to use the tiny space behind our house (we don’t have a backyard, just a couple feet between the house and a fence) as a litter box.  So flies were attracted to it obviously and they were getting into our house somewhere and so in our back hallway we had about 20 swirling flies.  DISGUSTING.  I had to cover the poop and vacuum up all the flies.  All while having a house guest.  So mortifying. 

ANYWAYS!  I’m finished with the list of what rewrites need to be done on the book.  Woo hoo!  There’s a fair amount of work to be done, but I was actually surprised that there wasn’t more.  Some major stuff needs to be noodled with in the beginning, but the third and fourth quarters are actually going to remain fairly intact.  I’m seeing the benefits of planning before you write.

I will be starting the first trial run of the new Spirecourse in a few short weeks.  It’s very specifically for writers working on a book, going from idea to a self-edited manuscript in one year.  It’s been very interesting to poke back through my journey and figure out how to take another person through it (and in a far more concise and wise manner).  In essence, I’m writing my second journey through writing a book.  How do I want to do this next time?  What would I do differently? Then I have some very beautiful friends with some very beautiful ideas that have agreed to walk through this for me and I so desperately want them to feel inspired and equipped to reach their goal.  That and I want to read their dang books.  I’ll be opening the course up to the public on January 1st with the soft launch of the new version of SpireSpire in December.  So a lot of time has been going into the planning of all of this.

My personal Spiregoal is to finish the large edits on the 1st quarter of my book by the end of…next week.  Oh my holy goodness, I must be crazy.  Yet, I know what I need to do, I just need to do it.  I would really like to get my large edits out of the way before September because the last month could be devoted to copy and line editing.  Oh my gosh, I’m so excited for the Spirecourse peeps not to have to do it this quickly.  Sheesh.  Yet, I need to walk the path before I can guide anybody down it, so on my horse I go.

Also, I auditioned for 24hrmusical because I was an actress in a former life (you know, like five years ago) and am really excited to be in on the process and watching it happen from within.  Though, I still have not managed to convince Matt to just tell me the show, already.  So it’s not like I have anything to keep me busy for the next little while.

See you soon!

Hi there!  So, it's technically Wednesday now, but better late than never.  The post title looks a little funny because Kaylynn flew in to hang out with me and Ena for a few days.  We've been having an absolute blast.  Kaylynn has been one of my best friends since we got paired up in a theater show (you got a "little sibling" and Kaylynn was mine) when I was sixteen and she was thirteen.  We're wired up very similarly, though she's a little more extroverted and I tend to need at least an hour in my introverted Shay-hole daily (man, Shay-hole sounds so cute when my husband calls it that, like I envision myself like a tiny little bunny, but it looks like I'm calling myself something mean in print.)

Either way, we've pretty much thrown each other off any goal accomplishing for the week, but we've been having a lot of fun!  We went to the Anderson Japanese gardens and visited all our old high school haunts. Today, we drove out to Lena to Kaylynn's grandpa's farm and Ena got to ride her very first horse.  She was a pro.  No joke.  My kid is going to be in the horse olympics.  Horlympics.  Wow, I'm tired.

So I'm off my goal of getting all my "large edits" out of the way.  Not that I would have had them completed but I would have gone through the book and recorded all the places that need changing.  I'm about halfway through that and Kaylynn's going to head back to FL and I'll a few days before Colin comes home (ha, my mom just got scared that I wrote on the the internet that I'll be alone.  It's okay, Mom.  I have a bat.  And a trained martial artist as a guard.  And three very ferocious cats.)  But seriously, break into my house and I will feed your liver to my cats.  In front of you.  Anyways, I should have the rest of the week to catch up.

Finally, I have been reading a book called From Girl to Goddess, the feminine version of Joseph Campells' "Hero with a Thousand Faces."  The premise of both books is that each hero has to go through a certain set of things in order for him to have successfully completed his mission, or to essentially "win the day."  It explains all the archetypal characters that take place in a story and what purpose they serve.  Now, I'm not the type of person to look for meaning in every word of a story--you remember your English teacher making you annotate stuff?--but I do feel like there are certain things that fulfill primal needs for us in a story.  From Girl to Goddess is the heroine story, and has been extraordinary helpful in pinpointing where I need to strengthen characters to have them better fit the role that they're trying to play.  

Who is my evil stepmother?  Who is the fairy godmother?  How weak does Cygna really need to be at the end in order for her journey to be satisfying?  So, with this book in hand, I feel like I've got some great ideas for the next draft and am excited to get going!

Happy Tuesday, everybody!  Man, this heat is atrocious. The wee bairn and I have been hiding in the house for the whole day and I’m feeling a little wall-climby.

I’m currently in the first editing process of my book—and I’m finding myself vacillating between thinking “this book isn’t so bad!” to “omg, what if someone reads this at some point in time?”  I find myself reading very sarcastically as well. (i.e. “right, so she’s not going to do ANYthing about her adopted mother leaving?  As if!)  Apparently, my brain has also been watching Clueless. Nice for pointing out plot holes, but not nice on the self-esteem.  This phase is very wide-scope, I’m figuring out what’s weak or doesn’t make sense or where I need to expound.  Basically, I’m creating work for myself and writing these giant notes of what I need to do.  I’m editing in all the crazy places; on the bleachers at my daughter’s swim lessons, in the show room of the Nissan dealership while I’m getting my oil changed, anywhere I can tote this giant black binder.  I had two days in there where I thought I lost the thing and I about had a conniption.

Several patterns are emerging—one of which Kaylynn actually called me out on before I really started seeing it for myself.  The first is that I am good at dialogue.  I’m also good at describing things artistically.  So most of my story goes:  Dialogue, dialogue, dialogue, describe.  Dialogue.  Describe describe.  Dialogue.  A good story layers the two on top of one another, and my paragraphs are almost entirely devoted to one or the other.  Cygna’s sections also tend to be more “dialogue-y” and Elena’s more “describe-y.”

One of the other things I notice myself doing is giving too much information away.  It’s suspense-creating to leave open-ended questions, and in going through my story with the eye for “what questions am I creating?”  “what will a reader want to know?” I’m finding that I’m offering the answers almost immediately.  Too much info and there’s no reason to keep reading.  Even if it’s interesting info, it’s still not as interesting as a question left unanswered until later.  (And when it’s answered, another question should be opened.)

So, I’m going as far as my own eyes can see and then handing this baby over to a few other people, because guaranteed, I am not seeing holes that other people will catch because I’m so close to the story.  So the goal is to get as much as I can find out of the way to clarify it for the next set of readers.  I wish I could say it’ll be done by next week, but probably not.  I think I’ll finish all my notes by the end of this week, and then go in quarters.

First quarter due on August 2nd, and then one per week so that I have my book in other people’s hands by August 30th.  It’s gonna take some elbow grease, but its other people’s eyes on my book that are really going to make the difference.  Hey, if I wrote 2/3rds of the thing in a month, I’m pretty sure I can edit (at least get it to a second draft) it in 6 weeks. (she said optimistically.)

Finally, I’ll give you my last realization that I’ve had lately.  Sometimes, I have to put things that I want to do on hold in order to do other things that I want to do.  I recently took a “strengths test” and one of my biggest strengths came back as “input” and “learning”—basically, I like to collect information (and my brain stores scads of ridiculous knowledge) and I love to learn.  So, part of my problem is I want to do (or gain the knowledge to do) so many things that take years to truly master.  This generally means I embark on a quest to learn karate at the same time as Greek at the same time as trying to write a book. (this may sound ridiculous or exaggerated, I can promise that it’s not)  I pray daily that the technology downloading info straight into brains from the Matrix becomes available at some point in my life.  Either way, not enough time in the day to do all that I want to do.

So I’ve been having to make choices and sometimes that sucks but I would rather fully learn some things, than hop from thing to thing and never learn anything.

I’ve had a few people contact me about this, so I’m throwing it out there again, if you’re interested in doing a trial run of a writing “Spirecourse” (taking a book from idea to edited manuscript in a year) shoot me an email at shay@spirespire.com.  Thanks!

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To read more from Shay, click here.

Well, well, well.  Here we are again.  Tuesday.

I just got to see Julie for an hour today and catch up with my old roomie, and she expressed how difficult it was to come up with something to write about sometimes and I’m totally in agreement.  Sometimes it’s hard not to be completely boring.  However, I will try.

I’m going to reveal some stuff that’s been rattling about in the background taking up my brain space.

First, I think that SpireSpire is going to undergoing some major overhaul in the next phase.  Some of the problem of SpireSpire is the HUGENESS of what it covers.  Is it writing, or weightloss or language or music or theater…or what the crap is this thing?  IT’S SO BIG.  There’s the common denominator of the goal, but the paths all look so different.  So what I’ve found is there is little to no cross pollination.  If you read Christian, you probably don’t read me.  You might follow Kaylynn, but not Julie or Matt.  Lexie and Matt, but not Kaylynn…blah blah blah.  People like the idea of SpireSpire, but when rubber meets the road, you follow who you know or what you personally are interested in.  That’s totally fine, but that means you’re bored or not getting content for about 5/6 days of the week.  That’s lame on a blog level.  It’s currently like we have 6 almost completely separate communities based around each person.  And each person brings in about 200 visitors a day—no joke.  But it can’t build on much of anything, because we’re all separated by topic and interest and then bored by lack of content for the other 6 days.

The other things is what Julie said to me this morning (how I love seeing her, she’s just such a burst of energy and thought.  LOVE) was that everybody’s self-motivator is broken.  We’re all so excited in the beginning, but you run out of ways to inspire yourself or keep yourself on track.  I don’t think SpireSpire really did much in that arena other than be there, tracking your progress.  Which is helpful, but even the value of that wears thin after a time.

So, what to do?  Well, I think the first thing is to narrow our focus.  I hate it.  I don’t want to.  I want to keep it broad because I like all the different goals…but it’s like the project itself is resistant to it.  I’m limiting the value of what it can accomplish because it’s not specializing in any one thing.  The reality is people need not only accountability but also fresh and creative ideas to shake them out of ruts and I can only think of so many of those by myself.  Also, it would be kind of insulting for me to advise on language learning or weight loss because I’m not very good at either one of those things.  So…I’ll give you three guesses on what the focus of SpireSpire is going to be and the first two don’t count…

Writing.

It makes sense, doesn’t it?  At least, this is what it will be to start out. I'm half really excited and half really bummed, because I had a few people lined up for phase 2 of this version of SpireSpire, and I'm not sure what to do now. My ultimate goal is to find people that are fellow Developers that would be excellent coaches for other areas and have smaller niches within Spire and have SpireSpire itself become a hub for all these different areas.

The other problem to solve is that the internal motivational fires only burn for so long.  I’m currently working on a “Spirecourse” for writers, a weekly inspiration mixed with tasks and assignments specifically designed for writers hoping to take a book from its idea to phase to a fully polished manuscript in one year.  Actually, I’m testing out the curriculum early on some willing guinea pigs, so if this idea is of interest to you, shoot me an email at shay@spirespire.com.  Eventually, I’d like to have several: one to write the book, another to land an agent/sell/market it, and then smaller three month goals for specific improvement.

So, in the meantime, I’m trying to stay faithful to my book while still starting some of the work on the next phase.  We’re going to finish all of the goals all the way through the year and a bit beyond to clean up some loose ends before we start our switch.  Because…it would be stupid for me to try and guide someone else through writing a book if I can’t even finish editing my own manuscript and get it perfect.  So there’s that.

So, that’s news number one.  I’ll give you news number two next week.  Stay tuned!

(And no, I'm not pregnant.)


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To read Shay's journey with her first novel, click here.