Friday links

Big chunks of the past 168 hours have not been stellar, time-wise. I’m getting tired of running in the cold, and consequently, I didn’t exercise during the week. But I did carve out time to work on the novel. For the past few months, and on and off over the last year, really, I’ve been writing scenes here and there. Over the past two days, I read these scenes and chunks, and chapters from a previous novel attempt that can be incorporated into this one. I’m starting to feel like I might really have something. I’m getting into the story. So now I just need to pull it all together, flesh out a few transition scenes, and alter a few events for reasons of pacing. Sometimes I get frustrated that this part of my writing life has not come together yet in the way I wish it would (I have four novels in a drawer…) but I can also see that I understand things like pacing in a way I didn’t ten years ago. Sometimes things take time.

This week’s links:

I participated in Women’s Money Week. You can find links to other bloggers who participated at that site.

Money Saving Mom is running an “Early to Rise” challenge during the month of March. Every morning, people are checking in with what time they got out of bed. The goal is to be mindful about a chosen wake-up time, and develop the discipline to actually get up then. I think this is a great idea, and I could see myself doing this … in another year. Right now, my toddler is still getting up too early and unpredictably for me to set an alarm clock. And on a morning like Thursday, when she slept in, my 5-year-old crawled into bed with me at 5:30 a.m. I get enough sleep (I go to bed early or take naps when I fall behind) but I look forward to the days when I am more in control of whether I choose to rise early or not.

Wandering Scientist’s new children’s book, The Zebra Said Shhh!, was published this week. I ordered my copy!

Modern Mrs. Darcy revealed another fault line in humanity — between those who will abandon a book they start and those who will not

I wrote about 3 simple ways to upgrade your wardrobe over at Women&Co.

I also wrote about The secret to getting enough sleep at CBS MoneyWatch. I revisited the topic of How to windsurf in economic gales

BeliefNet ran a slide show on keeping the Sabbath, featuring What the Most Successful People Do on the Weekend

I enjoyed a piece at Fast Company about accountability called My most embarrassing (and effective) productivity trick. To spoil the surprise, the writer asked his editor for a fake contract holding him to a certain posting frequency. Fake contracts are often a good idea. I’ve told my husband he should give me a fake contract on the novel forcing me to finish it by a certain date!

Charlsye Smith Diaz reviewed my weekend ebook

Wealthy Single Mommy writes a nice essay called What if your failed marriage was really a success?

Photo courtesy flickr user sure2talk