Childhood obesity is a serious problem and it is on the rise.

The issue here isn’t laziness, but education. Many parents were not given the proper education and tools to make good decisions when it comes to their kids’ food.  We need to educate our children early to help them make good choices when it comes to food.

As teachers out there can attest, it isn’t easy to teach children something they find boring. A subject needs to be exciting enough for them to want to know more.  That’s where The Standards come in.

Meet The Standards: 

From left to right: Nic, (me), Jordon, (Kelli), Nathan, (Christa), Quinn, Morgan

The Standards are a critically-acclaimed vocal group made up of five brothers who know firsthand how proper nutrition affects us. This is Nicholas:

just ignore Jordon's creepy floating head

When he was ten years old, Nic was diagnosed with a cancerous tumor. On top of the medical attention he was getting, his parents turned their attention to what the family was eating. They really focused on changing their lifestyle and making sure they were making healthy choices. The doctors did great, but Nic is alive and well today largely due to the nutrition choices he and his parents have made.

The Standards have inspired thousands of children back east with their Music with a Message program, and now they want to take that message to the west! Schools want them to come teach and entertain their students, but budgets are tight. Schools are having budget cuts left and right, and they just can’t afford to bring the program to their students.

That’s where we come in.

The Standards have partnered with Kickstarter.com to bring their Inside Out Nutrition Tour to schools in the west at no charge to them. But they need our help! So please, listen to their message below, and then head to their project page and make a pledge. Our children thank you!

And now for the part where you can WIN!

Want the signed CD and DVD but can’t swing the full $75 pledge? How about I give them away instead? Here’s how this will work:

1. Make a pledge.
2. Come back here and tell me about your pledge.
3. For every $10 you pledge, I will enter you in a drawing to win a signed, personalized copy of their new CD and DVD.
4. If we reach our goal in time, I will pick a winner!
5. When I see the boys again in two weeks, I will have the CD and DVD signed for our luck winner. Horray!

While I have wanted to be a writer since I was really young, that goal got sidelined for some time while I was busy trying other things in life. Then, just over a year and a half ago, I had a dream. When I woke up, I just knew I needed to start writing again.

I spent the next days coming up with a plot based on said dream (by the time I was done, I actually had plots for three novels). Then I sat down and tried to write the thing. But nothing came out. I struggled and fought and couldn’t get any words out. Eventually I figured out that I had gotten into my own head and psyched myself out. I had thought so much about the story and was trying so hard to get it out, that I didn’t realize that it was not the story I really needed to tell.

A few days later, I sat down and started free writing. It wasn’t until I was nearly four chapters into my new story that I realized–holy crap!–I was writing Incubus. It wasn’t at all the story I had plotted out, but the more I wrote, the more it morphed into a better version of that story. I kept on writing until I hit a wall.

Then, I completely rewrote what I had so far from a different POV and with quite a few tweaks. Incubus is the only book I have stopped and rewritten before I finished the first draft, and I did it more times with this book than I care to admit.

Finally, I turned out a really crappy first draft. Come to think of it, really crappy doesn’t quite do justice to just how bad this draft was. It was so abysmal it probably shouldn’t even be considered a real draft. It was so bad, that no amount of edits would save it; Incubus was going to need another rewrite.

I sat down before I started writing again and figured out what it was that was not working. I tweaked the plot and added some depth to the back story. After quite some time working out all the kinks, I was finally completely satisfied with what I had outlined. I mean, I am really really happy about where this book is going (finally). It just feels right, and I know this is the story I am meant to write.

But, there is still a problem. See, no matter how pleased I am with the story and how confident I am that I finally got it right, I can’t get the words on the paper. I know that writing is often hard, and I am prepared to do the work, but there is something different about what is happening here.

After a lot of fretting about this and a lot of talking to Bubba and Lilah, I decided that maybe I am just not ready to write Incubus yet. No matter how badly I want it, maybe it is not what I should be focusing on right now. Maybe, just maybe, I should let Kyle and Jayne simmer on the back burner for a while while I write something else*. In the end, wouldn’t the story be better served if I waited until I was ready to tell it?

So readers, question for you:

In my situation, what do you do? Do you keep plodding through and finish what you started, or do you push it aside and write something else for the time being?

*Yeah, this is gonna be really hard for me to do–I am incredibly stubborn–but it might be the best thing for the book.