27 April 2014

ROW80 2014 Round 2, Week 3

 "A Round of Words in 80 Days is the writing challenge that knows you have a life." 


This week has been hectic. In addition to the usual editing and writing coaching, I've been working with my intern, Andrea Scovel, to formulate an internship (& blog post) plan for the next several weeks (very exciting!); I'm about to embark on the next leg in my year of nomadery, so I'm preparing to pack up self and dog and move again; and I had some friends visiting this weekend. Therefore a few things fell off my plate, but for the most part I pulled through. And I even got in a #writeclub sprint on Friday! Woot! Was completely exhausted by the end of the week, though. Taking yesterday off from everything to hang out with my visitors was a much-needed break.

Writing
  • Min. of 2 hrs/day on pseudonym's WIP2 - MOSTLY. Did really well on this for most of the week, even got some extra time in here and there, but didn't write yesterday due to visiting friends. Plan to write tonight, though. Most of my energy over the last two weeks has gone into handwriting a super-detailed outline. An outline so detailed, in fact, it might even cease to be an outline and instead be the shitty first draft. It's a mix of character exploration, narrative, writing about the book (rather than actually writing the book) and dialog. Sometimes scenes or pieces of scenes have emerged. And I've been averaging 2,000 words per hour by hand. Pretty darn good, I think. On Friday I started to transfer some of the handwritten stuff into my Scrivener project, and a new scene sprang up out of that, one I hadn't handwritten. It feels like a hodgepodge approach, kind of risky considering the deadline I've set for myself, but it's also fun and motivating because there's never too much pressure when I sit down to write.
Reading
  • Read something inspiring every week - NO. This one of the things that fell off my plate.
Community

  •  Read & comment on at least 3 fellow ROW80-ers' check-ins - MOSTLY. Commented on two. Just did not have much spare time this week.
Health

  • Continue to exercise for at least one hour per day - DONE. I'm going to be super sad to leave my tai chi school! I've been loving the classes and after the first few weeks I started to feel a sense of community that I'm going to miss, too. But there will still be walking. There is always walking. And I plan to practice tai chi on my own for the next seven months. Still, it's not going to be the same without Master Chen and my classmates.
  • Continue to moderate my consumption of refined sugar, bread, cheese and alcohol - SORT OF. At the moment am feeling the effects of yesterday's alcohol and potato chip with onion dip consumption at the family party. Also treated myself to a burger and a beer earlier in the week, and tonight I'm going to gorge on my uncle's homemade lasagna (CHEESE!!!), so not the most successful week for this goal. But as they say, "Moderation in all things, including moderation."

This is a blog hop! Click here to see other ROW80 participants' check-ins.

2 comments:

  1. Yes, moderation even in moderation.

    Your process on WIP2 sounds a bit like the process I've been using on my Swan Song series books. It's pretty chaotic, and I haven't been as consistent with it as I should be. But given my own experience, I bet your "shitty first draft" is going to be filled with a lot of detail that will add color to the story in the end. And a lot of it will need to be deleted... (though I've read a lot of authors who say that even the deleted story elements are still "there" in a book, in the sense of depth a story offers, that that's good)

    As for the "shift change" due to company and moving and... It sounds like one or two days of joy and play are well deserved. :-D Though yeah, the beyond normal diet food will probably make its presense known longer than you'd like....

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  2. I've never been much of a plotter, but I'm starting to see the benefits of doing an outline before starting the first draft. It's great that yours is detailed enough that it could be a first draft by itself. Hopefully that means you won't have to deal with writing yourself into a corner or getting writer's block as you continue to work.

    Homemade lasagna sounds like it's totally worth stepping out of your diet rules for a meal. Enjoy! :)

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