ROW80 2014, Round 1, Week 5

The following is this week's update on my ROW80 goals.

Writing - Work on WIPs, 3 blog posts/week, submit - 86% MET. Omg! I actually made progress on all thee of my pseudonym's WIPs this week! *happy dance! happy dance!* Also published three blog posts - a writing prompt; an interview with Chris O'Byrne, President of JETLAUNCH, as part of my research on self-publishing; and the post you're reading right now. Once again, however, did not submit anything.

Reading - Read something inspiring - MET. Haha! After who knows how many years it's been on my shelf, I finally read Italo Calvino's If on a winter's night a traveler. When I was originally assigned this book in grad school (shhh...don't tell anyone I didn't finish it then), I kept falling asleep trying to read the first chapter and, after several attempts, gave up. This time, however, I persisted. Yes, I fell asleep again several times during the first chapter, but the next night I'd pick up where I left off the night before, and so on and so on until finally I'd stopped falling asleep in the middle of a page.

And I'm so glad I did persist, because there were parts of this book that were absolutely brilliant, and most of them were toward the end. (My apologies to Calvino, RIP, but that's my assessment.) Unfortunately, it would do no good to share an excerpt with you as I did last week because it takes the rest of the book to make those parts brilliant. Trying to present them out of context is like trying to capture the grandiose splendor of Paris in a single photo: impossible. 

Community

• Participate in #writeclub on Twitter every Friday - NOT MET. Seriously, wtf?
• Continue to attend readings - NOT MET. This is not a high priority for me at the moment. There's too much other chaos in my life and it's enough just to keep up with editing, coaching, writing, eating, and sleeping.
• Read and comment on at least 3 other ROW80 participants' check-ins each week - MET. Hooray!

Health

• Begin each day with 15 minutes of freewriting (good for my mental health) - PARTIALLY MET. I did this 5/7 days, so pretty good.
• Exercise for at least an hour a day - PARTIALLY MET. Between injuring a muscle in my left leg and the damned snowmageddon I didn't get out much this week. (Grump, grump.) However, once my leg recovered around mid-week, I ventured out (despite lack of snow-appropriate footwear) for half an hour a day, sometimes just walking/slipping around and sometimes shoveling snow/slipping around. This coming week plan to work back up to my 1 hr/day thing, weather permitting.

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