Bloggiesta is over. My list looks much the same as when I created it on Frida. Only two items crossed off tho I began many more of them and along the way also got sidetracked into tasks not originally on the list but blog improvement related. But again, many begun and few finished.
Unfinished is my middle name.
Issues with connection made some tasks slow and tedious or interrupted altogether so I didn't complete any mini-challenges or visit many blogs or leave any comments. Which kinda put the fizzle in the fiesta for me leaving me just plugging away at a 2do list alone in my office like any other day.
But I don't mean to make it sound like it was all fizzle and no zesta. I enjoyed the learning and discovering of new things in the mini-challenge posts I did read and also on the sidebars of those blogs. Probably the biggest accomplishment was the addition of many more 2dos onto my master task list for going forward--widgets to add, social media to join, blogs to follow, events to participate in, organizational tips to try....
Too bad Bloggiesta can't be once a month instead of twice a year.
I hear the next one is scheduled for the last weekend of March.
Read more...
The theme of the last couple of days seems to be about revision.
I no sooner got my Bloggiesta goals posted on Friday and I was hit with the irresistible need for a siesta. Probably because I'd already been awake over twenty hours.
While thinking about the crocheted crafter's tote as I was dozing off, I realized the broom stick stitch pattern I'd settled on for one of the strips was too lacy and did not play well with the others--it was too flimsy and would have required a lining which there is no extra time for. So I spent an hour going over stitch patterns looking for a replacement and another hour thinking about how to repurpose the square already made.
While working on the Bloggiesta goal to create an embeddable spreadsheet for ROW80 goals I spent an extra hour after creating the spreadsheet trying to figure out how to embed it and had to give up and substitute a screenshot image and link to the spreadsheet for the ROW80 page I created for the goal list.
I spent a couple hours rewriting the goals from the last round, stripping them of the commentary from previous rounds, tweaking, reordering and clarifying.
That is at least two Bloggiesta goals complete. Plus the work is done for tomorrow's first Round 4 check-in.
This afternoon when about to switch from the crochet back to Bloggiesta I suddenly got the urge to completely rearrange my desk corner again. For the third time in a week! This time I knew I'd tried all of the easy fixes and if I was going to do it I was going to have to go whole hog. Meaning I would have to remove over a hundred books off of the shelves and move the shelves.
That project took over four hours.
I concluded it was necessary after all of the focus on goals for Bloggiesta, ROW80, NaNo, and the Tote project revealed to me the relationship between the poor setup and poor productivity.
Issues needing addressed: light coming from the wrong angle, no room to swivel the chair and little room to roll it, no space to spread out papers and open books, stuff blocking the shelves containing reference books, frequently used books and tools out of reach from the chair, putting items away was as difficult as getting them out.
Only time will tell if I've solved any or all of these issues. Tho I'm fairly happy with the lighting situation at the moment.
Read more...
This time I hope to put my major focus on considering and implementing options for making daily posts less onerous to complete and cut back the average time spent daily from over 3 to under 2 hours.
Organization of tools and information would be the main players here I think and maybe some post backlogs..
The urgent:
write author interview questions for an upcoming blog tour
create an embedded spreadsheet to keep track of my ROW80 goals for the next round to replace the obnoxiously long posts I have been using.I created the spreadsheet in Google Docs but could not figure out how to embed it.
create a ROW80 page.
check out all of the mini-challenges and complete at least one.
read/write blogging related email
prepare a backlog of posts to see me through the the next three busy months. These could be Sunday Serenity posts, Quote posts, and book reviews.
collect book cover images for likely book reviews
prepare a list of themes and concepts for Friday Forays in Fiction posts and a place to collect info and images for them.
learn and apply at least one new traffic gaining trick.
clean up the sidebars again.
add commitments for next several weeks to calendar
visit Blogiesta participants and leave comments
Less urgent:
pare down labels and add labels to old posts from the years before labels were available.
fix image and video size in old posts created before the template change two years ago that are too big for the current post column.
change icons for social network links in sidebar and add the missing ones. I would like smaller icons and if possible a consistent size.
So A week after I settled the major stitch choices and made the calculations as to best pace to get this done by the Christmas deadline, how did I do?
Well good overall I think but still not keeping up the necessary pace. Due in part to two days sick with nausea and headache but mostly because I was still fussing with stitches giving me fits. But with 88 days until Christmas I now have 20 of the 99 squares complete. And a full inch on the 2 chain mesh Mobius strip that will comprise the bottom, sides and shoulder strap for the bag.
I missed my major goal for the week of having all 9 of the starting squares for the strips complete by two squares but they at least are well begun. They are the two stitch patterns giving me the most fits. I've taken out nearly half as many stitches as I've put into them and one of them--the aqua second from right in top row--is riddled with mistakes in the first three rows which I chose to leave be after discovering them while working on row 6.
I decided that since those rows would be near the seam attaching the panel to the Mobius strip they would not ever be that closely observed so if I could fix the problems caused by building on those mistakes by increases and decreases in the spots still affected on the row I was working I would leave the goofs alone. I think I managed to make the fixes.
The stitch pattern is a riff on the chevron with the use of bobbles and clusters and is called Wavy Puff Stitch Spray. I had the square more than half done once and had to take it completely out after discovering a similar scattering of mistakes but in that case there was also the issue that the pattern had created a width over 4.5 inches which wasn't ideal considering all the rest of the strips are the intended 4 inches.
At that time I tried to select another wavy stitch but I'd grown attached to this one and decided instead to adjust the pattern to fit my needs by adding stitches to the middle and sides and then taking out one whole iteration of the wave. That's the first time I've ever rewritten a pattern I was trying to follow.
The other unfinished square--seen to the left of the aqua square above--is the Loops pattern and the only two color pattern in the project. This is a very simple stitch with a twelve chain loop added between every four single crochets on the first row of each color change but if you are not paying attention it is easy to goof it up.
My main goofs are to add or subtract a single crochet stitch between the loops. to add chain loops without any single crochet between them or to single crochet for an inch or two without adding the loops. This makes for a lot of undoing and redoing of portions of that one row. The three rows above the loops rows are straight single crochet and hard to mess up as long as I don't trap a portion of the loop into the stitches or trap it on the wrong side.
I had some trouble with the Lilac square's Broomstick Lace stitch--far right in top row-- in the beginning but got into the rhythm after awhile. That isn't a new stitch for me as I made an afghan with it while in high school. The 'stick' I'm using for working with crochet thread is a child's fat lead pencil. This stitch is going to be more time consuming than many of the others.
The two remaining stitches in that top row--the Golden Yellow Wavy Shell and the Green Key Tab--are both a breeze once I got them down.
Those five in the top row are placed in the order in which the strips will be sewn together and as seen from the back of the bag. They represent the panel that will be the back/top/front flap of the tote.
The squares and partial strip shown below them represent the panel that will wrap around the front of the bag creating pockets on each end. The completed strip belonging on the bottom of this panel is not shown as it is finished and packed away. It uses the same 2 chain mesh as the Mobius strip.
The bottom strip shown uses straight single crochet. It needs to be sturdy to hold the buttons for attaching the flap to.
The strip above that represented by the pale pink square uses the Track stitch or a row of double triple crochet separated by three rows of single crochet.
The top strip--pale blue square--uses the fillet stitch.
I could have been further on the Mobius but had to take out more than a full 16 foot round after discovering a bunch of mistakes. The worst mistake was having turned the work around and started working back the way I'd just come and discovering it only when I was less than two feet from working back over that spot. After taking that all out I was looking closely at the row below and discovered a whole bunch of missed loops, loops with two instead of one single crochet in them, and three chain loops. I took out more than half of that 8 foot row. This fiasco caused me to loose most of three rows.
To clarify: a row is one side of the Mobius strip representing the original 8ft chain before its ends were connected while a round is the full length that works both sides of that chain and thus adds two rows.
I've discovered that ten rows of 2 chain mesh makes approximately one inch. I'm aiming for a minimum of 10 inches but hoping for 12.
To sum up, it is still doable but I better not have to take more than two or three more full days off between now and December 24th.
Read more...
While resting between spurts of effort on the cleanup discussed below I watched videos, including tutorials like the one heading this post for the Crocodile Stitch. I'm really psyched to try some of the things I learned today but I know I shouldn't. At least not until I've made up for the missed days on the tote. And it would be wiser to wait until after Christmas.
With ROW80 being on hiatus this week I've been scrambling for those two extra posts per week to replace the check-ins. I wish I could report that I've kept up all the goals since Round 3 ended but I haven't kept up any of them. I switched the intensity of my focus to the huge crafter's tote I'm crocheting for my Secret Santa giftee. I knew I was falling behind the ideal pace and still needed to solidify plans. So I spent one day calculating time estimates for various segments of the project and establishing a average pace. Then I spent two days experimenting with stitches for the strips until I'd settled on all 9 and started the first square for each strip.
I discussed all of that last Thursday and hope to have pictures of my progress for tomorrows post so I won't go into any more details about it here.
I had to take a two day break from work on it after spending one day with nausea and headache and then today deciding I needed to put order back into my office before I continued as clutter was getting out of control in here and my upcoming week is full with blogging tasks--Bloggiesta this weekend and Banned Book Week all next week for which I'm going to be adding a giveaway of one of my crocheted bookmarks to my review of a Judy Blume book and then the following weekend is Dewey's 24 hour Read-a-Thon and the week after that I've got a blog tour review, interview and giveaway. So it was imperative I get a grip on the mess.
After four hours of effort though I've only got one of the four corners in shape. The desk area where I spent most of my time. That's how bad it had gotten
The desk area was a conglomeration of crochet, writing, snacking, medicines, books and electronics. The messes in the other three corners are all craft related and caused when I was looking for something and pulled stuff out of bags and boxes, shelves and drawers, still packed from either our move lost December or my trip to my Mom's last spring.
It is time again for the big blogging slumber party, the three day weekend that comes around twice a year in which bloggers gather to learn from one another, do maintenance tasks on their blog templates, write a back log of posts for the future, learn new tricks, network, comment, teach, promote, and whatever other goals they might have towards improving their blogging experience.
Share what you (are, have been, are about to, hope to be) reading or reviewing this week. Sign Mr Linky at Book Journey and visit other Monday reading roundups.
Posted two reviews for blog tours last week. One of them a giveaway:
Howling funny! Did you know dogs actually love the leash because it makes it safe for them to bark and growl and pasture at the other dog on a leash in the comfort of knowing there can't really be any consequences such as having their throat ripped out or ear bitten off.
I will be posting my review Tuesday of that week accompanied by a giveaway of one of my crocheted bookmarks.
Primal by Deborah Serra A thriller about a mother defending the lives of her children from escaped convicts who invaded their camping site.
My review for this blog tour is slated for October 8th
Hellfire & Damnation II by Connie Corcoran Wilson a collection of short stories in the horror genre.
My review for this blog tour is slated for Oct 17th
and the author Interview with giveaway for Oct 18th
Also since my last IMWAYR two weeks ago:
Posted my review of Ann Pattchet's Bel Canto for the September 13 Read-a-Long party at Bookjourney. I continue plugging away at the same several NF as I have for weeks or months now. I'm creeping through most of them tho for a couple I'm closing on the finish line.
The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg Hooked: Write Fiction That Grabs Readers at Page One and Never Lets Go by Les Edgerton Get Your Loved One Sober by Robert Meyers Imagine: How Creativity Works by Jonah Leher. I finished this one and am working on a review. What to Do When There's Too Much to Do by Laura Stack
All of those are research for the writing side of my life. The third one for a character tho I won't deny there are potential real life application for the info.
I am taking all five slow as that is my preferred way to read non-fic. It sticks with me longer.
I have continued reading the ebook I was reading aloud to my Mom while staying there in March and April: At Home in Mitford by Jan Karon. The short little chapters are almost like stand-alone short stories with beloved characters. This tends to be my bedtime read which is why I seldom read more than one chapter at a time and that not every day as my eyes are usually already fried by the time I am laying down.
These two NF which I began last winter and have posted a kind of reading journal for but need to get back to before I have to start over:
And So It Goes by Charles J. Sheilds a bio of Kurt Vonnegut. Part of the fun I'm having reading this is in stopping to read the stories he wrote as the narrative reaches the point where he writes them.
This Mobius Strip of Ifs by Mathias Freese a collection of personal essays
And these nine ARC novels some of which I've had for weeks and in a few cases months:
The Land of Decoration by Grace McClean I actually read this once already, months ago, but am in the midst of a careful reread. The Variations by John Donatich
The Inquisitor by Mark Allen Smith My husband read this and loved it and is after me to read it so he can talk about it.
The Hunger Angel by Herta Muller Nobel winner!!
Skios by Michael Frayn
How Should a Person Be? by Sheila Heti
The Sadness of the Samurai by Victor del Arbo
Me, Who Dove into the Heart of the World by Sabina Berman
Winter Journal by Paul Auster a memoir from an American literary figure that really excites me. This one arrived earlier this month or late in July
We Sinners by Hanna Pylvaine. This one arrived about ten days ago. It's another story exploring the impact on family life of a fundamentalist religion. One of the themes I'm drawn to like Pooh to honey.
If anyone reading this states a preference I may let it weigh my decision as to what I begin next from the above list.
Read more...
Have now completed 20 of the 99 squares including all 11 in one of the 9 strips. Have completed all but two of the first squares of each strip and those two are well begun which means I've settled on all 9 stitch patterns, tested them for gauge and doability.
This means the design stage of this project is nearly over and that seems to be a dangerous stage for projects I begin. I tend to loose interest after all of the creative decisions are made and it starts to feel like a long stretch of tedious stitching 'by the book' even when as in this case 'the book' was 'written' by me.
I'm just going to have keep the vision of the finished bag fresh and living in my imagination to keep the desire to see it realized strong enough to keep me going for the next three months.
The last few days of work on it have been frustrating because so many stitches had to be taken out or as in one case reassigned to another project (I turned one partial square into a bow to decorated another project after deciding the stitch pattern wasn't gauging right and I needed to start it over.
In another case (the wavy aqua seen in the pic above) I had the square nearly to the halfway mark and had to take it completely out because not only was the gauge wrong but I'd made some egregious errors on the first and third rows that were being built on by the rows above and magnifying. It was a mess. I had to make adjustments in the pattern to get the gauge right and that took some math and a lot of trial and error. Read ripping out stitches.
Yesterday while working on the strip that uses two colors (the coral and brown in the pic) I got a knot in the coral thread and in trying to get it out with a needle I split the thread and dropped the work and in picking it up somehow pulled the work through the split. After spending three hours trying to untangle that, I gave up and pulled out all of the coral above the brown and then all of the brown in order to get the brown thread out of the snarl. After that I was able to get the knot out of the coral and even repair the split thread which had not broken.
Those two squares are the only ones still not finished. Later this week--probably Thursday, I hope to post a pic showing each of the 9 beginning squares complete to showcase the 9 stitches.
I may have to take it easy with the hook for a day or two as my right arm from wrist to neck feels like one giant toothache. Not stop just pull back. Keep the one square per day pace by doing one of the easy ones and maybe a couple of rounds on the Mobius strip which has been neglected the last three days.
Read more...
I've just discovered and I confess been shanghaied by another one of those 'timewaster' sites. At least that is how I first thought of cracked.com, lumping it in with cheezeburger.com and their ilk. But the more I hung out here the more I realized there was more than just LOL jokes. There is also much educational value. Which is the underpinning virtue of all story whether fact or fiction.
cracked.com messes with your head by playing in the interface between fact and fiction. Facts hiding in old stories in like this article relating the original meanings behind several popular children's songs. For example London Bridge is Falling down is about the ancient ritual of walling up children to die slowly of starvation and thirst in stone structures like castles, churches and bridges in order to insure the stability of the structure into the future.
I'll let you go read for yourself the facts hiding in Jimmy Cracked Corn, Here We Go Round the Mulberry Bush, Blow the Man Down and She'll Be Coming Round the Mountain.
Last Thursday when posting my progress report on the super major Xmas crochet project, I said I felt I'd fallen behind the pace needed to complete but also admitted I had no idea what the pace needed to be since I'd not done the calculations. At the time I didn't even know how many days there were left until Christmas.
Well I have now done the calculations and created a chart to mark progress. There are 95 days until Christmas.
Colors in blocks:
pale yellow, mint green, pale pink, pale blue, sage,
golden yellow, coral pink, aqua, lilac, peach, blue
Last week, along with a detailed description of the project, I posted the picture of the first of 9 strips of 11 squares and the beginnings of the 8ft Mobius strip side/bottom/shoulder strap. Since then I've completed four squares on the 2nd strip and one square on the 6th strip and begun the first squares of four more strips.
Beginning those squares was part of the process of finalizing my selections of stitch patterns for the strips and testing them for gauge etc. I still need to do that for two more strips.
But I now have a better sense of how much time I need to invest in this project daily in order to finish in time. Keeping in mind that I should leave several days for sewing the strips into panels and the panels to the Mobius strip, blocking, tucking tails and sewing on buttons and other finishing touches, my sense that I was falling behind on the pace was not an illusion.
There are 95 days until Christmas.
The Mobius strip: Takes me 70-90 minutes to make the full 16 foot round trip (= 2 rows of 2ch mesh). 4 round trips created 1/2 inch in width. I'm aiming for a minimum of 10 inches wide. and hope to make it closer to 12. 10 inches = 80 round trips = 80x80 minutes or 106 hours. Add another 10.6 hours to each inch added in width.
YIKES. This means I need to average more than 2 hours per day just on the Mobius starting now.
The panels: The 9 strips consisting of 99 squares of which 21 are complete leaves 83 squares to go. There is no way to calculate the time on these as some of the stitch patterns are very simple and go as fast as 30 minutes per square while others are more complex and may end up averaging up to 3 hours per square.
Keeping in mind the need to block, stitching strips into panels and panels onto the Mobius and other finishing touches I should have the strips completed at least a week before Xmas. That leaves me 87 days for these 83 squares.
So my guess that I needed to average one square per day was pretty spot on.
To be clear that is one square per day in addition to 2 hours on the Mobius!
What about all those other fiber art WIP? :(
I guess I did not comprehend the magnitude of this project as I was designing it. This is on a par with the work required for a large afghan in terms of number of stitches but has way more complexity.
Watch for weekly progress reports. I'll also be including mention of this project in the ROW80 check-ins when they start up again for round 4 in October.
Note: the current comments begin below the pic of the harnessed cat and are organised like a blog within a blog both at the top and under each goal. My goals will be very similar to what they were in Round 2 which I joined half-way through. And like last time I will continue to copy/paste the goals list with new commentary for each check-in. But I did strip nearly all of the commentary added during the last round leaving only what effects the current goals. I also added some new goals.
I debated whether to start the check-in count in the post title at 1 for the new round but decided that it was important for me to get a sense over time how the number of total check-ins correlate to progress on all fronts.
LESSONS LEARNED LAST ROUND:
Miracles seem to happen when attention is paid to something.
Attention =Attend =serving as well as being in service to Changing habits in just one area has ripple effects across all other habits. It is powerful and empowering to realize that if you just take small steps in the right direction BIG things start to happen.
the crochet tote
___9-19-12 - FYI I've a giveaway ongoing for a howlingly funny read for anyone who knows a dog.
all time investment goals holding steady. still dithering and fiddling with the edit/revision of the short story so am disappointed it is still not ready to publish.
I am definitely going to be working out a different format for these check-in posts next round. this method gets quite unwieldy by mid round.
next round will be about NaNo as October has long been my prep month for it
I mentioned here previously that I was considering for NaNo this year the story of the founding of the cult that is such a central figure in the lives of the characters. that is still in my top three or four choices but I've also started thinking about moving completely out of that storyworld for NaNo this year and this time in such a way I could not bring the story back into it. To do that I'd have to switch genre and I have this YA fantasy I started some years ago that has been on my mind a lot lately so I've got it on the list.
next round I'll probably also include frequent updates on the progress of the crochet tote as crocheting has become so intricately entwined with the story dreaming anyway plus I've fallen behind for it's intended Xmas done date. In the last week I've completed the first of the 9 11 square strips and gotten to the end of square 4 on the 2nd. I've also begun the first square of 5 more of the strips as one of the tasks I needed behind me was to settle finally on the stitch for each strip and its position in the panels so I'd know which color to start it with and test them for viability--can I make them hold at 4inches and will I not hate working it. but now the color I need next for strip 2 is on the hook for strip six.
I've made it to the half inch mark on the Mobius strip--or 1/20 to 1/24th of it's 10 to 12 inch width. It took 8 rows of the 2ch mesh or 4 complete rounds and each of those rounds around the full 16 feet takes me 90 to 100 minutes although I think I've been shaving time off that. So let's be generous and say I'm soon averaging an hour per round--that is 4 hours per half inch and if I stop at 10 inches that is 80 hours. as for the strips--there are 99 squares total and it's been a struggle to complete one per day and now the number of days left is quickly heading toward fewer days than the number of squares left and I still need to have time to sew all the pieces together and tuck tails which is probably a good week's task.
I've applied the skills I learned for ROW80 to break the crochet project down into manageable steps and have even created a chart of the strips so I can X off the squares I finish. ___9-15-12 - was reading Ann Patchett's Bel Canto for a read-a-long this week and I'm still trying to decide if I'm inspired or intimidated.
all time investment goals are holding steady. have been storydreaming with crochet hook in hand and made progress on the crafter's tote. am working on third square of second strip now and 6th round on Mobius
I've hit a snag in the edit/revision of the short story. snag may be more illusion than real tho due to loss of objectivity again from the multiple re-reads and the holding in my head of all the possible forks in the prose roads. i imagine i need to let go and get beta reader feedback but resistance to that is strong. just thinking about it makes me sleepy, hungry or nauseated. even all three at once.
Happy 46th Star Trek
my storytelling teething biscuit
___9-11-12 - re 'get moving' goals: the cramp in my calf has let up. i swear it felt like Baby Hulk was making a fist in it for nearly a week. am going to try getting on the min-tramp tomorrow. also have a lot of house chores to catch up on.
here's hoping i don't re-injure or something else happens. had a close call just a few minutes ago when i tripped over Merlin who was sleeping on the threshold of my office doorway.
such is life with a visual impairment.
how do i teach an elderly cat to be afraid of my feet without being intentionally mean?
anyway. pardon the no caps again. my pinkies have gone on strike for the night.
all the rest of the time investment goals are holding steady.
as for the prep of Candy Kiss for epublishing that is still going much slower than I'd hoped. I'd thot it was only in need of line editing but now am considering adding scenes but wondering if I should run it past beta readers first to see if it is only me who finds the ending too abrupt. ___9-08-12 - Once again my performance of goal tasks has been perfunctory at best. and once again I'm keeping all commentary here at top and only dropping the Ys into the goals list below. I'm getting frustrated with this post format and am thinking about options for next round as this is getting unwieldy to work with in draft--blogger brings me back to the top every time I insert a link or image.
And I imagine it is frustrating for readers to find two of these mile long posts on my front page.
Among the options for next round I'm considering is to make this a page instead of a post but that would still be too long in this format especially after multiple rounds! So I'm thinking of an embedable spreadsheet to keep track of the goals with this blog in a blog format for commentary below that but only for a paragraph or so with anything more I need to say in a separate post linked in that date's comments.
Just as I started contemplating stepping it up with my get moving goals because they were getting too easy, I developed a cramp in my right calf four days ago that is still painful and keeps me limping. I kept up the goals by doing only stretchy band work with arms and thighs while sitting.
___9-04-12 - Since I've been awake since Monday afternoon I'm going to give this the bare bones treatment. All of my comments will be here at top and only the string of Y's dripped into the goals section sans commentary.
Don't know exactly what got into me as it has been awhile--years--since the last time I stayed awake 30+ hours twice inside of one week let along twice inside of one long weekend. The exhilaration of the NaNo finish may play a role and might explain the first skipped sleep but that already feels so last week it can't explain my being awake 32 hours and counting yet again.
There were times when I was younger when my productivity stayed high up until I hit 40 some hours awake. This weekend not so much. Tho I made my goals it was perfunctory. About the only one that may have benefited from the extra long 'days' was the daydreaming of the storyworld. Which I confess I was doing while playing round after round of Free Cell as I waited on the Internet connection to come back or while watching the blades on the fan go round and round.
The 'get moving' goal also has had a boost this weekend since suddenly I find it easier to pace than to sit and as for sitting still well my foot is doing the jig as I type which joggles the screen annoyingly.
All of the other time investment goals--30 minutes per day each for reading on craft, working with fiction files, free writing, and prepping the short story for eventual ebook release--got done in blocks of 5, 10 even 2 minutes. I've got the attention span of a two year old.
What happened to the focus that got me across the Nano finish line Friday? ___9-01-12 - (excuse the lack of proper caps and other typos. am having significant finger and wrist fatigue tonight. and eyestrain. well earned as will become clear. hmmm.at least you'll get a sense of what i mean when i talk about the mess in my files)
the work in the fiction files (goal 6) is bearing fruit as is the storydreaming (goal 5)
Besides the Camp NaNo win (see Friday's post for details) tho there is a certain clarity about a direction I need to go with the storyworld building.
one that I have been resisting for years...
the more I think about the cult in my FOS storyworld the more I realize how little I really know about it. Especially of its origins in the late 1800s. Founded by a small group of individuals born between 1850 and 1880 at least one of which was old enough to remember the Civil War and had migrated from the Southern States to big cities in the North East where they met up with others and then migrated West to settle in rural Idaho by at least 1899. What they had then was not a cult tho. The question I still need to answer is when did it mutate into one and how. It had to have happened some years before 1944 which is the birthday of twins Faye and Julia whose lives were shaped by what this group had become by then. as was their mother's generation of course.
thing is, my understanding of the social landscape of post civil war America including the religious landscape is rusty to say the least. I had once accumulated a lot of research notes from hundreds of pages of reading on the topics and the era but that was all lost in 1) an eviction in the late 80s; 2) a computer crash in the late 90s; 3) an abandoned storage unit in 2001 that contained all my physical files and my computer on which harddrive most of my files were trapped because the floppy drive and quit a few months after we got it and for the year previous to that move I'd been unable to back up online and had lost access to the back up files that had existed
I think i'm going to have to redo some of that research but i worry I won't find the proper balance between research and story writing. i know my tendency to go to the extremes. take for example today when I rewarded my self for the Camp NaNo win by giving myself the free pass for last night for the video watching, games and fiddling with the metadata in my ebook libraries that I'm supposed to earn by addressing certain goals I'd been resisting.
no I didn't dis the two goals in question. I put the time into them but only after I'd watched four hours of video and mucked around in ebook metadata for 16 hours!!!.
How did i manage that? by not sleeping today. have been awake for 29hr as I type this and I've at least an hour of work left before i can post.
my point being that I habitually go to such extremes with whatever my mind latches onto whether fiber art projects, writing, solitaire, novel reading, housework....
...research...
and my eyes are not what they were even five years ago so there is no way i can duplicate it even if i could get my hands on all of the same books and journals. which means I need the research to be less scattershot this time around
so over the next week or month I'm going to start outlining/listing the specific aspects of topics I need to target, formulate specific questions etc.
And since this is coming up now just as it is time to choose and prep a story for November NaNo I am considering the story of the Founders even though I never before intended to give them a novel of their own. But it seems that until I get their story established every other story set in their world that I attempt to tell will stall out the moment encounters with the cult itself, a present or past member or a personal memory becomes relevant to an event or a character's motivation or history. 9 nano novels and at least 5 other stories already languish. and I can't seem to finish any story I start without dragging it into this story world
and maybe i need to research the craft of worldbuilding itself. i'd always associated that with sci-fi and fantasy storyworlds but apparently it isn't unique to them for unless your storyworld is exactly the same as your own home/neighborhood/era you are going to have to build it to some extent.
___8-28-12 - working at playing. will leave you with this LOL I made a few weeks ago for this Friday Forays in Fiction post. It features a quote by Joyce Carol Oates one of my writer heroines on the transgressive nature of art. ___8-25-12 - There is not much to add by way of commentary this time as this is the final week of Camp NaNo and of WFMAD and I'm putting my efforts into them in light of the insight I discussed Wednesday. I'm making messes....
Sandbox Joy
yep that's me age 5ish
___8-22-12 - This week there was a big payoff stemming from one of the time investment tasks--the reading on craft. I was reading Imagine: How Creativity Worksby Jonah Leher and he was talking about the role chaos plays in creativity and used a phrase "informational entropy" entropy being a condition defined by the presence of disorder. The point he was developing being that creativity and innovation occur when there is the right balance between chaos and order. Now because I'd been working in my messy files for several days by the time I encountered these concepts, my thoughts went there and to the fact that the act of fiddling in my files had already stimulated several minor additions to my notes that came from information out of the files colliding with information coming from memory, or recent encounters in life, online or reading. And then it struck me that this was not a rare thing but has always happened. Every single time I finally regain the courage to confront the mess in my files something new is encountered or created and sometime that is a breakthrough in a WIP. So why do I constantly associate the chaos of my files with shame and fear instead of courting it? Something to think about. Maybe write about in my freewriting and maybe eventually in a separate post if I reach any insights. But meanwhile this current insight is ammo against that resistance toward my messy files--both working with the already existing mess and the fear of creating further messes which is at the root of what I've called my version of writer's block. Which isn't really writer's block since I've never had any trouble generating words I've just had trouble crediting the words I generate with value when I can't label them as narrative, dialog, scene work, story draft etc and such. So then. New goal? Learn to love the mess like I once loved my childhood sandbox....Send the guilt and shame harpies howling into the abyss.
___8-18-12 - The new incentivizing plan I developed while composing Wednesday's check-in has worked! I earned my free pass all four days Wednesday - Saturday!
I finally did a read through of my short story and started editing it. And I started working with my fiction files beginning with a read through of the WhizFolders file that is a master worksheet for the Fruits of the Spirit storyworld containing info pertaining to all stories and novels begun or planned and links to their files, links to online resources, notes to self, character roster and sketches, timeline, research notes and resource lists. It's a mess!
I also maintained the other goals.
___8-14-12 - Still a holding pattern. And I'm still struggling to know how much grief to give myself over what I've NOT done in proportion to how much kudos for what I DID do especially the fact that the holding pattern IS a pattern developing into new habits--things I'm doing regularly now that I was doing rarely or not at all tree months ago. Like the time investment goals: reading craft, exercise, dreaming storyworld, and free writing. All of which are valuable habits for a writer to develop.
But I'm still disturbed by how I continue to avoid my fiction files and manuscripts even as I continue to create more of them adding to the mess I perceive it to be.
When I joined ROW80 in the middle of round 2 my primary goal for which all the other goals were to serve was to get my first short story published in ebook this summer as an exercise and test flight. And here it is with two weeks left in August and I'm still refusing to read/revise the chosen short story and put out a request for beta readers.
This egregious omission looms like a vulture over the entire list of accomplishments and makes me feel fraudulent. Since all of the time investment goals that are accumulating long strings of Ys are also becoming enjoyable, I've considered requiring myself to confront the manuscripts and files each day before allowing myself the pleasure of the other tasks. But I fear that my resistance is so strong on this I would just end up loosing those new hard-won habits.
Of course there are other pleasures I could deprive myself of until compliance or reward myself with after. I considered crochet but 90% of the storyworld dreaming occurs while crocheting and besides I've already let it slide due to this heatwave induced lethargy I'm fighting. I considered fiction reading but I've got review commitments. I don't want to use food as that is a whole other area I'm working on that I don't want to mess with.
That leaves me with video games and video watching and adding to or organizing my ebook libraries. All of which I've been overdoing during this heatwave.
So new plan or goal or whatnot: Must earn time with video games and video watching and working with ebook library with time invested in the prep of Blow Me a Candy Kiss for epublishing and/or work on that list of tasks related to my fiction files in the last time investment goal.
See details below at beginning of goal list.
___8-11-12 - It appears to be a holding pattern as I could repeat the first paragraph of the last check-in word for word. In spite of fewer life intrusions. Thus no excuse really. It's choices, laziness, fear. And as I write that I'm overwhelmed with self-disgust. Which I realize is a fruitless and destructive waste of energy that could be better directed constructively. ___8-07-12 - Did better on some fronts -- the reading, free writing, exercise, and story dreaming time commitments -- but still no progress on any goals related to working with my fiction files. Although some of the free writing is related to the current Camp NaNo novel and some of it amounts to narrative or dialog snippets.
The heatwave has lifted somewhat. Only high 90s the last couple of days. Merlin seems to think it is enough better to warrant reclaiming one of his favorite perches--the cushion supporting my back in my desk chair. I would beg to differ but will tolerate for twenty minutes or so the heating pad effect emanating off him. When I've had enough I just squirm a bit until he has enough and gets down.
Life intrusions other than the heat already discussed: Writing up a review and author interview and giveaway for a blog tour this week ate into some of the writing time. It also contributed to my lateness in checking in. My sister went into surgery for a second time in a week on Tuesday and I was sick again with a stomach thing on Sunday and Monday.
___8-04-12 - Well, having the dedicated desktop has had some beneficial effects but they were more limited than I'd hoped after life just stomped all over best intentions and plans. First my sister, Jamie, was in surgery on Wednesday up in Seattle and with us having no phone my only access to status reports was on fb where my sister, Carri, was posting them on her wall, Jamie's wall and private chat with me. Thus it was not easy to cut the umbilical to the net on that day.
Then on Thursday we got slammed by another heatwave with temps hitting the triple digits--103 and up--on Friday and Saturday and us with no AC.
Then on Friday we lost net connection altogether for over twelve hours between early afternoon and the wee hours of Saturday morning and it has been up and down at unpredictable intervals all day today. Now you might wonder as does my husband why I didn't just take advantage of the fact there was no net and hop on over to the dedicated desktop and focus on my writing.
Good question and I'm wondering myself why it was so hard for me to give up my obsessive vigilance over the icon for the WIFI on the system tray. Which leads me to question my dedication to writing itself if after all the work and frustration I went through Tuesday evening setting up a desktop whose primary attribute was no internet access I was unable to accept the lack of Internet access on this desktop as well as a gift, a release from the bondage to all of those proliferating tasks and activities whether important or frivolous that require or are created by Internet access.
Something I need to ponder I guess.
Meanwhile I did do better since the last check-in than between last Wednesday and Sunday when I zeroed out on all goals for the first time. I got another string of Ys on all of the time investment goals not directly related to working with the fiction files: Daydreaming the story world, freewriting, readings on craft and exercise tho that last has been pretty lame and I gave myself credit for lame somethings because it wasn't nothing at all.
___7-31-12 - Was still stuck in a rut as of late Tuesday evening so I decided it was time to do that thing I'd been threatening to do: set up a separate desktop for writing only. No admin, no internet, bare minimum of shortcuts. I just spent two hours setting it up and was so frustrated by the experience I felt like slamming the netbook lid on my fingers. It would have been more enjoyable.
The main frustration was that it took forever to send dozens of shortcuts to the recycle because without admin I had to get admin permission for every single one which added two extra clicks and several seconds of time to each. Then I discovered that all of the writing aps: WhizFolders, OpenOffice, Windows Office, Works wanted to be registered which I couldn't do from that desktop since all my codes are in my email or note aps. So I settled on using Word Pad but then had to dither for twenty minutes on how to save it so that I could access the file from this desktop. There wasn't any way other than making it a public document which I didn't want so if I decide to actually use the setup I'll have to save to a thumb to bring my work back over to this desktop.
Then I get back over to my regular desktop only to find that all of those shortcuts that I recycled on the other desktop were gone on this one too. Arrrrrrgh!
That makes no sense at all!!! Why can't any user have their desktop exactly how they want it without their choices affecting the other users? It was always so before Windows 7!
If it wasn't for the fact that all of the aps that I use regularly had been pinned to the taskbar here I'd have been even more growled out than I am.
I still think it is probably a good idea to follow through on this as I seem unable to self discipline. The list of things to do accessible from this desktop is longer than my hair was when I was in high school which was long enough to sit on.
I may have to do without the shortcuts on this desktop in order to make it work and having to save to a thumb isn't such a hardship and not having access to the bazzillion messed up fiction files in Whiz might be a good thing. If I think of the Joywrite desktop as being for focused writing of rough drafts only--like doing an assignment at my cubicle and turning it in to the boss ie my admin desktop where all other file manipulations will be done.
Could work.
I'll give it a try at least once shortly after I get this posted and the link posted at ROW80 for as I type this it is closing in on midnight which is the starting buzzer of August Camp NaNoWriMo
Hmm. I just had a thought and tested it. As Admin I can have access to the other desktop's files and info including their documents folders. So maybe I won't need the thumb drive. I just can't access all of my files created from this desktop from the other. Which is probably a good thing.
___7-28-12 - Lapsed on everything except day dreaming the storyworld and reading for craft again. The fact that temperatures are back in the mid 90s contributed to this but it was no where near as bad as that heatwave the week of July 4rth and I am acclimated better now so I should not still be babying myself so.
Daydreaming the storyworld actually got above and beyond the goal req as I've been crocheting obsessively all week having laser focused on a new project I am designing on the go--a large crafter's tote for my Secret Santa recipient. You can read about it in both my Wednesday and Thursday posts.
The first of 9 44in strips is shown beside this paragraph at 24inches after four days. In the last two days though I've added only another four inches.
I wish I would hyperfocus like that on the writing projects.
Maybe I will when the August Camp NaNoWriMo starts mid week. My Friday post was about the story I settled on for that event: a sequel to my November 2008 NaNo Novel, Mobile Hopes. I'm keeping the same title as the working title although the new story is set in 2012 four years after the events in the first one. ___7-24-12 - Lapsed on many things this week--moving, free writing, and file work all took major hits. Only reading for craft and day dreaming the storyworld stayed steady. Was not feeling well but have traced that as a direct result of the increase of activity last week which means I need to stay active not baby myself. ___7-21-12 - Since the heatwave broke Monday I've gradually increased activity and accumulated accomplishments in the ROW80 goals as well as other goals--like neglected chores.
The increase in activity seems to accompany an increase in creativity. I've noted the relationship before but seldom so dramatically as during NaNo a few years back when, frustrated by a days' long block, I went out on the porch after dark, in November in the Northwest mind you, to shuffle on the mini-tramp and began 'hearing' the voice of my character Gerta. Upon returning to the keyboard I wrote this over 1K monologue for her in under an hour.
That is still in my top five favorite pieces and it was intended to only be part of the character sketch notes but I decided I would either incorporate it into the novel or turn it into a related short story. That also began my practice of writing monologues for my characters but few of them have remained in my good graces more a few days after their spewing onto the screen.
Anyway. Most of the progress I made this week has been related to incorporating physical activity into my routines and especially into my writing routines. I hunted out the stretchy bands still packed from the December move and the ankle weights still packed from the recent trip to Mom's and made it easy to switch out my office chair for the big exercise ball and created an alternate work station that raises a surface up to a height I can either type or write with pencil and paper while standing with room to pace.
The point of all that is to make activity easy to begin on impulse.
I don't believe I've brought this up in a ROW80 post before but one of the issues I have that makes impulsive activity a challenge is a visual impairment called retinitis pigmentosa aka RP aka Tunnel Vision which has taken all of my peripheral vision and has encroached drastically into the center vision of my left eye. ___7-16-12 - The heatwave broke Monday!!! My body seems to be insisting on extra sleep before anything else except maybe activity tho.
___July 13 - Doing a tad better. Might be acclimating to the heat. But things that take focus and mental energy are still getting less than. ___July 7 - July 10 - Very little progress on any front and barely held my ground on most this week as I was sick from Wednesday night of the 4th through Friday evening of the 6th and about the time I started feeling better we got hit with a heat wave here in Southern Oregon that didn't break until Monday the 16th. High 90s no AC. Keeping my hands on my netbook's hot keyboard is not one of the easiest things I've ever done.
I've taken to sleeping through the hottest hours--laying down between noon and 3 and waking between 8 and 9pm. Once as late as midnight! Regardless it is midnight before the lights come on in my brain.
I owe return visits to other ROW80 peeps because of this so add that to the goals for this next week.
THE GOALS:
___8-14-12 - New plan to address resistance to working with manuscripts and fiction files: Must earn time with video games and video watching and working with ebook library with time invested in the prep of Blow Me a Candy Kiss for epublishing and/or work on that list of tasks related to my fiction files in the last time investment goal below.
Not one-to-one tho.
30 minutes on one of these earns two TV episodes or a movie or up to 90 minutes of games (my current obsessions are spider, freecell and word with friends).
But once I do the 30 minutes on the other also I've earned my free pass for the day.
But I must earn the free pass before touching my ebook library at all because I know that is the hardest one to quit once begun.
This means tho that I will have to give up watching videos over my coffee upon waking. A habit I've developed partly because my eyes don't work well for the first couple of hours I am awake. But I've been thinking that has been a bad habit to fall into anyway.
I'm making this up as I type but the activities to replace video watching upon waking while I wait for my eyes to be ready for the close reading of the manuscripts and files could include:
freewriting since it is really an advantage to not see clearly the words forming under the cursor
doodling
daydreaming the storyworld with coffee cup or crochet hook in hand
standing/swaying/shuffling on the mini-tramp or playing with the stretchy bands
shower
meditate
housework
Note that three of the other time investment goals are included in that list: freewriting, story dreaming and exercise which leaves only craft reading that must also wait for my eyes to be in the game.
1. Choose 1 of the finished short stories to be the first ebook to publish on Smashwords or Amazon and prep it for take off by the end of June August:
read through
revision
beta readers
line edit
format
convert
___[Blow Me a Candy Kiss part 1;part 2;part 3;part 4;part 5;] - 05-12-2012 Yes on choosing the title. This story is set in my Fruits of the Spirit story world and aspires to be literary. It has elements of romance in it but that is not the primary focus since the couple involved are already married. The focus is on loss and grief over infertility and the death of a child/sibling. Aprox 6000 words.
____9-01-12 - fiddled with phrases, word choice... but was distracted by NaNo efforts. now that NaNo is done tho I hope to refocus on this story __8-28-12 - Tweaked some sentences. But my focus has been on the NaNo novel this week. ___8-25-12 - Maybe half a page more since Wednesday ___8-22-12 - 1200 words into first revision...well not the first just the first in several years. More like the tenth since the first draft in 1990. So probably I should expect this to be the last before surrendering to beta readers anyway. My tendency is to keep revising, editing etc in endless rounds but the point of this exercise this summer is to prep this story for epublishing. And I think it is more important to get that done then to reach for unreachable perfection. so beta reader step soon. and i can feel the resistance building... ___8-18-12 - The new plan worked! I finally did a read through and started editing. The first read through wasn't for editing but an attempt to read for the story as if I hadn't written it myself. Since I hadn't read it for several years this was almost doable. Then I started a second read through with editing, including rewriting some paragraphs. After three days I'm only on page two or say 800 words into the 5500 word story.
When I finish this read/revise/edit pass the manuscript will be ready for beta readers. I've already received a couple of offers in comments which I've yet to respond to. Also suggestions as to how to recruit beta readers which I've yet to put in play.
This is another area I'm likely to resist. In fact it may be the primary reason I resisted beginning the read/revise/edit task in the first place. ___8-14-12 - Still resisting. See new plan delineated above. ___8-11-12 - Still have not started re-reading it. It's been nearly three months since I set this goal and prioritized it at the top of the (then) four goals as I began the last round and yet I've still not started re-reading it. That looks a lot like the RESISTANCE discussed in Pressfield's War of Art. So I'm tempted to explore that but I sense Pressfield would call that RESISTANCE too--just another way to avoid DOING. Besides, according to Pressfield, RESISTANCE is always about fear. What more do I need to know? At least before I begin.
Decided early in the last round I needed fresh eyes so set new goal:
Find beta readers outside of current circle of close family and friends. ___Not yet accomplished. I confess I'm not sure how to go about finding/asking for beta readers ___July 31 I have received several suggestions on how to go about this but have yet to follow up
My sister Jamie and my Mom both re-read Candy Kiss while I was at my mom's in May and Mom read my entire portfolio of hard copy stories and snippets and poems. But that isn't what I need at this point.
The binder Mom read which I call my portfolio contains all of my complete short stories and a number of scenes pulled out of WIP that I deemed worth wasting ink and paper on. There is another attitude steeped in my pesky perfectionism that I need to change and I would have put printing hard copy of all my WIP including the NaNo Novels on this goal list except that my printer is not working.
___9-01-12 - talked about the win and the role of ROW80 goals and lessons learned from the craft reading in yesterdays Friday Forays in Fiction Post ___8-28-12 - *shudder* ___8-25-12 - messy messy. ___8-22-12 - Time to unleash the mess... ___8-18-12 - plodding ___8-14-12 - Somewhat par for the course in all my NaNo wins to be only a quarter of the way at the halfway point. ___8-11-12 - still far from a NaNo win pace ___8-04-12 - also joined Laure Halse Anderson's Write Fifteen Minutes a Day challenge
___7-31-12 - Beginning in minutes as I type this.
___7-31-12 re what follows: for the first time since I started ROW80 I have registered a big fat N on every time investment goal since the last check-in.
No excuses. Just choices. I allowed myself to be consumed by three things: crocheting and streaming Stargate SG1 which I was usually doing simultaneously and manipulating the metadata in my ebook libraries whenever I couldn't stream because the Internet connection was down or my husband was playing his game.
Oh yeah and playing Free Cell and Spider. Or Words with Friends on fb. The Time Investment Goals: 2. [New Goal for Round 3] Return to some form of free writing exercise like doodling, morning pages or journaling for 30 minutes daily. A practice I once had that fell away when I began daily blogging which I confess is no substitute and if I cannot keep the very personal free write/journaling up in tandem with daily blogging then the blogging needs to give. The purpose of this free writing is to develop playfulness analogous to a jazz musicians playfulness with musical tools, vocabulary and grammar. I've been reading Imagine: How Creativity Works by Jonah Lehrer which reminded me of the importance of play in creativity. ___7-2-12 - N ___7-3-12 - N But I did clear off my desk and set out several kinds of paper, pencils and pens to entice me to doodle and I opened a free topic in my WhizFolders note ap only to just sit and stare at the blank screen. Sometimes I wonder if if is mere coincidence that the word 'free' is contained in the word 'freeze' ___7-2-12 - N ___7-3-12 - N ___7-4-12 - Y ___7-5-12 - N ___7-6-12 - N ___7-7-12 - N ___7-8-12 - N ___7-9-12 - N ___7-10-12 - N ___7-11-12 - Y ___7-12-12 - N ___7-13-12 - N ___7-14-12 - Y ___7-15-12 - Y ___7-16-12 - N ___7-17-12 - Y ___7-18-12 - Y ___7-19-12 - N ___7-20-12 - N ___7-21-12 - N ___7-22-12 - N ___7-23-12 - N ___7-24-12 - N ___7-25-12 - N ___7-26-12 - N ___7-27-12 - N ___7-28-12 - N ___7-29-12 - N ___7-30-12 - N ___7-31-12 - N ___8-01-12 - Y ___8-02-12 - Y ___8-03-12 - Y ___8-04-12 - Y ___8-05-12 - Y ___8-06-12 - Y ___8-07-12 - Y ___8-08-12 - Y ___8-09-12 - Y ___8-10-12 - Y ___8-11-12 - Y ___8-12-12 - Y ___8-13-12 - Y ___8-14-12 - Y ___8-15-12 - Y ___8-16-12 - Y ___8-17-12 - Y ___8-18-12 - Y ___8-19-12 - Y ___8-20-12 - Y ___8-21-12 - Y ___8-22-12 - Y ___8-23-12 - Y ___8-24-12 - Y ___8-25-12 - Y ___8-26-12 - Y ___8-27-12 - Y ___8-28-12 - Y ___8-29-12 - Y ___8-30-12 - Y ___8-31-12 - Y ___9-01-12 - Y ___9-02-12 - Y ___9-03-12 - Y ___9-04-12 - Y ___9-05-12 - Y ___9-06-12 - Y ___9-07-12 - Y ___9-08-12 - Y ___9-09-12 - Y ___9-10-12 - Y ___9-11-12 - Y ___9-12-12 - Y ___9-13-12 - Y ___9-14-12 - Y ___9-15-12 - Y ___9-16-12 - Y ___9-17-12 - Y ___9-18-12 - Y ___9-19-12 - Y
___9-01-12 - well the August Write Fifteen Minutes a Day Challenge at Laurie Halse Anderson's blog is over and now it's going to feel less urgent to keep it up--if I let it. For some reason having that commitment going carried more authority than the ROW80 check-ins alone. will have to find fortitude somewhere else now ___8-28-12 - word splatter and verbal gush that if anyone but me were to see would make me stutter and blush. here's hoping that a few months from now I will find some treasures in it like those I'm finding as I peruse my old files. ___8-25-12 - unleashed ___8-22-12 - messing around and proud of it ___8-18-12 - holding steady ___8-14-12 - Here's hoping my new plan described above will address the feelings mentioned below in Sunday's check-in comment.
___8-11-12 - for some reason I do not feel a sense of success in that string of Ys. generating words has never been a problem for me. knowing the condition of the words generated over the last ten years thru the various writing challenges gives me pause. what good is all that wordage if finished stories do not result eventually?
___8-07-12 - this is where having the dedicated desktop is having the most effect ___8-04-12 - joined Laure Halse Anderson's Write Fifteen Minutes a Day challenge ___7-31-12 - *hanging head* ___7-24-28-12 - I lapsed shamefully on this one this week. Free writing tends to trigger resistance in me. It makes me anxious. Which makes it even more important that I do it anyway.
And I've let my desk get covered in craft clutter over the top of the writing materials.
3. [New Goal for Round 3] MOVE!! 15 minute per day minimum: walk, mini-tramp, pace the house with weights on legs, exercise ball, exercise elastic bands, dance/sway to music. ANYTHING counts as I've gotten so sedentary which I've re-learned recently has very negative impact on creativity and energy. It doesn't have to be VIGOROUS yet. Maybe later after the daily habit is established I'll add that requirement for 3 days per week and up the 15 minutes to 30.
___7-2-12 - N But I did get the box of stuff still needing to be sorted and put away after my recent trip out from under the tramp which made it impossible to be impulsive about stepping onto it. ___7-3-12 - Y Paced the floor in the house for about twenty minutes but didn't put the weights on. Oh and at a separate occasion I played with the cat quite vigorously with dangly toys and balls. Anyone with a cat knows that they don't generally fetch back the tossed toys. They chase them while they are moving but then stop and stare at them waiting for them to start moving again. So I did a lot of moving in order to retrieve and toss, retrieve and toss.... Who was playing with who I wonder. ___7-4-12 - Y Paced the floor a few minutes and a few hours later paced the porch. ___7-5-12 - N sick ___7-6-12 - N sick ___7-7-12 - Y Paced the floor and the porch in two separate sessions. ___7-8-12 - N ___7-9-12 - Y stood on mini-tramp for several minutes. this is how I must begin after long hiatus until I get balance and strength in calf muscles back. just standing on it gives whole sets of muscles and ligaments from ankle to abdomen workouts. might not seem like much but it was a major overcoming of intimidation for me. ___7-10-12 - Y tossed balls and other toys for Merlin for several minutes (see @ 7-3 above) ___7-11-12 - Y paced floor several minutes while still cool before noon. ___7-12-12 - Y did some chores involving lots of moving about. ___7-13-12 - Y stood on mini-tramp for several minutes ___7-14-12 - Y did 'push-ups' against door frame several times. about 5 to 8 ea time; played with Merlin ___7-15-12 - Y the heat broke!!! did two hour kitchen clean-up--unload dishwasher & reload, complete counter and stove-top scrub, organize fridge ___7-16-12 - Y 2 hours of sorting, organizing and putting away from December move & recent trip. involved much walking from one end of house to other ___7-17-12 - Y played with Merlin; stood and swayed on mini-tramp several minutes. balance still too poor to lift feet ___7-18-12 - Y played with stretchy bands. one of them made from surgical tubing broke on me having rotten where a knot had been tied in it. so glad I was not standing on the mini-tramp when that happened ___7-19-12 - Y housework and more sorting and unpacking from the December move. I do believe I can count the folding and hanging up of clothes as exercise. my arms agree ___7-20-12 - Y played with Merlin; stood on mini-tramp several minutes. not feeling so much like I'm going to fall when I let go of the wall ___7-21-12 - Y Played with Merlin; housework ___7-22-12 - N ___7-23-12 - Y Played with Merlin; stood on mini-tramp ___7-24-12 - N ___7-25-12 - N ___7-26-12 - N ___7-27-12 - N ___7-28-12 - N ___7-29-12 - N ___7-30-12 - N ___7-31-12 - N ___8-01-12 - Y played with Merlin ___8-02-12 - Y played with Merlin ___8-03-12 - Y paced the porch from dusk to dark ___8-04-12 - Y played with Merlin; played with stretchy bands ___8-05-12 - Y played with stretchy bands ___8-06-12 - Y played with Merlin ___8-07-12 - Y stood in doorway hung on to casing with one hand and leaned out as far as my arm allowed and pulled myself back in slowly. About five times per arm ___8-08-12 - Y gently push/pull against both sides of door casing while standing in the doorway. a kind of standing up pushup ___8-09-12 - Y stood on minitramp. balance not good enough for lifting feet ___8-10-12 - Y paced porch ___8-11-12 - Y paced inside house ___8-12-12 - Y paced inside house and on porch while visiting with husband ___8-13-12 - Y stood on minitramp ___8-14-12 - Y paced inside house and on porch while visiting with husband ___8-15-12 - Y paced inside house and on porch while visiting with husband ___8-16-12 - Y clutter patrol thru house--lots of walking, bending, lifting and reaching ___8-17-12 - Y played with Merlin ___8-18-12 - Y stood/shuffled on mini-tramp ___8-19-12 - Y kitchen chores and vacuuming ___8-20-12 - Y curls and leg lifts while laying on the now clean carpet ___8-21-12 - Y played with Merlin and paced porch. ___8-22-12 - Y played with Merlin; paced in house and on porch; kitchen chores ___8-23-12 - Y played with stretchy bands ___8-24-12 - Y stood/shuffled on mini-tramp ___8-25-12 - Y gently push/pull against both sides of door casing while standing in the doorway. a kind of standing up pushup. arms still sore from crash into wall the other day but pushing past that ___8-26-12 - Y playing with Merlin ___8-27-12 - Y chores ___8-28-12 - Y pacing inside and on porch ___8-29-12 - Y chores; playing with Merlin ___8-30-12 - Y stretchy bands while sitting at desk ___8-31-12 - Y stood, moved gently on mini-tramp ___9-01-12 - Y lots of pacing while visiting with husband in livingroom and on porch. was hyper today or antsy. ___9-02-12 - Y ditto ___9-03-12 - Y ditto ___9-04-12 - Y ditto ___9-05-12 - Y cramp in right calf precluded pacing and tramp. stretchy band work w/arms and thighs while sitting; ___9-06-12 - Y ditto ___9-07-12 - Y ditto ___9-08-12 - Y ditto --pain is stil high after four days, still limping ___9-09-12 - Y ditto ___9-10-12 - Y ditto tho pain is milder ___9-11-12 - Y ditto but I think I might brave standing on the tramp tomorrow. ___9-12-12 - Y ___9-13-12 - Y ___9-14-12 - Y ___9-15-12 - Y ___9-16-12 - Y ___9-17-12 - Y ___9-18-12 - Y ___9-19-12 - Y
___9-01-12 - i'm sure I'm not expecting enough out of myself now. esp when the heat is not an issue. I'm nearly always already doing more then the minimum requirements set by the original goal. not just in time but in level of effort. it is getting easier. but is it yet too easy? or would stepping it up set me up for failure. I'm going to think about it for at least a week before I decide whether to change the goal now or wait until the next round ___8-28-12 - I need to be stepping this up ___8-25-12 - Not quite so feeble anymore ___8-22-12 - It's quite possible all the recent 'feeble' efforts helped create the conditions that led to my epic crash yesterday. Because I'm developing muscle and balance and confidence I was moving faster than I would have been a few weeks ago.
The heatwave broke we're only in the 90s this week so if I don't let the aches and pains of last night's jarring derail me I should be moving beyond feeble now. ___8-18-12 - holding steady. still in triple digit heat so efforts are still on the feeble side. have been pushing my sleep further into the afternoon and not waking until dusk or full dark. So my days are starting between 9 and 10pm and ending between 2 and 4pm. I sleep with a frozen water bottle inside a sock inside my shirt.
___8-14-12 - Must not dump on self for 'feeble' attempts as the current heatwave makes even feeble effort true effort. And as I've said before. IT IS NOT NOTHING which would be so easy to justify with the heat and the smoke hazed air. 105 to 107. No AC. I'm sleeping through the hottest part of the day, waking around 6ish which is an hour or so before it is cooler outside than in and safe to open up the windows.
I woke at 4pm today in a room imitating a sauna with a raging thirst. Drained my room temp water bottle and got a frozen water bottle out of the freezer and took it back to bed with me. Literally in the bed with me. Was cuddling it as I fell back to sleep and woke occasionally to sip the melted water out. ___8-11-12 - i guess it is still good that it is not nothing. but I know I'm not doing my best. the inertia is so strong. like paralysis. just lifting my arm, breathing itself all feels much like it does in a nightmare. I've also stopped crocheting as of 8 to 10 days ago and that represents as much loss of activity as the string of Ys above represents gain. not sure if that is a fair exchange. not sure how much credit to give the heat as I do feel much less leveled by it than I did a month ago.
___8-07-12 - still pretty lame. but not nothing which is the inertia I'm trying to fight right now. not to mention the heat ___8-04-12 - like i said at top, lame. but a lame something is not nothing. and there was the heatwave.. ___7-31-12 - *hanging head* ___7-28-12 - Tsk Tsk. Not doing well on these first two at all. If I was the boss of me I'd have to fire myself. For the last three days the mini-tramp has been covered in beads and buttons and other crafty stuffs that I was sorting. ___7-24-12 - lost some of the omph I had last week over the weekend was feeling weak and dizzy and achy. Was frustrated and mystified by it. Then I remembered that this is typical whenever I start moving again after going sedentary for weeks or months. Especially when getting back on the mini-tramp after a long hiatus. I suspect it is the stirring up of the lymphatic system which is finally able to start moving toxins toward elimination as I always start feeling like I'm coming down with a virus just as I start getting into the rhythm of the activities.. Which makes it most important to keep it up. 4. Spend 30 minutes or more per day reading a book or quality web article on Writing or Publishing or work habit/organization from my ever growing TBR of books and/or blogs or websites with professional level content on those subjects. Will compile list for future updates. (hmm no list yet)
Instead of a list of TBR titles I will start including the titles of books and articles and websites that I spend the time with between check-ins. This week it was the same three books I've been working my way through since the beginning of my ROW80 participation. The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg Hooked: Write Fiction That Grabs Readers at Page One and Never Lets Go by Les Edgerton Imagine: How Creativity Worksby Jonah Leher Write Good or Die! edited by Scott Nicholson (a collection of essays by inde authors. many of them self-published) A Cheap and Easy Guide to Self-publishing eBooks by Tom Hua am reading this online this week The Act of Creation by Arthur Koestler
___7-2-12 - Y ___7-3-12 - Y ___7-4-12 - Y ___7-5-12 - Y ___7-6-12 - Y ___7-7-12 - Y ___7-8-12 - Y ___7-9-12 - Y ___7-10-12 - Y ___7-11-12 - Y ___7-12-12 - Y ___7-13-12 - N ___7-14-12 - Y ___7-15-12 - Y ___7-16-12 - N ___7-17-12 - Y ___7-18-12 - Y ___7-19-12 - Y ___7-20-12 - Y ___7-21-12 - Y ___7-22-12 - Y ___7-23-12 - Y ___7-24-12 - Y ___7-25-12 - Y ___7-26-12 - N ___7-27-12 - Y ___7-28-12 - N ___7-29-12 - N ___7-30-12 - N ___7-31-12 - N ___8-01-12 - Y ___8-02-12 - Y ___8-03-12 - Y ___8-04-12 - Y ___8-05-12 - Y ___8-06-12 - Y ___8-07-12 - Y ___8-05-12 - Y ___8-06-12 - Y ___8-07-12 - Y ___8-08-12 - Y ___8-09-12 - Y ___8-10-12 - Y ___8-11-12 - Y ___8-12-12 - Y ___8-13-12 - Y ___8-14-12 - Y ___8-15-12 - Y ___8-16-12 - Y ___8-17-12 - Y ___8-18-12 - Y ___8-19-12 - Y ___8-20-12 - Y ___8-21-12 - Y ___8-22-12 - Y ___8-23-12 - Y ___8-24-12 - Y ___8-25-12 - Y ___8-26-12 - Y ___8-27-12 - Y ___8-28-12 - Y ___8-29-12 - Y ___8-30-12 - Y ___8-31-12 - Y ___9-01-12 - Y ___9-02-12 - Y ___9-03-12 - Y ___9-04-12 - Y ___9-05-12 - Y ___9-06-12 - Y ___9-07-12 - Y ___9-08-12 - Y ___9-09-12 - Y ___9-10-12 - Y ___9-11-12 - Y ___9-12-12 - Y ___9-13-12 - Y ___9-14-12 - Y ___9-15-12 - Y ___9-16-12 - Y ___9-17-12 - Y ___9-18-12 - Y ___9-19-12 - Y
___9-01-12 - most of the reading on craft happened online this week and I didn't keep a record of titles, topics or links. Was surfing out of newsletters in email inbox and notes in my fiction files. and of Laurie Halse Anderson's blog and then surfed off those pages and then off those pages and then....well you know how that goes.
i was also skimming back over sections of Imagine prepping for the book review i'm intending to do soon. ___8-28-12 - Finished Imagine: How Creativity Worksby Jonah Leher today so have added The Act of Creation by Arthur Koestler to the list. Am close on a couple more. ___8-25-12 - Got my hands on another copy of a book I once owned The Act of Creation by Arthur Koestler this week. Have only dipped in a bit into the intro and early chapters but that triggered memories. I'm looking forward to reading those chapters again and then finally finishing the book maybe after more than a decade. I'd probably made it less than 200 pages into the nearly 700 pages before loosing it in our 2001 move. But I'm going to try to finish up a couple of the books already in the list above before adding this one to it. ___8-22-12 - This week's breakthrough came out of this task. Sparked by comments in Imagine: How Creativity Worksby Jonah Leher. See comments at top for this date. ___8-18-12 - holding steady. ___8-14-12 - Why is that once something becomes not only the habit I hoped for but enjoyable rather than congratulating myself I start to think of it as something I need to curtail like a bad habit? Surely only good can come of this time investment as long as it doesn't completely replace the writing itself. ___8-11-12 - so the habit is getting stronger and goes beyond 30 minutes most days. But I can see how this can easily become a substitute for the writing itself. ___8-07-12 - :) ___8-04-12 - more like it
___7-31-12 - *hanging head*
This goal had become a habit by the end of Round 2 and I kept it up during the break.
Was even able to keep it up while sick tho the 30 minutes was an accumulation of smaller chunks of time between the waves of nausea and headache. The heat was harder to beat tho.
5. Spend 30 minutes or more per day daydreaming in the story world with pencil and pad at hand.
___7-2-12 - Y ___7-3-12 - Y ___7-4-12 - Y ___7-5-12 - N sick ___7-6-12 - N sick ___7-7-12 - N habit bending under pressure? No longer sick enough to explain it. ___7-8-12 - N it's the heat...continue to daydream story but not keeping notes so no Y ___7-9-12 - N ditto ___7-10-12 - N ditto ___7-11-12 - Y ___7-12-12 - Y ___7-13-12 - N ___7-14-12 - Y ___7-15-12 - Y ___7-16-12 - N ___7-17-12 - Y ___7-18-12 - Y ___7-19-12 - Y ___7-20-12 - Y ___7-21-12 - Y ___7-22-12 - Y ___7-23-12 - Y ___7-24-12 - Y ___7-25-12 - Y ___7-26-12 - Y ___7-27-12 - Y ___7-28-12 - Y ___7-29-12 - N ___7-30-12 - N ___7-31-12 - N ___8-01-12 - Y ___8-02-12 - Y ___8-03-12 - Y ___8-04-12 - Y ___8-05-12 - Y ___8-06-12 - Y ___8-07-12 - Y ___8-08-12 - Y ___8-09-12 - Y ___8-10-12 - Y ___8-11-12 - Y ___8-12-12 - Y ___8-13-12 - Y ___8-14-12 - Y ___8-15-12 - Y ___8-16-12 - Y ___8-17-12 - Y ___8-18-12 - Y ___8-19-12 - Y ___8-20-12 - Y ___8-21-12 - Y ___8-22-12 - Y ___8-23-12 - Y ___8-24-12 - Y ___8-25-12 - Y ___8-26-12 - Y ___8-27-12 - Y ___8-28-12 - Y ___8-29-12 - Y ___8-30-12 - Y ___8-31-12 - Y ___9-01-12 - Y ___9-02-12 - Y ___9-03-12 - Y ___9-04-12 - Y ___9-05-12 - Y ___9-06-12 - Y ___9-07-12 - Y ___9-08-12 - Y ___9-09-12 - Y ___9-10-12 - Y ___9-11-12 - Y ___9-12-12 - Y ___9-13-12 - Y ___9-14-12 - Y ___9-15-12 - Y ___9-16-12 - Y ___9-17-12 - Y ___9-18-12 - Y ___9-19-12 - Y
___9-01-12 - all my thots re this goal were move to the top under same timestamp--re the realization i need to research the aspects of the storyworld cult's history that still elude me. it is a big and intimidating undertaking ___8-28-12 - Since I started focusing so much on the cult this past week the resistance is creeping into this task too. ___8-25-12 - Applying the messing around concept even here. Trying not to censure ideas too soon. Asking myself a lot of off the wall, out of the box questions about characters, motive, ect hoping this will help me break through that sticking point that every one of the FOS novels has stalled out on. I've discussed this extensively over the last five years or so and this is not the place to go into detail. It's about the fudnamentalist cult that touches most of the characters lives one way or another and could be considered the primary antagonist in nearly all of the stories. I've never managed to clarify it's character. And of course it is unsurprising considering my own history that I meet a lot of resistance every time I try to look too close at it. ___8-22-12 - easy breazy ___8-18-12 - holding steady ___8-14-12 - Maybe the angst discussed below will be addressed by the new plan discussed above? ___8-11-12 - I used to think that the fact this was becoming so second nature meant something. That maybe like charging a battery the energy and thought invested into dreaming the story world would soon manifest in something of more substance on the file work fronts--clean-up, word count, revision etc.
Today my doubts of this are overwhelming. I'm trying to sort out how much of that is due to my tendency to create high expectations and see only failure in all efforts to meet them that aren't complete success.
So I ask am I cutting myself too much slack or not giving myself enough credit for what does get done?
Sure those strings of Ys on all but one of the time investment fronts do look good and make me feel good but there is a part of me that knows that I am not putting my best efforts into what I say it is I want. ___8-07-12 - :) ___8-04-12 -better but not as assiduous as in the early weeks of last round
___7-31-12 - *hanging head*
This was the habit that really took during the last round and yielded astonishing things. Late in the round I added a new goal related to this one: to develop the habit of keeping the note taking implements with me at all times because as the habit of dreaming the stories developed it didn't always confine itself to when I was near my netbook or crochet where the means to record them were available. Developing the means is a bit tricky for some cases but I'm working on it.
6. Spend 30 minutes or more per day on one or more of the tasks in the list below:
[as the round progresses check-in updates will accumulate in this spot which will push the list itself down]
___7-2-12 - N ___7-3-12 - N ___7-4-12 - Y ___7-5-12 - N sick ___7-6-12 - N sick ___7-7-12 - N ? no longer sick enough to esplain the N ___7-8-12 - N its the heat. zaps energy. also netbook is like mini heater ___7-9-12 - N ditto ___7-10-12 - N ditto ___7-11-12 - Y can't call it more than dabbling but its something and not nothing ___7-12-12 - Y ___7-13-12 - N ___7-14-12 - N ___7-15-12 - Y ___7-16-12 - N ___7-17-12 - Y ___7-18-12 - Y ___7-19-12 - N ___7-20-12 - Y ___7-21-12 - Y ___7-22-12 - N ___7-23-12 - N ___7-24-12 - N ___7-25-12 - N ___7-26-12 - N ___7-27-12 - N ___7-28-12 - N ___7-29-12 - N ___7-30-12 - N ___7-31-12 - N ___8-01-12 - N ___8-02-12 - N ___8-03-12 - N ___8-04-12 - N ___8-05-12 - N ___8-06-12 - N ___8-07-12 - N ___8-08-12 - N ___8-09-12 - N ___8-10-12 - N ___8-11-12 - N ___8-12-12 - N ___8-13-12 - N ___8-14-12 - N ___8-15-12 - Y ___8-16-12 - Y ___8-17-12 - Y ___8-18-12 - Y ___8-19-12 - Y ___8-20-12 - Y ___8-21-12 - Y ___8-22-12 - Y ___8-23-12 - Y ___8-24-12 - Y ___8-25-12 - Y ___8-26-12 - Y ___8-27-12 - Y ___8-28-12 - Y ___8-29-12 - Y ___8-30-12 - Y ___8-31-12 - Y ___9-01-12 - Y ___9-02-12 - Y ___9-03-12 - Y ___9-04-12 - Y ___9-05-12 - Y ___9-06-12 - Y ___9-07-12 - Y ___9-08-12 - Y ___9-09-12 - Y ___9-10-12 - Y ___9-11-12 - Y ___9-12-12 - Y ___9-13-12 - Y ___9-14-12 - Y ___9-15-12 - Y ___9-16-12 - Y ___9-17-12 - Y ___9-18-12 - Y ___9-19-12 - Y
___9-01-12 - i'm not really resisting anymore. most days I do double or triple the requirement. like so many other things it is all about just getting started. but like so many other things it is also about knowing when to quit as it could just as easily have been manipulating the data in these files that I latched onto for 16 hours today instead of the ebook metadata I discussed at top under same timestamp
speaking of timestamps. it's now 31 hours and counting since I slept and I'm still feeling wired. words are swooshing around in my head demanding a way out. but i need to stop adding words to this post and move back over to the fiction files or free writing file.
or better yet i need to close the lid on this netbook and walk away to the other end of this trailer to where I can close the lids on my eyeballs. ___8-28-12 - It's like cleaning out a closet or attic and finding things you don't remember putting there and haven't seen in years and wondering how you managed without them. ___8-25-12 - Just playing.... took the focus off of organize and put it onto looking at what is there and allowing that to spark new thots to add without shying away from 'adding to the mess' ___8-22-12 - Sandbox joy..... ___8-18-12 - :) Due to the new plan I've started reading through and fixing, organizing and adding info to the WhizFolders worksheet file for my FOS storyworld. ___8-14-12 - String of sad Ns again. Hoping the new plan will fix that soon. ___8-11-12 - It's this string of Ns and the resistance to prepping Blow me a Candy Kiss that is fueling the self-disgust ___8-07-12 - :( ___8-04-12 - *hanging head*
___7-31-12 - *hanging head* ___7-24-28-12 - Major lapse here. Primary cause was the switching of my focus to that big crochet project but it didn't help that I did a restart Sunday and haven't got around to opening up WhizFolders, my writing ap, again since. Several times in the last three days I've hovered the cursor over the taskbar where I have the ap pinned only to find it not yet open and then deciding to wait because I didn't have the patience to wait for the application to open up all of the windows and files that I left open when I closed WhizFolders for the restart. Whiz remembers what is open and window position which is very handy but when I close it with lots of windows and tabs open it takes several minutes from the moment I click to open the ap to the moment I'm able to use it. By lots of windows and tabs I mean over a dozen files represented by tabs in one window and two or three editor windows with multiple tabs representing specific sections of a file being edited. I use Whiz for many things besides fiction writing. It is my primary writing and note ap, link bookmarker, reading journal and task and project organizer. I solved this problem once. Ostensibly. The concept was to create a few files that contained links to everything else I might need--files, applications, urls, etc. A project file, a master task list, a web map file, and the worksheet file for my WIP. Actually if I did it right I could get by with only the master task list and the web map. But for the concept to work I have to be willing to close all of the tabs and windows I opened except those two before closing the program. Probably I should refrain from keeping so many open in the first place, closing the ones not related to whatever project I'm working on then I wouldn't be faced with needing to close fifteen tabs and windows when I'm in a rush. That would be a hard habit to break. This must all sound like a lot of irrelevant blather but it speaks to my efforts since joining ROW80 [which was right around the time I began reading The Power of Habit and returning to Allen's Getting Things Done principles] to engineer my environment and my routines to encourage productivity in those things that matter the most to me. So I've been making a habit of noticing how I do things and how what I do either works or doesn't work towards my goals.
I did not keep this up during the break and that is probably why I am having trouble reintegrating it into my days.
Input any material from the daydreaming session into it's appropriate file or task list.
___ this is a developing habit begun during last round
Clean up the Fruit of the Spirit storyworld worksheet. ___ this is where most of the dabbling for last round occurred.
Create a master task list in FOS story world worksheet file and add any actionable task that comes to mind while working with the files: research and fact check, character development, scenes needed etc. Future goals can be taken from this list. ___the master task list was created soon after I started the last round but using it is a developing habit
Create topic pages in the FOS story world worksheet file for every character from every existing story and novel finished or in progress that is set in this story world. Add any of the characters known life events to the master timeline. ___have added a few and added info to existing ones as well. Much of my file dabbling occurred in these character notes
New task --06-11-2012 : collect character info for all the Faye's Strays from out of all the stories and files they are scattered through into it's own section in the FOS worksheet file. ___this is where the work mentioned in the line above was happening during last round
Re-read the incomplete short story Home Is Where the Horror Is and consider returning to work on it with an eye toward finishing it this summer. This is one of the Faye's Strays stories so work on it will count toward the WriMos word count. ___ have not reread nor written new scenes yet but have jotted many ideas for the the missing scenes, did some new character sketch work some of which I may count towards the WriMos which end tomorrow
Do a line edit of all of the completed short stories
Blow Me a Candy Kiss
How Does Your Garden Grow
Running In Circles
Of Cats and Claws and Curiosities
Making Rag Doll Babies and Million Dollar Maybes
During the line edits consider whether any significant revision is still needed--scenes to add or delete, rearrange or rewrite; timeline issues, facts to confirm or to change--and create an actionable task topic in the file.___ am using the master task list in the storyworld file mentioned above and then linking to the appropriate story file. This is what I love about WhizFolders as my story writing ap.
Choose 10 POV level characters from FOS and write a first person rambling monologue for them.
Write fresh scenes whenever a spark is lit by any of the work on this list or the daydreaming or reading.
Clean up the 8 NaNo novel files: quarantine the mess, create work space for new writing, and create a system for storing the material salvaged from the mess in such a way as it can be found when needed. i.e. linking it to appropriate topic pages in the FOS story world worksheet.
____ The Substance of Things Hoped For 2009
____ Mobile Hopes 2008
____ Storyteller's Spouse 2006
____ Spring Fever 2007
____ Brooding Instinct 2005
____ Majoring in Marine Biology 2004
____ Everything That Rises Must Submerge 2010
____ A Trick of Light 2011
Read and notate the scene text of the 8 NaNo novel files
____ The Substance of Things Hoped For 2009
____ Mobile Hopes 2008
____ Storyteller's Spouse 2006
____ Spring Fever 2007
____ Brooding Instinct 2005
____ Majoring in Marine Biology 2004
____ Everything That Rises Must Submerge 2010
____ A Trick of Light 2011
Some of the work of these last two tasks can be done concurrently so I was tempted to collapse them under one task and have just one list of the WIP but they are very different tasks when you look close with this last one being more about the writing and the other about information organizing and story outlining. I could conceivably do the work of one task with one novel while doing the work of the other with a different one. The two tasks require different frames of mind.
Read more...
.JPG)
.JPG)
