54th ROW80 Check-In

A Round of Words in 80 Days
Round 4 2012
The writing challenge that knows you have a life

I'm doing things quite differently this round.  Since I joined mid Round 2 this year I have been using a blog-within-a-blog format for these check-in posts with updates stacked atop previous updates and commentary added under each goals section including a string of Ns and Ys for the five time investment goals.  This got quite unwieldy by mid round.

So now I've created a Google Doc Spreadsheet to keep track of the Ns and Ys and have set up a ROW80 page to feature the goals sans commentary.  These check-in posts will now contain only the commentary relating to the previous half week, a screenshot of the relevant lines on the spreadsheet and link to the spreadsheet and goals page.  And as of October 23 the READ CRAFT reading lists.


READ CRAFT:

Currently Reading

What to Do When There's Too Much to Do by Laura Stack (Part of my attempt to organize my life around my priorities. So part of my ROW80 reading list)
Hooked: Write Fiction That Grabs Readers at Page One and Never Lets Go by Les Edgerton
Write Good or Die! edited by Scott Nicholson (a collection of essays by inde authors.  many of them self-published)  
The Act of Creation by Arthur Koestler
What Matters in Jane Austen? by John Muller
Trust the Process: An Artist's Guide to Letting Go by Shaun McNiff


Recently Read:

A Cheap and Easy Guide to Self-publishing eBooks by Tom Hua read this online
Imagine: How Creativity Works by Jonah Leher
The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg  Just finished this last month and wrote an overview of it for that next check-in along with my musings on how to apply what I learned..  This is where I've been getting the most help with learning how to recognize a habit, determine if it is desirable and if so maximize it but if not change it.


In a recent Check-In I implemented a NEW GOAL:  before heading to bed, close all aps but the one I've chosen for free writing and when the time slated for that is up segue directly to working with the fiction files.

I established it after digesting the info in Duhigg's The Power of Habit and have followed through since the Sunday before November 1st now. I had nice new strings of Ys in the two relevant columns until the last week of NaNo and altho FREEWRITE holds steady I've let FICTION FILES slide.  I gave myself permission to take a post NaNo break to catch up on the many things that got neglected during NaNo.  I will get back on track tho maybe not daily until after Christmas since that Secret Santa crochet project is scarily behind.

See my musings in this check-in post about my several encounters recently with the principle that clarity isn't arrived at through thought alone but via action--engagement in the non-abstract realm with the minutia, manipulation of the materials, or in other words 'just doing it' and how I'm attempting to apply it to my stalled out stories.

View the spreadsheet Google Doc directly

View the goals list

This first post-NaNo week has been all about catching up on things that go neglected during NaNo: sleep, chores, ARC reading and reviewing, free choice fiction reading, husband (was also out of town for most of November), and that massively behind Secret Santa crochet project which has just lost two more days because one of my Net Galley ARCs was about to lock me out. Those 55 day limits are tough on me especially since reading in Adobe Digital Editions is all difficult as it does not accommodate my visual impairment needs--their menu fonts are teeny tiny and in order to get the text font large enough the line is so long my eyes loose their way between end of one and beginning of other.  And yet I keep downloading them... Ah well.  That's a rant that doesn't really belong in this post but I'll let it stand as it sheds some light on what happened to my ROW80 goals this week and what is about to happen.

I finished the ARC and wrote the review last night instead of posting this check-in.  Now I'll have to double-time the crochet for several days but at least that means my story world will also be getting the extra intensive attention as well since I've so tightly coupled crochet [any fiber art actually] to daydreaming the story world.  As for fiction file work, including fiction scene writing and editing I'm still on hiatus.  I will see where the crochet project sits at the time of the next check-in.  I'm hoping I can ease the FICTION FILE back in by Sunday or midweek next week.

Maybe I should invest in a microphone for my netbook so I can dictate my story while crocheting or on the mini-tramp?