61st ROW80 Check-In

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

My goals are all time investment and are detailed on the  ROW80 page   I keep track of the time invested with a Google Doc spreadsheet linked on the goals page and also in each check-in along with a screenshot of the most recent days.

These check-in posts will contain any commentary I have about encounters with the goals since the previous check-in and any relevant links.

Below the commentary is my current reading list for the READ CRAFT goal.

View the spreadsheet Google Doc directly

View the goals list

On Saturday's check-in I talked about an epiphany I had about perseverance and applying it consciously to productive tasks instead of letting it sneak up in the guise of a solitaire game or untangling a knot.  I mentioned how I'd transferred that stick-to-itiveness to tacking the tangled mess of my Master Task List beginning with another spreadsheet.  This time for the accumulating ARC aka Advanced Reading Copies sent to me over the last year that I still owe reviews for.

Well guess what?  It worked.  I've been as obsessive with the Master Task List as I was with that tangled thread on Friday night.  But guess what else?

I neglected to finish the novel for the blog tour review I need to have up in six hours or less.

This speaks to yet another issue.  Why, as a writer of fiction and book blogger, do I still treat reading fiction like a treat that I can't have until all my *real* work is done?  That needs to stop.  Right?

I'm thinking about adding READ FICTION to the ROW80 goals and to the spreadsheet. It is after all one of the recommendations repeated by nearly all of the authors as well as all of those craft books which have prime real estate on my ROW80 goals list.

But that might open a whole other can of oops.  Because I know how easy it is for me to get lost in a story.  Easier by far than it is to get caught up in untangling eight strings with beads on the ends which kept me enthralled for twelve hours.  That's nothing compared to the power of story.


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 I left this book at home so I can't continue until I return in mid February but I don't want to remove it so I'll just use strikethru for now.


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.