63rd 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

My check-in posts for the last week or so have been on the theme of needing to read more fiction and trying to figure out how to give it the space in my schedule and yet keep it from taking over.

In the process of contemplating what things were using up time I discovered, not for the first time, that writing and prepping my daily blog posts were the worst time and energy and creativity hogs.  I noted the irony of claiming to be a fiction writer while blogging was being allotted more time than fiction file work and fiction reading was being pushed into the hours of exhaustion just before sleep.  I determined that:

BLOGGING NEEDS BOUNDARIES.

Since writing that line Saturday night I have monitored my time while working on blog posts and give myself the treat of extra fiction reading with the time saved.  Both Sunday and Monday evenings I was posted before 11pm and then spent the next three to four hours reading.  The first hour or so was NF for ROW80 READ CRAFT but I was able to switch to fiction before I was mentally exhausted and my eyes were burning.

I won't be able to do that every night as often I still have several ROW80 tasks to fullfill after posting.  But it felt good to do it two nights running.  And was actually not the first multi-hour late night fiction reading of late as last week I had an ARC to finish for a blog tour.

Today was one of those days life got in the way.  My sister who cares for my Mom had to go spend the day in the hospital with my other sister who was having emergency surgery and that left me on duty for Mom's meals and keeping her company until she goes to bed about 9pm.  So I still need to do READ CRAFT and FICTION FILES.  I already put the Y's in for the screenshot but that's because I KNOW I will get it done before midnight as it is looking like this will be posted before 10--again under an hour!.

And then I'll be free to read fiction again for a couple hours.

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.

What Matters in Jane Austen? by John Muller Net Galley a NF that purports to answer many puzzles in the Austen novels. Since this discusses writing and techniques of fiction
Jung and the Tarot: An Archetypal Journey by Sallie Nichols Since I'm reading this for an understanding of character type and the language of symbol understood by our unconscious as well as research for a character who is a Tarot reader
13 Ways of Looking at a Novel by Jane Smiley  This was one of the 24 items I checked out of the Longview library on my sister's card last Thursday.
The Exegesis of Philip K. Dick.  Found this while spelunking the stacks looking for the Smiley book.  Who knew.  Dick was a mystic.  I've only read one of his novels and a few short stories but now I've got to try to find and read everything!


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 fall and wrote an overview of it for that 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.