Sunday Serenity #386

This is ROTFLOL for any reader, watcher or writer of stories

This Studio C vid can speak for itself.

Story is the universal language.  It's vocabulary is archetype, image and symbol.  Its grammar is character, plot and action.  The first being discrete representations of meaning and the latter being the arrangements and interplay of those representations.

The reason so many stories are so similar when broken down into those components is that the human mind is designed to think in story.  Story is the template that our native language is imprinted on.

So much for letting the vid say it.

Story has been the theme of April for me with Camp NaNo all month and the Dewey Read-a-Thon yesterday.

I'm heading to bed early tonight as I had two short sleeps in a row.  Anticipation kept me awake late Friday night so I started the thon on four hours and then I got six this morning after giving in to sleep at 3:30 with only 90 minutes to go.

Those two nights broke my string of 7.5 to 9hr nights that had lasted nearly two weeks.  I need to snap myself right back into my regular schedule.  So altho I haven't even been awake twelve hours yet I'm heading to bed.

The rest of this week I'll be pushing hard on my NaNo project--the rewrite of my story Blow Me a Candy Kiss.

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My Brain on Books XIV

I am reading for The Office of Letters and Lights the folks who bring us NaNoWriMo today as I love what they are doing for literacy with their Young Writer's Programs and because I've participated in NaNo every year since 2004 and will again next November and am currently doing Camp NaNo.  I have been blessed to have it in my life and would like to give something back if only kudos and link love.  I'm putting this plug at the top in hopes some who stop by will check out their site and see all the great things they do to foster love of reading and writing and story in kids. If you happen to be doing Camp NaNo this year you can find me there as joywrite

This post will be organized like a blog inside a blog with recent updates stacked atop previous ones. I may be posting some updates on Twitter @Joystory and the Joystory fb fanpage. But this is where I do anything more than a line or two.  Including mini-challenges unless required to have a separate post..   


Be sure to scroll to bottom of this post for advice on how to ward off those scary nap attacks. You won't be sorry.

Ode to Dewey

by Joy Renee

vote, fav and share for Dewey

We Miss You Dewey

2:00 AM -- I guess the idea of updating fell totally off my radar.  I didn't drop out. I just finally got to do the one thing I was counting on doing for the thon this time: get totally immersed for hours in a single book that I knew I was going to love.

The Book of Heaven by Patricia Storace is as amazing as I was expecting after reading the prologue the other day.  It's a tree book from the library. If it had been an ebook I'd have probably kept my focus on it the entire time.  But tree books strain my eyes.

I read in it for over three hours but before I got started I broke out my Flannery O'Connor Collected Stories to check out the beginnings of several to see how they fit or didn't the advice of Les Edgerton in Hooked.  Pretty well I guess as I got hooked into both I looked at and read both short stories entire.

I'm still going strong just like the good old days when staying up the full 24 was my thing.  The one thing I could do better than the majority of thoners since I had a great deal of practice at it.  My visual impairment made sustained reading iffy and even if I could sustain it I couldn't read much faster than 20 pages an hour.  So I couldn't rack up books finished or pages read but I could  hang in to the last second.  I used to do cheerleading the last two or three hours even if I'd not signed up for it.

Not anymore.  At least I'm not supposed to.  Being under treatment for a mood disorder and ADD I'm supposed to stay on my med schedule which just about forces me to stay on a regular sleep schedule.

I have cheated by pushing my Trazadone from 9pm to--well as soon as I click update.  I was supposed to take it no later than midnight. Once I take it I have as little as 20 minutes or as much as 2 hours before sleep overtakes me.  My vision will blur by the 20 minute mark regardless.

So this is probably my last update.  I'm going to take my Nexus 7 to bed and read an ebook while waiting on the Traz to kick in for I don't want to get caught out and about once it kicks in.  It makes me feel and behave as tho drunk.  Dizzy + 90% blind + ADD + sleep walking are not a good mix.

3:00 PM -- Have been reading the flash fiction collection 420 Characters by Lou Beach.  These little stories were originally written as status updates on a major social network.  Somewhere online I saw were someone said it was facebook.  But whichever one it was they only allowed 420 characters in a status update.  Hence the title.

As I read these it strikes me how well they adhere to all the principles Les Edgerton discussed re the opening lines of a story.

Well I'll read a few more after this update (it's hard to read more than a dozen or so in one sitting as it fills up your brain with the buzzing of voices for over ten stories) and then move on to The Book of Heaven by Patricia Storace which I've been holding back like some kind of dessert.

1:00 PM -- I spent over an hour hanging out on the blog, watching vids and catching up on each of the hours.  Then I loaded an ARC I've had since last fall, Complexity and the Arrow of Time a book of essays by scientists, on my Nexus 7 but it was a PDF which doesn't work well on the Androids for me.

I need the font to be large enough and yet not have to scroll sideways.  The Adobe Android aps do allow text reflow now but it still limits the the font size and the formatting is frustrating with lines broke in mid word and pages ending in single lines at top of screen.  This does not work any better with my visual impairment than having font the size of caterpillar footprints or lines I have to follow into the next room.

So I fiddled with that for too long and finally just opened the book on my laptop.  It's not portable that way tho and the long lines are hard to scan.  But at least they are intact.  After reading the Intro essay tho I decided I'm just no into complex science philosophy for the Thon.  So I'm moving on.

Lunch first.  Time for those carrots in ginger, molasses and butter sauce.


10:00 AM -- Just finished Hooked: Write Fiction That Grabs Readers at Page One and Never Lets Go by Les Edgerton  The link is to my review posted last night after I'd reached 80%

Think I'll go scope out the Thon blog before I pick up another book.

5:00 AM -- The Kickoff Meme:

• 1) What fine part of the world are you reading from today? From my mother's house in Longview WA where I grew up.  At my desk to start with.
• 2) Which book in your stack are you most looking forward to? The Book of Heaven by Patricia Storace
• 3) Which snack are you most looking forward to? Lightly cooked baby carrots in a molasses and ginger butter sauce. 
• 4) Tell us a little something about yourself! I was recently diagnosed ADD at age 55.  An example of what that means in my quotidian is what happened this morning when I had to spend the first fifteen minutes looking for my glasses in a panic I wouldn't find them before 5.  More examples in my recent post ADDlepated.
• 5) If you participated in the last read-a-thon, what’s one thing you’ll do different today? If this is your first read-a-thon, what are you most looking forward to?  Participate in the mini-challenges and other social activities.  The last two times I hermited with the books because sustained reading was what I hungered for but both times I came away feeling deprived.

[I have this scheduled to go live at 4:44.  But if this bracketed paragraph is still here on top after 5 I don't have my eyes unglued enough to check in yet.  I will be here soon as I can.]

 

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Friday Forays in Fiction: Les Edgerton's Hooked: Write Fiction That Grabs Readers at Page One and Never Lets Go -- Book Review

Hooked: Write Fiction That Grabs Readers at Page One and Never Lets Go
by Les Edgerton
Writer's Digest Books (April 12, 2007)
256 pages

My experience with this book is a good example of one of its precepts: the abstract won't reach the reader where she lives only the particulars that allow you to live the scene along with the protagonist will.

I received a free ebook of Hooked in early November 2011 as a NaNoWriMo participant.  After NaNo that year I began the book but got distracted half way through the second chapter.  A few months later I began it again and didn't finish the first chapter.  Half a year later I started over again and may have finished the second chapter before other books and passions preempted Hooked yet again.

I think there may have been a time or two after that.  I never got beyond the second chapter.

This time was different.  This time I had a purpose.  A very specific purpose.

When I began it again at the beginning of April it was specifically to get help for the structural rewrite of my story Blow Me a Candy Kiss as I knew the biggest problem with it was the beginning since several of my early readers had expressed issues with it. And I confess I was uncomfortable with it and also with the ending which is why I never submitted it anywhere.

This rewrite is my Camp NaNo project for April so my focus has been on it all month.  My usual method to prepare for working on a story is to daydream in the storyworld until it feels as real or more so than reality.  When I began Hooked again this time, I'd already reread the story twice and had been dreaming the story for several days while jotting down thoughts, insights, questions.  That is what made the difference for I was soaked in the particulars of the story and especially the opening scene.

Thus it was that as I reread the first two chapters again I was applying every suggestion, explanation and example to Candy Kiss and making notes on paper and marking up my hardcopy as I experienced on Aha! moment after another.

I am feeling fairly confidant now that I see where I went wrong and why and how to fix it.

The amazing thing is that I was much closer than I thought to being on the right track.  It isn't going to take a major rewrite only some tweaks scattered throughout, a change of emphasis here, a new image there, an added phrase or three, a new sentence or four or five and maybe three new paragraphs besides the rewrite of the opening paragraph.

The breakthrough for me was Edgerton's explanation of the difference between the surface problems and the story problem: The first can be encapsulated by a photograph but the latter exists deep in the protagonist's psych and any attempt to depict it other than telling the whole story would be nothing but abstract psychobabble or monotonous stream-of-consciousness navel-gazing.

But, goes on, the first surface problem triggered by the inciting incident needs to be rooted in the story problem.  And every surface problem thereafter stems from the failed attempt to resolve the previous surface problem. Neither the reader nor the protagonist is aware of the story problem until its resolution in the final scene but the author MUST know before she begins.

I must have had good instincts back in 1989 because I identified the inciting incident in my first paragraph just where Edgerton said it should be but I had intended that first surface problem to be the story problem.  Consciously anyway because I found evidence scattered throughout the story that I was developing the story problem all along.

And that explains why I got so confused when the story seemed to reach a good resolution without that final scene I was so attached to because it had been the storyseed for me: the image suffused with raw emotion that catapulted me into the story and served as its north star.  Because of that I couldn't bear to part with it and had to tack on that little epilogue like a tree that had been pulled up by its roots and replanted in a too small pot.

I finally realized that I'd set out to write the story in which the first surface problem was the story problem which would have made that final scene its resolution but the real story problem was also peeking out by the third paragraph.

I have, as well, developed a second story featuring Greg and Iris with Greg as POV protagonist which might carry that original storyseed scene.  Unless it turns out to belong to a third or even a forth story. Their story has been growing in my heart for decades and I've long suspected there might be a short novel's worth of story left; or a novella's length collection of short stories centered on Greg and Iris.

After I finish the Blow Me a Candy Kiss rewrite, I'm going to start moving through my fiction files taking each story or novel one by one, applying the inciting incident/surface problem/story problem paradigm.  I expect this to give me breakthroughs on every one.  At the very least I believe it will eliminate that fear I have of going back to play in my plethora of NaNo messes.

Yes Mr. E.  I used that word on purpose.  I understand you hate it.  I imagine you have good reason.  But I won't let you murder a perfectly good word because you've seen it misused by dozens of newbie fiction writers who probably plucked it out of a thesaurus with no true understanding of its dimensions in meaning, connotation, history, etymology and typical class/education level of it users.

I could go on.  But that would belong in a separate post.

The core reason for my defiance is a refusal to allow yet one more fear to be added to the already overabundance of fears I have about sending my stories out to be read.  That's exactly all the  knowledge that you, editors, agents and, in fact, every reader has a handful of trigger words that makes them stop reading is worth.

But, as usual, I digress.  So, in closing, I would like to thank you from the bottom of my heart for your little book. It has already had a profound impact on my concept of story-craft.  Only two others rank above it: Janet Burroway's Fiction Writing which I was reading for the first of many times as I wrote the first draft of Candy Kiss and Robert Olen Butler's From Where You Dream which taught me the storyworld dreaming method I've used for over a decade.

Burroway taught me how to make and use the jigsaw pieces of all the disparate elements of good story telling.  Butler taught me how to make the story live.  You have taught me how to arrange the pieces and put them together.

From the Publishers:

The road to rejection is paved with bad beginnings. Agents and editors agree: Improper story beginnings are the single biggest barrier to publication. Why? If a novel or short story has a bad beginning, then no one will keep reading. It's just that simple. 

In Hooked, author Les Edgerton draws on his experience as a successful fiction writer and teacher to help you overcome the weak openings that lead to instant rejection by showing you how to successfully use the ten core components inherent to any great beginning. You'll find:

• Detailed instruction on how to develop your inciting incident 

• Keys for creating a cohesive story-worthy problem 

• Tips on how to avoid common opening gaffes like overusing backstory 

• A rundown on basics such as opening scene length and transitions 

• A comprehensive analysis of more than twenty great opening lines from novels and short stories 

• Plus, you'll discover exclusive insider advice from agents and acquiring editors on what they look for in a strong opening. 

With Hooked, you'll have all the information you need to craft a compelling beginning that lays the foundation for an irresistible story!

From the Book:

• This is the only scene in the story that the protagonist doesn't enter with the goal of resolving some type of problem, and that's simply because it's the opening scene's job to create the initial problem in the first place.
• A good, quality story beginning is a microcosm of the work entire. If you capture the right beginning, you've written a small version of the whole.
• What transforms a story is the inner psychological problem of the protagonist being laid bare on the page.
• once the story-worthy problem is introduced, nothing can take precedence over it
• As the author, you should have a firm understanding of your story-worthy problem before you begin writing

Les Edgerton

From the author bio on amazon:

Les Edgerton has published fifteen books, the latest being two novels from StoneGate Ink, the noir thriller "Just Like That", the thriller, "The Perfect Crime", the short story collection, "Gumbo Ya-Ya from Snubnose Press, and his latest, the noir thriller "The Bitch" from Bare Knuckles Press. His most popular book is the writer's text, "Hooked: Write Fiction That Grabs Readers at Page One and Never Lets Them Go." His own favorite is his collection, titled, "Monday's Meal," which received a glowing review from the NY Times in which he was compared favorably to Raymond Carver.

He has a blog on writing at: http://lesedgertononwriting.blogspot.com/ he invites you to visit.

He lives with his wife Mary and son Mike in Ft. Wayne, IN. He has two daughters--Britney and Sienna--from a previous marriage. He teaches a private writing class online as well as a class via Skype for the New York Writer's Workshop. In the past, he has taught creative writing for the UCLA Extension Writer's Program, Trine University, St. Francis University, and was Writer-in-Residence for the University of Toledo for three years.

Edgerton is an ex-con, having served two years of a 2-5 sentence at Pendleton Reformatory in the sixties for second-degree burglary. The sentence was the result of a plea bargain where it was reduced to a single charge from 182 burglaries, two strong-arm robberies, an armed robbery, and a count of possession with intent to deal. Today, he's completely reformed and you can invite him into your home and when he leaves you won't have to count the silverware... Prior to this little "trouble" Les served 4 years in the U.S. Navy as a cryptographer who had "up close and personal" experience with the Cuban Crisis and the beginning of the Vietnam War.

After making parole from Pendleton, Edgerton obtained his B.A. from Indiana University (Honors of Distinction), where he was elected Student Body President, and then received his MFA in Writing (Fiction) from Vermont College. He teaches workshops nationwide on writing, specializing in classes and seminars on the writer's voice and story beginnings. He also coaches writers on their novels and the fee is $100 per hour.

He was born in Odessa, TX on Feb. 13, 1943 and grew up in a variety of places, including Freeport, TX and South Bend, IN. He is the oldest of five and has two surviving sisters (his sister Jo passed away) and a brother. Growing up in Freeport, his family ate all their meals at his grandmother's bar and restaurant, and before the age of twelve, Les had worked every job in the bar, including serving alcohol and food (those were different times, before the government assumed the job of parenting and protecting us from ourselves). When he turned 12, his grandmother told him he was old enough to learn the taxi-cab business which she owned and he began his first day on the midnight shift. An hour after he began, one of the cab drivers shot and killed another driver who was tormenting him with a rattlesnake, and he made the call to the police. Later, he was called on to testify at the man's trial and the defendant was found innocent as he was acting in self-defense.

These days, he's working on a memoir, a new writer's how-to, several novels, several nonfiction projects and appearing at various workshops. He invites readers of his work to contact him. His contact info is on his blog at www.lesedgertononwriting.blogspot.com/. His newest novel is a noir novella forthcoming from New Pulp Press titled "The Rapist.

His novel "The Bitch" was a finalist in the Snubnose Magazine "Best Novel" in the Legends category and was the winner of the best novel in the 2011 Preditors & Editors award. His first novel, "The Death of Tarpons" was awarded a Special Citation from the Violet Crown Book Awards.

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An Ode to Dewey, Founder of Dewey's 24 Hour Read-a-Thon (April 26)

An Ode to Our Dewey
by Joy Renee
vote, fav and share for Dewey
We Miss You Dewey

Join the Party

What is Dewey's 24 Hour Read-a-Thon? -- 24 hours of reading, sharing, mini-challenges, prizes, cheerleading, blogging, social 
networking...

This twice a year event was founded by book blogger Dewey in 2007 and hosted at her original blog, The Underside of the Leaf, which I can't link because it no longer exists.  Which is so sad and not just because I didn't get to  finish reading her archives but because there was a lot of valuable insight in her reviews and they could have added richly to her legacy.

Dewey passed in late November of 2008, after organizing and hosting four events in the spring and fall of 2007 and 2008.


Since then her legacy--the world wide community of book lovers she wove together by those 4 events--has continued to thrive under the dedicated administering of a slew of organizers, hour hosts at the hub, gift and postage donors and cheerleaders.  And the numbers of participants increase each thon--nearly 500 this fall--which is now hosted on a dedicated blog, Dewey's Read-a-Thon

I have no set-in-stone goals for this one other than to enjoy it and go with the flow. It will depend on my mood when the time comes what the ratio between reading and the other possible activities will be.

The Book of Heaven
by Patricia Storace

But I do have a tentative reading plan:

• To finish the ebook Hooked: Write Fiction That Grabs Readers at Page One and Never Lets Go by Les Edgerton if I haven't already.  I've been reading this slowly all month to aid in the structural rewrite of my short story Blow Me a Candy Kiss which is my Camp NaNo project.
• Select two or three books I'm close to finishing from my mile long currently reading list as posted in my most recent IMWAYR? and finish them.
• Spend a sustained amount time with the library tree-book The Book of Heaven by Patricia Storace.  It is a lovely, lyrical, mythopoeic retelling from a woman's point of view of stories from the Biblical Old Testament era.  
• If my eyes give out I'll listen to the audio book, A Discovery of Witches by Deborah Harkness.  I started this during the last hours of a previous thon (October 2012) and then didn't return to it until I had to restart it.  That has happened several times now.  That opening scene talking place in a library haunts me every time I see the title sitting in the list on IMWAYR?

I used to pride myself on my ability to stay awake the full 24 but that is no longer a given.  Unless I have had a solid week of good sleep (7.5+ per night) I shouldn't even try.  But even then I would have to do it without fudging on my med schedule which is tricky with the bedtime Trazadone which I'm rarely able to resist more than an hour.  I'm supposed to take it between 9 and 9:30 PM but for the thon I will push it past midnight but I'm not sure yet how far.

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156th ROW80 Check-In

A Round of Words in 80 Days
Round 2 2014

The writing challenge that
 knows you have a life

Before this round (2014 R2), my goals were all time investment and are detailed on the  ROW80 page   [That strike through will remain until I can clean up and update that page.]  In its place I've created a section called GOALS AND HABITS where my current commitments are detailed.

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.

This round I've added time-management and habit formation goals that aren't easily tracked on a spreadsheet.  Or at least not the same one.  These skills are the subject of the coaching my husband has been providing.

 

Note: I broke this up into themed sections to make updating easier:  


Current Check-In --  This section, just below the spreadsheet screenshot, will contain commentary about encounters with the goals since the previous check-in, LOLs, post roundups and any relevant links.  They are arranged like a blog inside a blog.
GOALS AND HABITS:
__Habits and Structure that Supports Writing --  These are the things my coach aka husband is working with me on.
__Month by Month --  Very specific and limited projects for each month
__Ongoing Fiction Files Tasks: -- Big and small projects--WIP, editing, organizing notes, timelines, rosters, sketches, research etc
__Other Writing -- working the AWAI  copywriting course; book reviews; poetry; freewrite and journaling 
Read Craft -- currently reading and recently finished
The Lifequake -- Life decided to give me free lessons on the art of flexibility in January of 2013. There have been continuous aftershocks.
Self Management -- applying flexibility, persistence, habit rehabilitation as I learn that caring for myself is the foundation for all else. Including writing.
Evolution of the Workstations -- the never-ending story with pictures and commentary about the attempt to create a productivity environment here at Mom's

View the spreadsheet Google Doc directly

View the goals list

With my husband's coaching in time, self and project management, I'm slowly recovering from the massive setback in March when my mood dove into the Marianas Trench of my psyche.  The last two check-ins of Round 1 provide the explanation and the plan for recovery so I left them in place when I cleared the last round's check-ins.

CURRENT CHECK-IN

April 23 -- The three days between check-in this time (Sunday-Tuesday) have been hugely productive in regards to ROW80 goals.

Sunday I spent hours going back and forth between reading Hooked: Write Fiction That Grabs Readers at Page One and Never Lets Go by Les Edgerton and DAYDREAMING STORYWORLD for my Camp NaNo project,  the structural rewrite and edit of my short story Blow Me a Candy Kiss.

Edgerton's guidelines have helped me so much I'm thinking of making it a ritual for all the structural rewrites of the dozens of stories I have in the works.  Take each story one by one, reading the book again while living inside that story's world and applying each suggestion to that story.

And from now on it would behoove me to apply his principles at the planning stage for each story.

Monday I continued to read the Edgerton book and keep my head in the Candy Kiss storyworld but the reading took place during scattered breaks throughout the morning and afternoon as I once again rearranged my workstation.

Tuesday I gave my new workstation a workout while I continued reading Hooked while marking up a hardcopy of Candy Kiss.  I titled yesterday's post Lost in NaNoland but could just have easily called it Lost in Candy Land.

I was exceedingly pleased on both counts--the workstation worked above expectations and I'm now captured by the rewrite process and no longer flailing around in a morass.

My First Bike

April 20 -- After two perfect days in a row with the new schedule--Tuesday and Wednesday--I had a minor setback in the three days following.

I overslept Thursday morning and almost missed vid chat and did skip the face/hair/teeth task in order to make it at all which set a sour note and forced me to face one of my demons.  Perfectionism.  Which raised its ugly head in the feeling that I'd already blown it so I might as well give up for the day and start again the next.

This is something I've fought and seldom won since before kindergarten.

When I was five and trying to earn my first bicycle by proving I was responsible enough to have one we had a chore chart that Mom would put colored stars on for each task. We needed to collect all gold and silver stars for the day's chores to earn a gold star for the day.  At the end of the week Dad would put a dollar in the bank for each of the gold star days.

Quite often I'd already earned a blue, green or red star before breakfast was over and would give up for the day.  The blue meant task completed and acceptable but we had to be reminded, green task not up to par and red we'd had to be nagged and/or earned the paddle for attitude.

At some point around forth or fifth grade I got it into my head that I needed a perfect week so I would give up for the week after failing Sunday morning. Tho I often allowed a do-over for Monday but a failure on Monday always meant halfhearted efforts at best until the following Sunday morning.  I was thirteen before I'd earned my new bike.

The bike in the picture was a hand-me-down from a cousin I got around age 11which I wasn't allowed to use it recreation.  Acceptable use after permission granted: to school and back, to piano or swimming lessons and back, to the library and back, to my Aunt Helen's or Aunt Carol's or our church which was next door or across the street from them and back on errands for Mom or for supervision while Mom ran errands, and to the mall across the street on errands for Mom.

It was a fierce struggle Thursday to not fall into that old black hole.  But I'd promised Ed in morning vid that I would move on through my day staying on track from that point on.  I did OK.  I got most of the daily chores done but few were done on time or to specifications.  My mood took a dive and I still wasn't posted at the time of our afternoon vid chat.

Shortly after that chat I learned Mom was leaving a day early for her weekend with my brother's family and I was fending for myself for dinner.  I took advantage of that to get Thursday's and Friday's posts up before I went to bed but that wasn't until well after midnight and then I overslept, missing morning vid Friday.

I also woke with a crick in my neck Friday that was so severe I had little range of motion in my neck.  The one tolerable position was a bowed head with gaze slightly left and slumped shoulders.  Attempting to lift my chin or turn to the right caused waves of nausea.

Just by standing or sitting and thus carrying the weight of my head that way the muscle between the neck and right shoulder tensed up increasing the pain.  This also threw me off balance and made it hard to see where I was going when moving through the house--my visual impairment is zero peripheral vision.

So much for Friday.

It was good that I'd gotten Friday's post up the night before but disappointing that I was unable to use the extra time to finish putting this room in order as I'd hoped.  Instead I spent a lot of time on recreational activities on and off the electronic devices--things that I could do while keeping hot or cold compresses on my neck.  I also fudged bedtime and thus the Trazadone schedule for third night in a row.

I slept until ten Saturday morning.  Though I have had more range of motion today and the pain never rose to nauseating, I still had to be careful and keep compresses on when possible so I still gravitated toward recreational--reading, games, videos, surfing web.

I did get a lot of STORYWORLD DREAMING in over the last several days but holding the position for typing put too much stress on my neck so writing was limited.

Waisted
I refuse to kick this habit 

April 16 -- Ed started coaching me on time and self management on March 12. I wish I'd been journaling it from the beginning so I'd have a record of the long haul--the steady improvements amid scattered failures, the incremental adding of new expectations as one new habit after another was attached to established habits.  Then I'd have a play by play of what led up to yesterday which was my first PERFECT day:

• I got up at 5:25 half an hour before my alarm.  
• First visit to bathroom includes face/hair/teeth task.  
• Next task is getting tea and breakfast and grazing snacks for the day and feeding the cats  
• I was sitting down at computer ready for vid chat by 6--15 minutes early.
  [It did not occur to me until late yesterday that that would have been the perfect opportunity to add FREEWRITE back into the daily routine as it is best when I've not had occasion for conversation or other encounters with language beforehand.  That is what I did today]  
• I messaged Ed that I was ready when he was then fiddled with email and played Bejeweled Blitz  on my Nexus 7 while waiting.  
• Vid chat began at 6:15 and ended at 6:40.  
• Fiddled with email for a few minutes before getting on tramp where I played more Bejeweled Blitz, read several pages of Hooked: Write Fiction That Grabs Readers at Page One and Never Lets Go by Les Edgerton, and watched an episode of Malcom in the Middle.  All on my Nexus 7.
  [This is how I bribed myself to start getting on the tramp after vid chats in late February.  Haven't missed a single day and the committed to 15 minutes grew to over 50]
• I started work on Monday's IMWAYR? post right after tramp.
  [Got behind during the weekend HABA project, which may have been the last piece of the puzzle needed to set me up for this perfect day] 
• As soon as I  finished posting the IMWAYR? link on Joystory's fb fanpage I started work on Tuesday's post re the black jeans and white belt. [Another triumph] It was 10:30 and I had that posted by 11:30.
  [Both posts begun and posted before the usual 1PM lunch break thus an extra task proving there is time for at least one more significant brain work task besides posting before lunch and with some more streamlining of tasks there would be room for a third and even a forth. Or the two significant 45+ minutes and several 15 to 30 minute tasks.  Depending on which tasks.  Especially since I quit for lunch an hour early because of another extra (non-daily) task]  
• I got dressed before heading to kitchen which is one of my goals--no more wearing what I slept in all day or sleeping in what I wore all day.  
• Then I gave Mom the choice of having lunch inside half an hour or after I'd sorted her supplements and meds for the next 4 weeks which is at least an hour's task if it goes smoothly.  She chose waiting so I started the pill sort but was only half done when she said she was hungry so I stopped to fix our trays. 
• Ate lunch with mom
• Finished pill sort.  [the extra task referred to]
• Cleaned up kitchen.  
• Was back at desk by 2:45. Messaged Ed that I was back from lunch but would not be hatching the Google messenger or email so he should call me if I didn't respond inside of 5 minutes.  I keep my Blaze smartphone in my pocket ever since he gave it to me for my birthday in November.
  [There are many ways I could be using it to streamline tasks, fit more small tasks into various small slots of time throughout the day and jot quick reminders or story thoughts when unable to get to desk.  I will be making that a front burner task soon]
• Next I started work on desk area--clutter clearing and rearranging of items from the size of books and papers to the printer and crates and boxes full of files, books and crafts.  No furniture this time tho had done a bit of that on Sunday.
  [Another extra aka non-daily task]
• Vid chat with Ed began just before five and finished at 5:30.
• Next I cleaned the downstairs litter box.  [another extra non-daily]
• Followed by a quick in and out in under 15 minutes shower (no shampoo)  and another 15 to dry and dress.  [another triumph as showers had been such huge productions taking 45 to 120 minutes from hunting clothes and task misc to getting dressed before the weekend HABA project]
• Tuesday is my regular on duty day so I was back in kitchen to fix dinner by six thirty.  Fixed a tray for Mom with a leftover chicken slice with bacon bits from Monday's dinner and cooked baby carrots and  had her served by 6:50.  Then fixed turkey burgers with carrots for my nephew and me.  i ate mine without bread then served Mom and I ice cream--one scoop each.
  [Though having responsibility for dinner has become more common lately (two or three besides Tuesday that get randomly added) it is still not a daily task thus an extra]
• Next I read to mom for 30 minutes. 
• It was 8:10 when we quit and she headed to dress for bed and I started cleaning the kitchen.  
• I was finished in kitchen and changed into PJs by 8:45 and crawling into bed with Nexus 7 to play Bejeweled Blitz until the Trazadone kicked in.

Today I woke at 4:50--65 minutes before the 5:55 alarm.  I'm hoping to push wake-up back towards 4:30 but would have to be asleep by 9pm (7.5 hours minimum required for mental, emotional and physical health).  4 would be better but would have to be asleep by 8:30 and that doesn't seem like a reasonable expectation.

The reason I'm aiming for earlier is to give me more slots of time before vid chat for my spiritual path work, freewrite and another brainwork task or two.  Ed began the coaching work by suggesting that all but the bare minimum of my projects be put on back burners until we got the structure of my days built.   For the first week there was only the daily post and I was struggling to stay on top of it.

It wasn't that I couldn't work on the other projects but I was supposed to have the post done first.  I balked and took advantage of having everything on the back burner to choose on the whim of the moment which had a certain benefit in allowing me to see where my heart would take me.  I added in a lot of reading, free webinars during which I'd crochet, storyworld dreaming, fiction and misc writing.

Which is great but by not having the post up before lunch I risked not getting it up before dinner which put it off until after reading to Mom which often pushed bedtime well past 10 which shorted me on sleep IF I didn't sleep through the alarm and mis vid chat altogether.

I think I've seen the light. And it is the light at the end of the tunnel.

Face Hair Teeth

April 12 -- The self and time management project is going leaps and bounds.  7 of the last 10 days I've had my 7.5 or better sleeps.  That's a huge accomplishment.

I was telling my coach aka husband this evening (Sunday) that I'm starting to sense the presence of the new structure to my days in the same way that I sense the structure of the building I'm inside and the neighborhood surrounding me.  It feels a bit like being inside a 3D spreadsheet that resembles a jungle gym or monkey bars.

I didn't get much work on my Camp NaNo story done over the weekend, including Friday.  I had a counselor appointment Friday and Friday evening Ed gave me my assignment for the weekend.  A suggestion I could have vetoed but I knew he was right.  He thought I ought to get my HABA organized in the bathroom (face, hair, teeth and shower), the bedroom (folding clothes and accessories) and the office (hanging clothes).

Shower

Nearly every morning I was complaining about something going wrong while doing my face, hair and teeth before morning vid chat--fumbling for things on the counter, knocking things into the sink or causing a domino effect among the items on the counter.  Showers were equally frustrating with fumbling for things with soap in my eye or water beating my face or the floor outside the tub and the bench my bottles set on.

Fumbling around adds extra time to a task and along with extra messes to clean up means less time to write or read or crochet or study or work on my writer's webpage.

Then there was getting ready to go somewhere.  Nothing but one frustration after another.  It was nearly impossible to put together a whole outfit including accessories without having to spend extra time searching for something.  Several somethings. During the mood dive in March I'd been neglecting putting things away after use or after I was handed my clean clothes.

This habit had begun after I'd moved my accessories and folding clothes into the bedroom during one of the room rearrangements in late February but did not get around to establishing their new homes in there before my mood tanked.  Then by the time I was feeling better the mess was so bad I couldn't look at it without wanting to crawl into bed.

With Mom away at my brother's this weekend I was able to spread sorting stations over the bed.  This allowed me to clear the surfaces where I would be establishing homes for each type of item--socks, pjs, scarves, and so on.  I knew I didn't have time to sort and fold and organize each one of these so I chose the most important.

Looking at the large pile of hanging clothes on the bed and thinking of the crowded closet I went with that.  I managed to make room for everything and still allow them all to hang free so wrinkles wouldn't form by hanging a hanger on another hanger at the point where the hook meets the slopes.  For slacks and Ts I could do a third but for longer shirts and skirts I could only do two.

What does all of this have to do with writing?

Well I've finally learned that with the structure to my days I get to spend more time on reading and writing and by keeping organized and creating rituals for tasks that put them on autopilot I'll be opening up even more time for the projects dear to my heart--reading, writing, research, blogging, fiber arts, study, working on my writer's web site, etc.

You can see in the spreadsheet how I've already quadrupled or better my reading time investment.  This is deliberate rewarding for staying on track with the non-negotiable--sleep, meds, food, hygiene and exercise.  I bribe myself to get on the tramp or lay down ahead of the need to be asleep with music, reading, a computer game or a TV episode on my Nexus 7.

My project over the next week is to get my daily posts up before lunch so they are not crowding out afternoon activities and keeping me up past my bedtime.  Like tonight.  This is supposed to be my Saturday post but it is nearly midnight Sunday night as I wrap this up.  I'm going to get less than 6 hours of sleep before morning vid chat with Ed.  Unless of course I turn my alarm off in my sleep and miss vid altogether which really sours my whole day.

iz mai dooty 2 in4rm u u r wayk 

whey passt ur bedtyme

April 9 -- I've already put hours of work into cleaning up and updating this wash and wear post so I'm going to try to keep this minimal.  Besides I've already covered all the info in a series of posts over the last two weeks.  There is a roundup of those posts in my Round 2 Goals post along with an explanation of the self manage goals now a part of ROW80.

I still need to clean up, tighten up and update the sections below READ CRAFT.  Hoped to have it done before I posted this check-in but it is already Thursday afternoon.  Sigh.

Which means I still need a Thursday Post before I go to bed.

dat is a big bad wuntz

March 26 -- Dwell not upon thy weariness, thy strength shall be according to the measure of thy desire. - Arab Proverb

I featured that Arab Proverb on the accompanying LOLcat with the witty kitty's take in Monday's post and then in Tuesday's post discussed how, thanks to my husband's time-management coaching, I've just experienced the truth of it in an object lesson:

• Monday -- One Big, Bad Want
• Tuesday -- Getting Kitted Out

If you haven't been following my ROW80 over the last year, you might wonder what this has to do with ROW80 writing goals.

And if you've read all of the last week's posts but were new to my story, you might wonder why a 50 something woman needs to have tasks assigned to her like a tweener.

Some women might even see my submitting to my husband's guidance as an offence to a modern woman's social position.

Well I'm going to answer those questions in tomorrow's post. (I will try to remember to come back and link it right here)  Or you can check out the Lifequake section below the check-in section for context.

The short answer is: I tried it my way since I left my parent's household at age 21.  It didn't work.

Tomorrow's post will describe my way and why I now think it would never work. And why I practically begged Ed to continue helping me like he did last spring and summer.

Meanwhile there have already been several small successes since we reinstated the coaching on Friday that are adding up to something more than the sum of their parts.  More on that tomorrow.

Have you figured out what all this has to do with ROW80 writing goals yet?

The short answer is that these things: time management, self care, and habit formation need to be in place to support the writing goals.

Especially when the challenges I face include: vision impairment, ADD, mood disorder, living in a chaotic household where 85 to 90 percent of the chaos is not under my control because it is not mine to control.

I'm going to be sharing this journey throughout the next round both in check-ins and other posts.  I have high hopes that by the time Round 3 begins the habits and routines to support my passion will be in place so that productivity will begin to soar.

Why do I pose more questions than answers here with the teasers about tomorrow's post?  Because most of the answers were composed right here as I wrote this check-in which was on its way to a mile long.  Besides most of what I was sharing I wanted to also share outside the ROW80 fence and didn't want to cover the same territory twice.

It's an extra bonus that I now have the hardest part of tomorrows post done--the first draft.  Yay!  Not only not behind I'm ahead!

LOOK UP - GET UP - SUIT UP - 

LIFT UP - MOVE UP

but never give up

March 23 -- As you can see from the spreadsheet screenshot above, I've lost a lot of ground in the last couple of weeks.  I have worked on this post every check-in since the last one I successfully posted on March 9th but each time failed to get it ready before the next check-in was only a day away so I held off.  But then the spreadsheet scrreenshot had to be redone and the check-in section rewritten.  I finally just got rid of all of the commentary intended for check-ins that didn't happen and started fresh.

The gist all that I cut out was whining about the nose dive my mood took.  Deeper than in a long time.  All the way into the Marianas Trench of my psyche as I put it in one or more of the posts in the last two weeks.  It was demoralizing after the way things were looking up for the March 9th check-in.

I am not going to say much more about it here as I've already said it all in these three posts:

Get Up and Move In which I share a motivational video I found while on the prowl for aids to regain and optimize motivation, energy and optimism after having just been through another very rough patch with my mood disorder.  It also featured the LOLcat that accompanies this check-in which I made to reflect the theme of the video.  I thought the ROW80 crowd would really enjoy it.

Habits and Hypnosis  In which I share an hilarious animated GIF of a kitten being hypnotized by a shinny object on a string and relate my first experience of a successful hypnosis and it's fall out.

Report Card  In which I share an LOLcat of a stern bespectacled tabby that I made to reflect the theme of the post about the list of priorities my husband helped me make and then assess my performance over the last three months so that I could acknowledge where I stood in order to see clearly the path forward and submit to the necessary discipline.

This was how we kicked off the renewal of his coaching me (at my request) on management of time, self and projects that we  began last spring and dropped as the holiday season kicked into gear where he works last fall.

I had been keeping most things on this theme inside the check-in posts which were primarily looked at by a supportive community but I'm going to start putting it out there for the general public as well.  I hope for this to make my whole blog as honest and sincere and real as the ROW80 posts.

There will be fewer filler posts to hide behind whenever the primary thing on my mind is touching on these themes of self-management, mood-disorder, lifequake, dreams and goals.  Who knows, maybe it will end up being a story tracking the trajectory of my progress as many small triumphs accumulate into one big one as I reach one of my dream goals.



GOALS AND HABITS:

HABITS AND STRUCTURE THAT SUPPORTS WRITING:

Ed says these have to be in place and on autopilot to support everything else.  So that's my goal for Round 2--that by the end the routines are in place and the habits formed for:

• - TIME MANAGEMENT -- establish a structure to my days that supports the following five and makes room for the writing goals
• - SLEEP 
• - MEDS
• - HYGIENE 
• + NUTRITION 
• + EXERCISE 

The reason for the +/- to the left of each is due to my having copy/pasted from my post about the priority evaluation list we created during our first coaching session.

MONTH BY MONTH:


This time my husband has helped me create my goals list and establish the priorities.

My Brain on Story
see moar kittehs 

 vote  caption   share

April Camp NaNo

A structural rewrite and several edit passes for Blow Me a Candy Kiss to prep for self pub:

• An edit pass to create a printable rewrite draft for marking up with page breaks at end of scenes. The primary fixes will be formatting, changing the indented paragraph and no line spaces to the WWW friendly form with no indents and blank lines between paragraphs.  Also increasing space between lines inside paragraphs to provide room for notations.
• Print hardcopy.  [The computer and printer's need marital therapy.]
• Print hardcopy of my beta reader's marked up copy
• An edit pass on the hard copy noting any issues as listed in edit passes below but primarily for structural and expansion and breaking up overlong paragraphs
• A structural rewrite that incorporates suggestions of my one beta reader and includes expansion of scenes, addition of scenes and extensive rewriting of many paragraphs. [This, the biggest task, has begun and will be ongoing at least through the second third week]
• An edit pass for grammar and punctuation, word choice and word overuse and consistency of story facts.
• Read aloud noting any issues with how it sounds, listening for sour notes and tongue twisters and out-of-character voices in dialog, rewriting to fix
• An edit pass for spelling and typos and formatting consistency, including reformatting paragraphs to remove the extra space between lines.
• As time permits throughout, write new material for future Greg and Iris stories as encounters in Candy Kiss trigger memories or spark new ideas.  [Also begun and will continue throughout the month]

That list is an example of a step in project management.  Naming the project and breaking it down into discrete tasks (mini-projects inside the umbrella project) and whenever those tasks contain tasks that contain mini-projects you repeat until there is nothing that can be broken into smaller units of action.

May Self-Pub Project

• Convert Candy Kiss to epub
• An edit pass of epub for formatting issues created by the conversion
• Convert to mobi
• An edit pass of mobi for formatting issues created by the conversion
• Upload epub and mobi to Smashwords
• Upload mobi to Amazon to convert to Kindle
• Another edit pass of the Kindle for formatting issues

June JuNoWriMo

Will decide in mid-may which project to target

ONGOING FICTION FILES TASKS: 
[the grey highlight means back burner.  I'm free to tackle any when time permits but they don't have commitment status and the agreed upon priorities with my coach must be on track first]

• work at cleaning up the Wrimo messes
• target a second finished short story for the self publish route: How Does Your Garden Grow?
• work on cleaning up the WhizFolder for the NaNo Novel, Wailing Womb [task list similar to that for FOS Storyworld below]
• work on the FOS storyworld:
•  -- add notes from DAYDREAM STORYWORLD notebook to FOS Worksheet WhizFolder as well as the specific story's Whiz
•  -- add events to timeline
•  -- add character sketches, rambles, and metadata
•  -- move or copy metadata from each story's Whiz into the FOS Worksheet Whiz
•  -- add to FOS mind map in Xmind
•  -- clean up notes, research, reference, links, etc in each story's Whiz, adding any relevant to multiple stories to FOS Worksheet Whiz
•  -- clarify specific research needs
•  -- edit existing scenes and add new
•  -- target one of the POV character's stories to focus on  [When Home Is Where the Horror Is AKA Crystal's story]
•  -- break out Aeon Timeline and start inputting info from the text timeline
•  -- breakout Smart Draw and experiment with creating story boards and plot flow charts

OTHER WRITING TASKS

• Daily blog post -- goal is to break habit of starting work on post in late afternoon as it tends to not go up before dinner which means I have to return to it after 8pm after reading to Mom.
  
  This puts one high priority in conflict with another because I'm supposed to take my Traz and be in bed by 9.  Then I get shorted on sleep and still have Trazadone in my system until late morning which makes the morning brain work less productive.
  
  I also miss about half of the morning vid chats with Ed.  Altogether it sounds a sour note across the beginning of my day and its hard to recover.
  
  The post needs to go live before lunch!
• AWAI Copywriting course work: working the course involves reading, writing and research as well as videos, web seminars, and teleconference recordings and networking.  This has been on hiatus since my mood dive in early March.  It's time to start easing back into it.
• morning freewrite and/or journaling
• work on cleaning up my poetry Whiz and get poems composed on LOLs and in blog posts and wherever else they are scattered collected into it.  Print hard copies of any that have none.
• keep on top of the upcoming blog tour reviews
• tackle the backlog of book reviews for ARCs 
• tackle the backlog of book reviews for books owned and borrowed finished 2012-2013
• tackle the backlog of book reviews for finished ROW80 READ CRAFT books

READ CRAFT:

Currently Reading

For Round 1 2014 I removed all but five of the books the ever growing list. I intend to totally abandon the others but I'm targeting the five in this list for focus until finished.  As a book comes off I'll add another.

As Round 2 2014 begins all five of the same books are still here.  It is my goal to have all but AWAI  finished by end of round.  And AWAI should be well on its way.

What to Do When There's Too Much to Do by Laura Stack   my todo lists are way overloaded even for someone with a reasonably quakeless life.
Hooked: Write Fiction That Grabs Readers at Page One and Never Lets Go by Les Edgerton
The Fiction Writer's Handbook by Shelly Lowenkopf  Review for blog tour  Haven't finished it yet tho so it will remain in the list.  This is more like a reference book tho.  Organized by literary terms that hyperlink to every term referenced in its explanation that has its own entry.
The Complete Idiot's Guide to Writing Erotic Romance by Alison Kent.  Found on my shelves while packing books.  I won this in a drawing during the Sweating for Sven writing challenge in 2007.  It made me blush and I kept it hidden in the recesses of my bookshelves but I think I've gotten over that.
AWAI Copywriting Course materials

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  Finished this fall of 2012 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 got 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.
Writing in General and the Short Story in Particular by Rust Hills onetime fiction editor at Esquire.  A tiny little paperback published in the mid 70s.  I pulled this off my own shelf, having found it while packing/unpacking my books.  Don't remember how it became mine.
Write Good or Die! edited by Scott Nicholson (a collection of essays by inde authors.  many of them self-published) 


THE LIFEQUAKE:

Ed and I April 2nd
5 minutes before leaving

The event I'm calling the lifequake hit me in late January and for the most part of most days I'm accommodating myself to the new realities shaking out from it.  The details are covered in ROW80 #69 check-in. and  this Sunday Serenity and in It's Like This and The Eyes Have It so I won't keep reiterating the story in these check-ins.

The most important fact affecting ROW80 goals is that my 5 week visit at my Mom's begun in early January has been extended indefinitely.  It has been a huge disruption in itself not counting all the disruptions of life, thought and emotion behind the whys and wherefores.

Between the last week of February and the first week of May 2013 my sister and I made several round trips to my place in Phoenix to pack up my stuff and bring it back to Longview.  It was supposed to be only for my books, crafts and summer clothes for an extended stay until medical insurance for me was back in place.  But in March our landlord decided he needed to sell the trailer and set May 15 as our move-by date.  So I made two more trips and my sister made a forth the first week in May, leaving me behind while she took a load back and returning for the forth load.

Merlin

Merlin, our cat, came back with me in May.  During our trip in early April my sister took him to the vet and the following week he had surgery to remove rotten teeth and fix his eyelids so his lashes would stop scratching his eyes.  He looks oriental now.  The pic is from several years ago when he was still healthy.  He has started to regain the weight he lost while he was sick winter of 2012-1013.

As 2014 Round 1 begins we're pushing 8 months since leaving Phoenix with the last load by February 11 it will be 9 months.  There has been no further visits.  He's living with his folks in the same tiny room we shared for ten years but we both agreed that environment would be unhealthy for me and our relationship.  So we're waiting for him to find a place before I come back for a visit bringing a van load of household miscellany and Merlin.

Before I can go home for good my meds need to be stabilized and healthcare assured.  I have to be separated from Ed in order to qualify for health care.  So much for those wascally wabbits and their so-called concern for the sanctity of marriage.

Meanwhile we make do with phone calls, text chats, emails and one or two vid chats each day.


SELF-MANAGEMENT

A significant development in self-management was the timer my sister bought me just before she left me alone with Ed the first week of May.  It has two timers, a clock and a stop-watch function.

One of her concerns about leaving me there for a whole week was the tenuous nature of my ability to stay on my med schedule, sleep schedule and food and water intake schedule without outside monitoring.  That is one of the repercussions of an unmanaged mood-disorder.

In December I transferred all my task alarms to my smartphone, a birthday present from Ed in November, and no longer use this timer except for one off tasks.

There have been enough improvements in my ability to function that I've been able to commit to making and serving lunch for me and Mom every day since August.  I have gained more ground each month.  Adding minor and major commitments to self and family.  I've just [Feb 3 2014] taken on care of one of the two litter boxes.  I've been on duty with Mom from lunch to bedtime most Tuesdays since fall and oven fix dinner at least one other time during the week.  Significantly, except for Tuesday, most evening dinner preps are sprung on me in the one to four hours before time to start which would have flummoxed me into paralysis a year ago.

One of the fallouts from the stabilized sleep schedule has been an increase in those intense, creative, colorful and story-like dreams that have often contributed to what I call the storyseeds for my fiction.  This augers well for the future work with my fiction files--both editing and new writing.  And is a sign the depression is lifting or at least being managed well.

The early-bird schedule I switched to last August specifies the pre-lunch hours for brain work--reading, writing, blogging, research, netbook maintenance, daydreaming story world and the afternoon for active/social tasks like exercise, sorting/organizing, chores, hygiene, family interaction, vid or text chats with Ed.  But so far I've nearly always gravitated back to the brainwork after lunch and once engaged in a task it is hard to break away for another.  So many things get neglected.  Which often leads to fudging on sleep... Slippery slope.

My Nature Bright Sun Touch Plus
w/ high lux light and air ionizer

The two most significant things that contributed to the healthier sleep patterns were the melatonin I began using in late summer and the the full spectrum light therapy lamp I bought during the Cyber Monday sales.  This gives me hope that I won't have to be on the meds forever.  There are still several more things I can add to my Natural Remedies bag.  Like maintaining consistency in the sleep schedule (still pulling too many 20 to 30 hour days and too many under 7.5 hour sleeps) exercise, meditation weight loss, water intake, detoxing from sugar and food additives and diet changes for starters.  Except for the sleep schedule most of these I've been dabbling at in the last six months but I need to be committed and consistent with those things I've experienced as helping. 

Meanwhile I'm trying to learn patience with myself and flexibility.  One of the new skills I'm honing is the ability to analyse what is working and what isn't and then apply a likely fix and observe what does and doesn't result.  I'm trying to keep a vision of what success looks like in my head so that I'm always aiming for it.

WORKSTATION WOES AND WOOTS

The evolution of the writing and workout room:

Workstation and
Indoor Workout Space
January 2013

Late January 2013
Tramp set on end after
2 falls and a close call

March 2013
Making room for 1st van load

Reference Books
The 1999 World Book set
and the Britannica Great Books set
bought from the library in 2005
And writing related misc.

Looks more like a nest
Primary work and play and mope
station May 11-24 2013

Cubby desk May 25 2013
replace exercise ball
with office chair

Working it Out 

June 2013
Almost good but hard
to get in and out and no room
to scoot or swivel chair

April-August 2013
Standing desk above tramp
Good for writing, reading ebooks,
text and vid chat, videos and music
All while getting a gentle workout
Or vigorous with videos and music. 

Bradley Desk Inspector
Major August 2013 Makeover
Cleared Mom's Desk
Finally room to spread
out books and paper

In late August it finally came together: a workable workstation.  The story and pics about it are in these Sunday's, Monday's and Tuesday's posts.  My productivity ratio increased from 1 in 5 days to 1 in 2 or better.  But a couple weeks after setting this up I got my Aspire and being significantly larger than the netbook it didn't work well in this setup and major tweaking commenced.

I keep meaning to add pics of the most significant tweaks to accommodate the Aspire and now there is the January 2014 whole room makeover pics to add.  But not this time.

Bradley

The family cat, Bradley has been a pill as I rearranged the two rooms.  He mountain climbs the stuff.  He picks up small things and carries them off.  Twice it was my reading glasses that I wear over my prescription glasses for close work.  He sits on top of the very thing I need to pick up.

Once he knocked my netbook off the desk.  I had an extreme moment of panic before I got it picked up and checked over.

Merlin nesting with me

Merlin had to stay locked in the laundry room for nearly three months until we were sure he was free of contagion or parasites.

My hope that once Merlin was allowed to join the family the two of them would entertain each other came true.  After a few weeks of talking to each other through the laundry room door they had a brief encounter when I brought Merlin up on his leash on our way out for his yard exploration they  touched noses and nobody hissed.  Bradley did raise one paw over Merlin's head and held it there until Merlin ducked his head and slunk away.

A couple weeks after that Merlin was paroled and they've acted buddies ever since with Bradley obsessed with grooming Merlin who had been lax with that due to his poor health.  They do occasionally fight over the spots of sun on the living room carpet.

But for over a week after Merlin got paroled I hung out on the tramp again so he could hang out with me.

Read more...