Category: Writing Process

A Brief Aside, or, There’s This Cool Thing on the Web (not the sticky, stringy thing in the corners, but the electronic aether upon which you are reading this): Liz Argall posted a delightful blog post, “Jealousing is the new writing exercise“:

When I get professionally jealous it’s often an exciting thing. “Wow! I never thought of doing that, that’s amazing!” But excitement can turn into sad feelings… “I don’t know if I’ll ever be awesome, eloquent and organized enough to use a moment in front of doorknockers to do the sort of tight exposition, character development and micro-tension that’s now sucking me through this book.”

Fortunately these moments of wonder/jealousy/despair are the perfect place to find a writing exercise.

The post is worth a read over just for her fun facial expressions alone, and the exercise looks like quite a bit of fun, and I’m definitely going to have to give it a go.

Last Week in Writing: I received one rejection and visited an open mic. Yay!

I also finished up the last of the Napowrimo challenge, which required me to write 15 poems over the course of Monday and Tuesday. Another yay!

I did not, however, submit anything or work on my novel. And I have no excuse for this. Boo!

Last Week in Exercise: All three required workouts done and one yoga morning (sort of) completed. Though the run on Saturday was Rough McGruff. I made the mistake of going in the middle of the day and it was too hot and too dusty on the trail. It also didn’t help that I didn’t have any water with me. I will have to remember to start earlier in the morning during the rest of the summer.

Last Week in Other Stuff That Needed Doing: I bought envelopes and some other tools to help me with the filing process, but did not actually start the filing process. Still, baby steps.

That which must be accomplished in the coming week (which looks a lot like last week, but isn’t):
– Finish Chapter Three of Under the Midday Moon
– Submit something (poetry, fiction, whatever)
– Workout at least three days with two workouts being running training (1/3)
– Do three yoga workouts, three sun salutations min. (0/3)
– Sort paperwork out by year for filing
– Either purchase new a new filing cabinet(s), and/or buy folders/large envelopes, and/or go through the process of sorting and putting everything in its place

PS. As I’ve  been writing this I’ve completed the draft of a new poem (408 words!), which I will probably submit somewhere this week. I’m tempted to do so now, like RIGHT NOW, but am forcing myself to wait until I’ve let it rest a day and can give it a fresh read through.

Cross-posted to my livejournal. You are welcome to comment either here or there.

In writing: I submitted a couple of poems/flash pieces to Nano Fiction and wrote four new poems for Napowrimo. One of the poems you can read here.

I spent a considerable amount of energy avoiding writing Chapter Three. Once, I even had the laptop out and in front of me with the blank page open, so, I, uh, started fleshing out the outline a bit more. Sometimes I just need to get a hold of the big picture in order to be able to focus on the specifics of a scene. I start to get annoyed if I don’t know what to write and verge off into generalities, rather than get to the heart of the scene. It feels all wrong as I’m writing, and while I know sometimes it’s best to just soldier through, it can be frustrating to put work down on a scene that you know you’re probably going to have to rewrite from scratch later. At any rate, I hope the outlining will help me with getting Chapter Three done this week.

Edited to add: I just saw whipchick’s mapping post on triggers, which notes how the triggering event is what really get the story started. Perfect right now, since I think (part of) the reason why I’ve been stuck on the opening chapters is that I’ve been burying the triggers a bit. Will have to think about moving them forward to get some more action going.

In exercise: It was a very good week. Did a run on Monday (which went very well), did an excellent workout with my trainer on Wednesday, another run on Thursday (which didn’t go as well — in fact, it was a bit rough), and did a four mile hike on Saturday with my sister, niece, and mom (which involved lots of hills and felt great). So, I’d say I accomplished my goal with flying colors.

In other important stuff: State taxes did not get done, which is very, very bad of me. I must accomplish them this week. MUST.

I think the filing thing is kind of a spin off of the taxes thing. It would be fantastico, if I could get more organized in that regard and I keep saying I will and then, um, not. If I even just do some baby steps this week, that would be awesome.

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That which must be accomplished in the coming week:
– Get California taxes done (must happen today)
– Begin Chapter Three of Under the Midday Moon (write a minimum of 1,000 words and hopefully finish)
– Submit something (poetry, fiction, whatever)
– Finish at least a handful of Napowrimo poems
– Walk/Run at least three days at least 2 miles each day (0/3)
– Sort paperwork out by year for filing
– Either purchase new a new filing cabinet(s), and/or buy folders/large envelopes, and/or go through the process of sorting and putting everything in its place

Cross-posted to my livejournal. You are welcome to comment either here or there.