A Year in the Life, July 2012
The end of June marked the halfway point in 2012. Time to take a look at goals for 2012, see how well (or not!) I’m doing and how they might need to be tweaked or changed altogether. Some areas are going strong, some are a bit tepid, so some changes might be necessary.
For example, one goal seemed likely lead to accomplishing every other writing goal almost by fiat. Write one million words of fiction this year. Sounds monumental, I know, but I knew it was doable because I’d done it before.
The problem is that so far this year, I’ve not had a story to write. Planning, yes. Research, yes. But so far, no story.
Research and planning are part of writing and both have gone very well, so I’m not troubled by the way things are turning out.
But that million word goal … it may need to be reassessed.
At mid-month, I found an article written by Janice Hanna Thompson and posted on the ACFW blog. Seven Days to Better Writing was published shortly after my goal re-assessment, so I decided to work my way through the daily exercises.
It took eight days, but it was well worth the effort. I discovered some interesting things about myself as a writer and the topics that interest me and make sense based on my life experience. Thanks, Janice.
As a spin off of Janice’s article, I devised a schedule that will allow me to write a new rough draft and revise an existing story in the same twelve month period, if it works. I would never have thought of such a thing before reading the article, so taking the time to work the plan has already reaped benefits.
The plan was implemented on Monday, July 23. So far, so good.
Ten days at the beginning of the month were impacted by a computer failure. Nothing major, just the power supply. My husband was able to replace the power supply, but I was off the primary computer for all of those ten days.
Know what? I barely missed it!
Fortunately, I was between articles with EmptyEasel.com, so that wasn’t a concern. A couple of reference images for paintings were out of reach, but I got by just fine with everything else. I used Neal’s computer on a limited basis while he was at work and did everything else by hand.
The change of venue was great for writing, even if word count dropped. I can’t write nearly as fast with pen and paper as with the computer, but it was such a delight to be able to sit in a favorite chair in the office or on the couch in the back room or wherever else I wanted to sit and write.
As a matter of fact, I’m still doing some of those things by hand and enjoying the process.
