The First Full Week Begins!

Final Word Count: Saturday- 2,003 (approx. 4.5 pages), 1 journal page; Sunday- 3,575 (8 pages), 1 journal page

Right off the bat, let me apologize for not having a make up post for Sunday. I was bad and didn’t write one up. It was a busy day between writing like a fiend, dancing and catching the tail end of the Powwow. Phew!

A recurring thought floating around my little head is the fear that once my life picks up (work, social events, god forbid dating!) I’ll run out of time to get my quota met each day. There’s only so much catching up I can do on Sundays. Maybe the pure fiction will go a little quicker as long as I don’t get caught up in figuring out and obsessing over the snaggly bits of plot I’ll come up against. This memoir is turning into quite the beast. I’m really glad I picked it to tackle first.

I’m not sure how consistent the tone is since I don’t read what I’ve written the day before before starting on my work. It’s also extremely dense (as evidenced by the word count:page ratio. Not a whole lot of dialogue, that’s for sure! I’ve also been picking through my brain for memories and feelings to include so the process has been pretty slow. Hence, it’s been taking me approximately an hour a page so you can understand my apprehension of a busier schedule. Did I mention the pages are single spaced, size 12 font? This challenge isn’t operating on the agreement of double spacing the pages and writing in size 14 font.

I’m really looking forward to getting this done. It’s been a project I’ve had for over 3 years but it’s been shoved to the back burner for so long the little scraps of the idea were starting to send up smoke signals- finish me now or forever hold my pieces.

I decided to do this year-long project because I have a few such projects and I felt like they were dragging me down. I needed a way to work on them and hopefully write them out of my system so I can focus on new ideas and move on. I think it’s a pitfall for a lot of artists (writers, sculptors, painters, etc.) who are continuously brainstorming ideas. I’m so grateful that I don’t have a problem right now with coming up with new ideas, the problem is that they’re so eclectic and separate that I don’t know which to work on first or how long they’ll take to finish.

I used to prefer short stories but something I should have been able to whip up in a day or two was taking a month or more. Maybe my writing isn’t as tight as it once was or I’ve developed from a short story author to the novella form. Whatever the case may be, I wasn’t used to suddenly ending up with 15-page short stories. I’d put off completing what I started because it felt like it would never end. At least now I’m prepared for the long haul. I really enjoy settling down and working on a piece that I know not to expect to finish in one sitting. when I started and finished the chapter yesterday, I had an amazing sense of accomplishment but starting the next one today was difficult. I’m getting used to picking up where I left off rather than having to start fresh all over again.

The newest lesson I’ve learned? Don’t finish a chapter and call it quits for the day. It’s very difficult to start writing again when you don’t have a jumping off point set up. Always end with at least a little bit left in a chapter or a scene. When there are too many directions available, it can really stall your writing.

I managed to get about a page and half done before coming into work and I would have gotten more completed but after a walkies with Yesterday, the weather was so lovely I just had to hang out in the backyard for some playtime with her. Hopefully I can get some serious writing done now.

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