16 October, 2018

Maintaining Balance: Writing and Writing

I don't want my blog-writing to slip by the wayside as I get more into book-writing. That's why #AccountaClub works for me. I mean, okay, Isa-Lee Wolf posted the prompt on Friday, and that was three days ago, but I'm getting to it!

Last week, I finished the first draft of my second book. It's basically a steaming pile of crap for now, but it has a beginning, a middle, and an end. There's a lot to do, but it's out of my head for the moment. I think a good, clean, messy, edit will help. Later.

I signed up for NaNoWriMo last month, and I've been slowly working on the plot for that one, but I don't want to actually start writing the story until November 1st. I'm a purist, what can I say?

Until November 1st, I am practicing writing 12,000 words a week. I'm meeting that word count by working on a project my sister and I talked about:

Our dad started writing down his memories. He's not calling it a memoir, and he might just be doing it because he's afraid he's losing his memory, but he seemed kind of stalled at about the time in his story that we moved overseas. So we thought it would be fun if all five of us kids wrote some of our memories of life overseas. Maybe to jog his memory, maybe as a continuation of his story.

So that's my writing project for the next couple weeks.

As far as maintaining balance, I realized last week that if I'm going spend so much time writing, I can either work on A) my fitness or B) keeping the house clean. One or the other. 

I live in a country where the house is open to all the weather all the time, and we go barefoot in the house. Guess which will win - A or B? So I do my yoga, and sometimes a supplemental workout, but I'm not worrying about getting in a number of steps each day.

Maybe that's it: I can count words or steps, not both.

What do you give up when you take on a new project? Or are you one of the amazing people who simply adds an extra hour to your day?

5 comments:

  1. Someone should interview your father on camera. That might help jog some memories as well.

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  2. Red,

    I think that's wonderful you're helping your day to pen his memories. There's so much that I don't remember but I think it's more or less from being too busy. We just forget details until something jogs the right brain cell. I'm glad you're keeping your nose to the grindstone with your daily goal of 12k words. *applauds* I'm working on it but only through prompts. Maybe I'll eventually take a bolder leap. Thanks for visiting, my friend.

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    1. Hi Cathy! This past week I got sick and the word count dropped, but I had some good advice that, since I know I can do the words, I should maybe focus on preparing for the long month of November. NaNoWriMo will be intensive writing, so it will help to have everything in place beforehand.

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  3. I'm at the other end of the spectrum - I'm looking at reducing how much I blog - starting next month. I want to pare it back so I have more time for other things - silly things like colouring in and reading and walking and generally being off my laptop. Writing 12,000 words a week just blows my mind - so you're definitely doing really well on my scale of one to ten!

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I enjoy a good debate. Feel free to shake things up. Tell me I'm wrong. Ask me why I have such a weird opinion. ...or, just laugh and tell how this relates to you and your life.