write one page every week

I managed 1245 words last week, or nearly 5 pages. That’s been unheard of recently. :D

Now, let’s see if I can keep it up this week….

I actually managed to do something in terms of this goal this week!

While I was waiting for a fried to return my call (whom I called as previously arranged only to find she was out for the evening), I decided to give reading The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail another try. I only made it through the second paragraph of the first, shorter, introduction before I was distracted by something shiny. I was struck by Lincoln’s tale of how he became interested in the Rennes-le-Château. And now I have a Barthesian essay bubbling in my brain. I wonder if there is an English translation of Le Trésor Maudit….

And then I pulled my journal out of my bag tonight.

So, the totals: 1 page of jot notes and 4 pages in my journal.

And I’m getting tired of not allowing myself any tea. Still, I’m doing a lot of brainstorming lately. I’m very bad at carving time from the day for writing, wasting a lot of time I could have spent writing.

Managed 5 minutes (122 words) of creative writing, though.

I didn’t check in with this goal last night – because I didn’t finish my page. I didn’t even start it until I was at work yesterday and, basically, had a 2-hr coffee break because the guy who was supposed to give us instructions for our new project was two hours late. I could have finished the page if I had begun writing in my journal at the beginning of the shift, but I spent more than an hour chatting with my colleagues and the new guy.

Anyways, I think that my procrastination did me in this week, as did adjusting to the new job, which is taking longer than I expected. So, two days without tea for me – at least the weather this week is supposed to be warm, so that I won’t want a warm drink at work. (Ha. Doesn’t sound like much of a consequence when I phrase it like that…. Ooops!)

I got more than a page this week – if I double space it. It’s not much, and I’m not sure where it’s going, if anywhere. But still, it’s much better than last week. I think I’ll be lenient with myself this week though, with the tea thing since I ended up accidentally going without tea for four days last week

So, I read the beginning of my rewrite of last year’s NaNo, hoping to get back into the groove. Did I? Not really. I changed some words here and there, made a few notes in the sidebar notepad. I’m lucky if I got ten or twenty words, if you count the sidebar. I have some ideas and I think I need more details. I underlined a significant portion of the small chunk I decided to work on – underlined to denote the necessity of serious reworking.

So, no tea for a couple days, and next week is Week One again. The tea thing might not be so bad, I’ve run out of some things necessary for a good cup of tea, sadly.

Taking a page from Miss Silva’s book, I didn’t work on anything new this week. Instead I revisited last November’s NaNoWriMo attempt and started to edit and rewrite it. For now I’ve decided to leave the Prologue alone, but I made it through what I had called Chapter One and halfway through Chapter Two and merged them into one chapter. I didn’t compare word counts on what was and what now is but the section I did complete was about 637 words, so a bit more than a page single-spaced.

I’ve been applying some of the things that Timothy Hallinan talked about here. I actually began by spending a fair chunk of time two or so days ago writing here. It’s interesting reading, providing something of a strategy to keep writing, to finish writing pieces that you start. So, I reviewed what I remembered of my initial and current intentions for the story. I’m still not sure that I’ll work on this one for this year’s NaNo. I still don’t feel as though my universe is complete enough, nor that it will be in time, for this November.

Tonight I also started researching some things to write a story around the song Fields of Athenry, something which probably has already been done but oh well.