Write every day

...about doing NaNoWriMo this year. Except…I don’t have an idea. Maybe I should file this entry under “take more risks.”

Still, the prospect is kind of exciting, and daunting. I’ve never done NaNo and not finished. Plus, I’ve got this trilogy to complete. Could be good. Could be a disaster. Guess I’ll find out.

Started a seminar class called “Revising the Novel” and our homework was to write a query letter for our book. I don’t feel like this counts as writing but maybe it does.

I’ve been working with The Writer’s Book of Matches (http://www.freshboiledpeanuts.com/writersbookofmatches.html) and have managed three different exercises in 3 days. The writing isn’t great, but this evening after a frustrating day I was able to come home and drop right onto the page. For me this is an achievement.

I’ve been working with Julia Cameron’s “Right to Write” for a while now (not true: I work with it, then stop, then start over from the beginning, then stop, then start over again) but consistently have been doing morning pages. Yet, they no longer feel like they’re useful.

Some mornings they energize, help me focus and feel less coiled and expectant. Some mornings they just seem like self-centered whining. I’m wondering if I’m like a battery that has been charged to a certain point and is no longer able to charge to full capacity. Are morning pages my charge limit? I hope not.

I’m working my way through Julia Cameron’s “Right to Write” It’s scary but productive. Getting better about pages and about doing small fiction exercises. I consider this improvement.

Took a Flash class and that sucked up a lot of time. Then I realized while on vacation that it had literally been a year since I’d done the edit on my last book…the one I promised myself I was going to finish polishing and try to get published…in 2008.

I need to recommit to this in a big, serious way but in a way that allows me to make mistakes, write badly, and not get strangled by the big seriousness of it all.

It’s day 13 of a brand new year and so far I’ve done 12 days worth of pages and probably 6 writing exercises. Incremental improvement. I find I like my life better when I’m writing fiction, even if it is only 20 minutes/2 pages at a time.

A fiction class and NaBloPoMo were definitely not a good idea. My well is very dry in some ways and yet I’m managing eight or nine hundred words a day in blog entries that are when I read them later amazingly coherent.

What does this teach me:
that just writing every day isn’t enough.
that I need fuel for my fire if the writing is going to be anything satisfying.
that I really need a nap (OK, possibly not relevant but possibly crucial as well)

I’m taking a writing class, Gotham’s Fiction I, instead of doing NaNoWriMo this year (I knew I would be too wiped out from the summer of working hundreds of hours of overtime and no vacation) but it’s proving to be a little less challenging than I hoped (OK, so it’s only week 2 but still).

So I signed up for NaBloPoMo:http://www.nablopomo.com/ 31 blog posts in November. Sounds easy enough. I’ve done it before.

But I still don’t find out if I’m on federal jury duty for six weeks until the middle of next week.

Definitely “or both”

We have a blog that I’m involved in managing for work…and over the summer I’ve neglected my own blog (really: 10 entries over four months!)

I’ve given myself a challenge: post one more time/week than I’m forced to interact with my boss’ boss’ blog at work. If we keep our editorial schedule that will get me up to 4 entries per week. Thing of it is, I’ve gotten bogged down in the idea of what “should” be a blog entry.

It doesn’t have to be 1,000 profound words. Sometimes something short and sweet says it all. Sometimes it’s a photo with a comment. The key is to write something, and often.