THAT’S RIGHT, you heard it here first, kids! I’m ACTUALLY DOING a Sunday Circle! (*stunned silence* *roars of applause!*) Okay, but in all honesty, I’ve been so bad about checking in for the last…two…ish…months? Some of that was because the project I was working on completely fell apart, and I realized I was going to have to go back to the outline drawing board (again), and I was just too depressed to talk about it, and the other part was 1) illness (#preschoolplague), 2) holidays, 3) travel immediately after holidays, and then since then we’ve had some health-issuey things for me, which THANKFULLY YESTERDAY we got the just-about-all-clear on, so thank goodness. The stress of that hanging over my head probably took two years off my life. But we’re good now! SO YAY!
Also, motivated by the general gloom of last week, I managed to submit a story for the first time in months, and took out a subscription for a month to Duotrope, which I’ve been meaning to do for ages, if only to keep submitting top-of-mind. It’s harder to ignore that step when I have to pay something to remind me I’m not doing it.
What I’m working on this week: This coming week, I’m trying to wrestle out a few logic nuggets on the WiP novel that I just can’t seem to get my head around, and it’s a big enough logic nugget that I really need to understand it before I plunge into Draft 3, because I’ve been avoiding it for the past two drafts, and that. has. not. helped. But I think I’m close, just need to spend the brain time on it.
What’s inspiring me this week? I’ve been working my way through The Artist’s Way these past couple weeks, which has been a very interesting process. I’m afraid I fell off the exercises wagon last week because of all the health-scare crazy (though I did keep up morning pages, so there’s that), but I’m going to try to start up again this weekend. I’ve been hard to inspire this week, with my head in the dark clouds, but I did just read Angela Slatter’s “Cuckoo” and Carrie Vaughn’s “Fishwife” in the Year’s Best antho I’m working through (focusing on stories 5k and below for reference), and both were great examples of what you can do in such a short space. I’ve also been mainlining The Marvellous Mrs. Maisel which has absolutely been the laugh I needed to get me through the last week. We also re-watched How to Train Your Dragon with Bug, and not only is that a fun flick, but I was mostly tickled with how excited he was about how Hiccup INVENTS and BUILDS things. (This from the boy who when we asked him, post-Back to the Future, if he wanted to be Marty, he said, No, I wanna be Doc. Future mad scientist perhaps?)
What action do I need to take/What’s getting in my way this week? I’m going to go back to what’s getting in my way, because for some reason, the action-version of the question just doesn’t really work for me right now. As for what’s getting in my way, fairly clear: I need to reestablish my daily writing habit from 8:30-10:30. I did pretty well the last couple days, but I’ve been out of the habit for a while, and I need to get back to it. Part of this challenge is how to fit in morning pages, because right now I’m squeezing them into the half-hour before that (barely), and by this point, I recognize I am not getting up earlier to do them: Bug snuggles in the AM are too blissful to cut short!
Maggie Slater 