What a week! I had no more time than usual, occasionally less due to skipped/combined naps, and yet somehow, magically, I managed to write 5,000 words! That’s 1k/day! HOW, you ask?
I’ve finally embraced the questionable juggernaut that is GoogleDocs. I got it set up on my phone this past weekend on the advice of So You Want to Be a Writer? by Allison Tait and Valerie Khoo, as a way to write in those little moments when you aren’t at your computer or have a notepad handy. I put in chunks of my bigger projects (current scenes, etc.), and drafts of short stories I was loosely working on, and then when Goldbug fell asleep on me, or we were waiting in the car while the boys picked out a Christmas tree, or when I had a few minutes before reading to B-Bug at night, I could plunk away on something. And boy, did that add up! I’m flabbergasted, actually. I had a couple days of decent morning naps that allowed me to rack up a few extra thousand, but I chipped out quite a bit with my thumbs (need to find some good thumb exercises, because until Santa swings by with a bluetooth keyboard for my phone, it’s all on them).
It feels SO GOOD. Not all the words are fantastic, and there’s definitely some scenes I won’t be using as they’re currently written, but I do think I managed a bit of a breakthrough with the novel rewrite which feels AWESOME. So I’ll take it. Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth, right?
I also stumbled across my Five Year Goals from way back in 2015, and I’m pleased to say that while there are some I haven’t hit yet (submitting a novel to agents, for example–I’m far closer than I was back in 2015, but still a ways to go), I’ve gotten pretty darn close, even with a lot of unexpected life twists and turns. I’ll be posting a more extensive look at those goals (and new goals for the next five years) sometime near the turn of the year, but let’s just say I’m not too discouraged. Small changes and habits have made a tremendous difference in my output and my success rate, and I’ve been having a ball with the AWC courses, which are filling in a lot of craft-gaps, hopefully setting me up for better success in the future.
But all in all, a really solid week. Hope everybody’s staying safe and healthy and looking forward to 2020 wrapping up at LONG LAST. XD
Maggie Slater 