What's Up? - Progress
Topic: WC - Progress Log





Tuesday 6:28pm 20Feb07

I realize I haven't given a progress report in quite some time. Probably months!?

I've been keeping track of my writing hours for 8 weeks now. I'm in my 9th week. I have yet to hit 21 hours in one week and I figure I will eventually. Of course my New Year hasn't started yet, It's a week Thursday. NINE MORE DAYS! At almost 43 years old I'm still a giggly excited child about my birthday, probably because my birthdays in my 40's have been the best so far...but I digress! Right now I count every thing I write, my blog entries, my journal and my novel work... at some point, that may change to just my novel work but we'll see.

I have 4 habits that I'm working toward:
1 - getting up at 4am at least five times a week. 4:30am is close enough, if all else fails. I originally wanted it to be 7 days a week but have since determined that everybody has to sleep in sometimes, especially a sleep loving girlfish!

2 - 1 hour nonstop writing - mind cleanse. Freeflowing all the junk and complaints and rants and funnies and pieces of gratitude. Vomiting every thing in my mind onto the page to free me to work on my writing without inhibitions and distractions.

3 - 1 hour nonstop writing - novel in progress. I just added this habit the other day after getting The Writing Coach's first five days of her ebook.

4 - Weekend Contest - "How much can I accomplish, if I commit?" I've been failing miserably on this one because of groceries and cooking and cleaning and laundry and goofing off and staring into space and napping and watching television ... you get the idea.

Last week I wrote more than 15,000 words in total which as any writers reading this sure know, that's writing to the max for even some full time writers. So I can't be mad at myself for not getting to the 21 hours a week. It will take a lot more discipline and persistence.

Last night, I was close to nodding off at the writing desks so I stopped and did a little Tae Bo and some crunches. I figure I can work in my work outs that way. Get a little shape happening and be ready, when the time comes and that man arrives. ha ha! I want the goals and the man!

On the television front, I've been real good. I've been programming my VCR for the week. I watched Heroes this morning because I have to. That show is FANTASTIC! If I don't watch Grey's Anatomy Thursday night then I'll watch it Friday morning. Naw! I'll watch it Thursday night. If it makes me cry I can go to sleep but going to work after I've been crying all morning just doesn't work for me. Eyes are all puffy. I'm super sensitive. I have no reserves left to be aggressive if I need to be and working with men a girlfish has to be aggressive sometimes. "Am I speaking Swahili? Don't make me tell you again!" ha ha

In the one hour nonstop writing for my novel, I'm finding ideas popping up for other chapters like crazy and I'm starting to see the full novel as if I'm peering over it all in a suspended out of body sort of way. That rocks!

What I've found about the Writing Coach's original 30 days that she did one day at a time back in June is that she really gives you permission or the focus to work on your novel and discover what you will need as you are writing it. It can be so daunting thinking about research and tone and viewpoint and all the mechanics of what goes into the novel. You can stop yourself before you even get any where. And that may be what has been happening to me over the years. Writing is work, no doubt about it but for me it's fun work and sometimes I forget that.

Having read her whole first draft when she posted it on her blog, I'd recommend it wholeheartedly. I'd even consider using her as a writing coach. She's in the U.K. though so I think the long distance calls could make me cry like a baby getting that phone bill. But we'll see once my finances are organized!

So that's me and the writing progress. I find the blogging comes in fits and spurts and that's okay. I wanted Writing Zazen to be more about using writing exercises (writing scales, as I like to call it) and that hasn't been happening as much as I wanted. This blog is about daily practice, sitting down everyday and writing what's in my thick shaved skull and thinking up challenges that I can add or move over to Writing Zazen.

I am focusing more on my real writing goals so some of my blog entries will be write offs. But there are days like today when I post more than one entry so hopefully one of them is worth something. It's not like you have to pay for this crap. Hey, I started to write the blogs to get me writing and I'm writing, with serious regularity. In my world, that's all that matters.

By the way, if you want to drop me a line, ask me a question or send me a comment but don't want to comment at the blog, my email is poeticpieces at gmail dot com. I don't check it daily but I check it. Just put writing2live in the subject line so I don't delete you as spam without having opened. I hate spam!

EY

Progress Log - September 2006
Topic: WC - Progress Log
Sunday 3:09pm 10Sept06

I have to admit that I haven't been doing as much work on White Wishes as I would like. I still get pulled away by household chores and the like. It's a continual work in progress trying to balance everything. There are things I have to do everyday without fail like braid my hair (otherwise I scare myself), make my juices (it's time consuming but for my health), and do some sort of work out (still feel like I'm not doing enough of that). I like to say that I could let my apartment go and not be too focused on being a clean freak but by the same token I can't be a dirt freak either. I'm continually trying to clear the clutter. sigh!

Enough with the excuses...

I am managing to blog pretty much everyday. The blogging is my writing scales. A musician practices everyday and a writer must do the same. I am doing the writing practice. I've also been keeping a hand written journal of thoughts and the like. And I've been writing poetry (my friend John calls his Riffing, I think I'm going to use/steal that term). Men always make me Riff. Riffing is a way of getting my thoughts out quickly so I can go and do what I need to do.

So overall I feel happy about what I'm accomplishing but I need to crack down on the novel. I still have to transcribe all the digital recordings I have that include ideas and comments and direction for White Wishes.

I want White Wishes completed to the point where I can step away from it in November for Nanowrimo and give it a good read through in December to work on the re-write.
There's my goal out there! Need to email that to myself, post it on my bathroom mirror and in my writing space and on the fridge and sit down and write like mad.

EY

Progress Log
Topic: WC - Progress Log
Wednesday 11:35am 9Aug06

I've been writing every day. With this blog, I'm managing to find a topic to discuss each day and mostly trying to find ways to link it to writing since that is the theme of this blog. With my other blog, I am still managing to throw an entry in here and there. It's with less regularity, mind you, but I hadn't planned on making it an everyday thing. As of late, the entries have been every couple days or so which is an improvement on once a week.

This weekend, I didn't get as much work done on White Wishes as I'd planned but I'm not beating myself up about it. I'm looking for ways to have that motivate me rather than beating myself down into a writing coma. I did walk with a book for research for White Wishes and have been reading that. So I'm never too far away from it.

Writing the blogs have kept me in the frame of mind to write. I look for opportunities to sneak in a post through out my days. I look at situations and current incidences throughout my days as possible blog fodder. My thought processes are geared foremost into writing material except for that odd fantasy of some hot man that crosses my path... ha ha.
It's a good plan for my overall writing.

Robert J. Sawyer writes two hours a day everyday. He says that if he's done those two hours by 11am then he has the whole day to play with. If he hasn't written by 10pm then he has to sit there until midnight to get those two hours done. It doesn't work for every writer of course, but it's nice to know what others do, how they get through it. What I seem to come across a lot is that most writers don't tend to write much more than two hours a day. Some, like Ray Bradbury, write a certain number of words, some count pages.

On a work day, I like to get up at 4am and write before I leave for work. I like the quiet darkness of the early morning. I like my morning mind that is more conducive to stream of consciousness, less apt to bombard me with my inner critic and I especially like the feeling that I've accomplished something before I start my day. There is nothing better than feeling like I've done all that I set out to do before I walk through the doors of my work office. I can give all my focus at work and not feel that underlying annoyance that I'm not accomplishing all that I want to in my private life. As of tomorrow morning, I'll be back to that schedule.

EY

Progress Log
Mood:  lazy
Now Playing: 112
Topic: WC - Progress Log
Thursday 3Aug06 5:33pm

Nulla dies sine linea - Pliny
"Never a day without a line."

As I did the dishes this morning I was thinking about how balanced my morning had been. I did my daily piece for this blog albeit a rather short piece. I worked on my novel White Wishes. I got all the things on my to do list done. I thought about starting a journal of my progress specifically what I do when things work out the way I want to. A bible, if you will, of what to replicate when things aren't exactly going to plan.

Which brought me back to Henriette Anne Klauser, Writing on Both Sides of the Brain (Breakthrough techniques for people who write).

Exercise 3 - Your Own Progress Log. Page 23
- Date your entries (include the time).
- Record information
- use rapid writing (write fast without thinking about it too much) to record what is happening to you so far. Where do you see yourself in your writing, and where would you like to be?
- Other things to include - stories that will come to you about how you learned to write - the good stories and the more painful ones about, how your writing was received, how it was rewarded, or what happened when it did not please the person in authority.

My story that came to me this morning was that my mother used to post my brother's drawings all over the house. As soon as you came up the stairs into our house you were assaulted by the beauty of his drawings. He was a superior artist, that's why I gave up on drawing.

As soon as anyone came to our house the comments went on and on about how talented my brother was. Then the looks in my direction that I felt said, "Too bad you didn't get any talent."

My poems couldn't be posted around the house like art work. My mother didn't think to mention, "Shelley writes poetry."
I was undiscovered, unrecognized, invisible. It used to bug the shit out of me. The value in what I did wasn't as translatable or as in your face as that beautiful art work.
I haven't thought about that in such a long time.

Sometimes I feel that I hold myself back with my writing. I don't do enough work. I haven't done enough work. It's like I need to unearth all those subliminal messages that made me feel like I was wasting my time. Find the genesis of that inner critic and kill it dead once and for all. If I can't kill it work through it. One of the blogs I read has writer interviews and in them the question is always asked about a writer's self doubts. I don't think I've ever read an interview where the writer didn't have self doubts.

I almost have to be the delusional American Idol contestant that causes the judges ears to bleed with the caterwauling he or she tries to pass for singing. The contestant will inevitably say, "I can sing. You don't know what you're talking about," when Simon Cowell says something like, "That is the worst noise I've ever heard in all 18 seasons."

"You don't know what you're talking about Simon!"

Perhaps I need to name my inner critic Simon and make that my new mantra, "You don't know what you're talking about Simon."

EY