So here we are and Ciage (me) is barely over the halfway mark.
If I wasn’t able to produce 50k in a month regularly, I might be worried. I very seldom do, but rather than those people with their set schedules for writing, I’ve always had to flex and adapt. So besides the main project (see below) I got work done on that kiddie sequel as well as a bit more on that fantasy I’ve been doing hard copy (basically writing it in an old journal for ten mintues here and there randomly). So nothing done, lots of in progress.
I know at the beginning of the year I said my resolution was to draw horses better. Haha – I mean, I have been drawing in general more, and my inking has gotten much better. Thing is, horses, without reference, still suck. With reference – a little better. Nothing to stick up on the fridge, but, better then they have been.
But for writing, my biggest challenge was for this specific project was writing an unreliable narrator with a villain protagonist. I found my biggest challenge was staying in that voice, and it got to the point where she was so disagreeable I was reminded of CS Lewis talking about writing The Screwtape Letters and how distasteful the project was. I really enjoyed TSL, but now I finally get where he’s coming from. So now, rereading his book and I feel that I have much more direction then I did before. Mine’s a novella, so there’s really no other excuse as I let myself work on other projects as well, but I’m about 22k into a 35-40k piece of prose and because I’m working on the voice slowly (which is another huge change for me) I find it’s flexing the writing muscles I don’t tend to use as much.
But yeah – even 1700 words a day was doable. Thing was, or rather, is, is that I’ve been working a lot. I am in a position to pick up extra shifts and even work on creative projects during our down time (I get a lot of reading/editing done on shift) but it seems like there’s been less and less time for general goofing off. I noticed that the days were all blurring together, so I picked up a calorie counter app. I’ve been counting calories since high school and for the most part it worked (although I probably gained 10 lbs in paramedic school – three of us were non-smokers at the end of everything, hallo stress) but I’m finding that with rounders and not expecting to go in, when I start getting really tired is when I’m craving greasy food. Plus, if I’m coming in and having dinner at 9 am and breakfast at 4pm due to night shifts, I’ve been all over the place. This app isn’t perfect, but I like that it’s ballparking my nutrition. I’ve been honestly trying to eat much more greens and substituting beans into my diet, but the hard part about that is that beans actually take a while to prepare. It’s usually cool if I’m letting ’em soak for the day and then I throw them in the crockpot over night, but any medic will tell you that one might have the bestest salad in the fridge at home and you won’t see it for sixteen hours because you failed to throw it in your bag before you left on a quick run to town.
Basically excuses excuses – been tired, I know I’m burnt out, but if I remember last year correctly, December will be crazy and then everyone has bills in January, so I have like four weeks to go and then my easy OT will dry up. I have been focusing more on editing projects up, plus I still want to take an editing course (I took a few in Uni, but it’s been a few years) and my goal has been to send out four projects by year’s end for publication. Three out, two pending. The two pending can be done, but I suppose I ought to stop procrastinating and get back to editing.
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