My mid-week report to you that covers the three major commitments I’ve made: to write, to edit, and to read.
Writing
3k words or so on “My My, Hey Hey”, the superhero story for the 5 Second Rule open call. I was discussing this with my wife last night, and I think that I’m going to structure it differently than I had originally intended. I’m going to try and start it in medias res - not in the middle of the action, but in the middle of the story. It will end up being more of a mystery than a tale, which is OK. If I do things correctly, you’ll be discovering what’s going on along with my main character.
No work on Sigils this week. I need to get “My My, Hey Hey” out of my system and then return to that.
I did come across something that’s helped me with my mental attitude. A discussion on LinkedIn where a musical artist talked about noodling around before a recording session. His point was that you absolutely can’t expect to walk into something like that cold and just turn on creativity; you need to warm up first. Limber up your fingers, warm up your vocal cords, what have you.
This really hit home for me. It resonated with something I have been thinking about these past two weeks. There’s a paralysis that can set in when you feel like you have to be on point because you’re doing something important. On the other hand, when you give yourself permission to fool around - when you can dare to be stupid - then you can give yourself permission to create without those fears. I’m going to focus more on that. The idea that even if I don’t feel like I can do a good job right now, that’s OK. Because keeping your creativity flowing is sometimes the job for the day.
And sometimes you come up with a neat riff. Case in point: it was a throwaway line that made me rethink how I wanted to do “My My, Hey Hey”. I could have spent an evening feeling lousy because I couldn’t write the scene I wanted, but instead, I threw out 4-5 interesting ideas. I’m actually going to be incorporating all of them into the story now - but if I hadn’t made that decision to just noodle around, I wouldn’t have them to play with.
Commitments for this week:
BICHOK. Want to go 6/7 this week.
Finish the first draft of “My My, Hey Hey”. No, really, I mean it this time…
Return to Sigils and get 2-3 scenes wrapped up.
Editing
No editing this week. I still need to redo my editing schedule on Sigils in light of what I’ve learned about how I work over the past few months.
So this week, I will:
Revise my editing schedule.
Keep to my established editing schedule
Finish off the TODO list for Sigils
Reading
I started (re)-reading Legends and Lore of Western Pennsylvania by Thomas White. This is a favorite of mine and something I return to frequently for inspiration. There’s a lot of weirdness in Western PA. Murder swamps, lost bombers, lost revolutionary war treasures, and haunted islands, just to name a few. There is a whole series of books in the American Lore series. Each one I’ve seen has been short, but full of interesting and fascinating information. Recommended.
I have a couple of stories I need to provide feedback for from my writer’s group. They’re both cued up and ready for me to read in between events today, so I’m hoping to get those done tonight/tomorrow.
Commitments for this week:
Keep reading history.
Two writer’s group critiques
Other
I need to create a publishing schedule for #TeamAndMore posts. I did one yesterday on calls, contests, and congratulations. I think I may split those out into separate weeks. Calls on the first Tuesday of the month, Contests on the second, and so on.
Day Job continues to be very busy. Thankfully, I feel like I’m starting to get a handle on the new code base. Aside from that, April is turning out to be a (cocaine) bear of a month. Lots of events for my youngest (this is her senior year in high school). Family comes first, and some days I’m going to have to settle for (maybe!) a few dozen words in the short space between “I’m finally done with the day” and “unconscious”.
So that’s it. See you next week!