Wednesday, November 6, 2013

Go Left, Young Writer: ROW Round 4 Check-In #5


It’s a new month! It almost feels like a new, shiny round, since I broke my main goals out by month this time, mostly due to NaNoWriMo. I woke up to about 3 inches of snow on my car this morning, and the unexpected feeling of gratitude that I’d had a flat tire on Sunday. I wasn’t particularly happy about the tire on Sunday, but if it hadn’t been flat, I wouldn’t have had to change it out for the donut spare. And if I hadn’t had to put on that donut, I wouldn’t have made the time to go out to my father-in-law’s house to have my snow tires put on. It took me, my husband AND our roommate to get the tire changed - apparently, the summer tires were not original to the car, and the tool provided to loosen the lug nuts didn’t fit. After going through three of our socket sets to find one that would work, we finally had to ask our roommate, and thankfully, he had the right size in his toolkit. So yeah, not really the way I wanted to spend my Sunday afternoon, but I’m so grateful I had my snow tires on this morning.

Anyway, writing. Here’s how my goals shook out this week:

1) NaNoWriMo - 50,000 words
The good news is, I’ve written over 10,000 words already this month - I got off to a great start by taking the 1st of November off work and banging out 3200 or so, and then another 2000 on Saturday. The bad news is, over 5000 of the words I’ve written this month are on a project completely unrelated to my NaNo project. I guess I’d call it a fan fic of sorts, since it involves a character I created for a Star Wars roleplaying game I played in a couple of years ago, and at least a couple characters from the Expanded Universe (that’s the mass of books, comics, etc that have been created outside the official Star Wars movies, for those of you who are not Star Wars nuts). On the one hand, I’m somewhat irritated that I’ve spent this much time on a project the will never see the light of day instead of my original work that I may actually have a chance of publishing someday. On the other hand, I haven’t felt this compelled to write something for a long time. I wasn’t actually sure I could feel that anymore.

The more I think about it, I think the thing to do is just keep writing the thing, since it’s insisting upon being written, dump it into my NaNo project, and count those words. After all, I’ve already declared myself a rebel - writing short stories without even a theme to tie them together instead of a novel - and plenty of people write fan fiction for NaNoWriMo. I think ignoring this impulse to write would be a mistake. And maybe being so passionate about this piece will spill over into my other stories once it’s finished.

2) Post Writing-Post Round Up weekly
Fail. I’ve been feeling like I’m about to come down with something for a couple of weeks now, and after my super productive Friday and Saturday, I decided it was completely okay to have a lazy Sunday morning. I fully expected I’d still have time to put the Round-Up together and get a couple thousand more NaNo words in on Sunday afternoon (loving the NaNo word sprints on Twitter, by the way!). Enter the flat tire. C’est la vie. That will teach me to do important things first and be lazy second I guess.

3) Visit and comment on at least 5 other ROWer's blogs per week.
Failed you again fellow ROWers - that was another thing I should have done Sunday morning. I think I did manage to actually respond to most of the comments on my own blog though, so that’s something.

Fitness Goals:

Still going to the gym about 4 times a week - either to a class, or to workout on my own (I’m using the workouts I got during the Fit Challenge, with some modifications like adding weight or reps as needed). On Friday, since I had the day off from work, I broke up my frantic NaNoing to take in a yoga class, which was amazing. I haven’t been to a yoga class for a long time, and it’s just really good for my body and soul. Thanks to the fit challenge and consistently getting stronger, I was actually able to do a back bend. The last time I tried that, I couldn’t even lift myself off the ground, so I was really pleased.

Healthy eating - well, I’m trying. I think I’m doing okay. I try to follow the 80/20 rule, where 80% of what you eat is for health, and the other 20% can be things you just enjoy. Sometimes I think it turns out more like 60/40, but I’m still doing a lot better than I was.

Anyway, that’s my week! I hope all of you are doing fabulously with your own goals, and having a great week!

If you want to see what other ROWer's are up to, you can find them here.

0 comments: