Saturday, May 25, 2019

Back to Work

I started this blog post last week but…

Daniel (Webster) defines procrastinate as ‘to put off doing [something] until a future time.’ The online Urban Dictionary plans to define the word next week.

As a retiree of almost two months, schedules and goals are self-imposed. As a hobby writer, I have no publication deadlines. I started writing a few years ago when I’d stopped watching television, but the time-killing habit crept slowly back into my life. I took a clear look at the calendar this week and saw my writing goal of publishing one Detective McGregor mystery a year will be hard to accomplish if I continue dawdling.

The daily writing habit I’d embraced during April’s Camp NaNoWriMo evaporated. I know books don’t write themselves; they require work and seat time in front of a computer. I’m getting back on the writing bicycle. I haven’t forgotten how to write—accomplish small goals daily. Vacation is over. It’s time to get back to work.

Wednesday, May 1, 2019

The Morning After

It’s May 1, and NaNoWriMo’s April Camp session is over. The good thing about NaNoWriMo is that you don’t answer to anyone except yourself. For me, that’s also the bad thing.

I started the month with a goal of 30 thousand new words, enough, when added to the existing draft’s word count, to push it to the 50 thousand words considered to be a novel. Half way through the month, I reduced my goal to 15 thousand. I wanted a Winner badge on my Profile page even if I didn’t reach my true goal of finishing the draft. Yesterday, I felt like I’d “sold out.”

During April, I restructured and revised the existing draft to reflect the addition of a major conflict the detective faces while out of his jurisdiction; wrote over 15 thousand new words for the current story; and wrote several thousand more words developing the plot for a future book in the series. Yesterday, I felt like shrugging my shoulders and saying “Oh, well,” but today I’ve given myself permission to write slowly and be proud of what I accomplish.