Summary:

Another very productive week – my first seven-day ‘writing’ week of the year! Still struggling on the motivation and enthusiasm front, but pushing through in the hopes that achievement will unlock the joy.

 

Monday:

I made it to the cafe for the first time in quite a while. I managed to get up at my planned time of 8am and was at my usual table and ready to start at 9am, which seemed like a good start to the day.

I did a section of the current reflective novella, trying to comment more deeply, after some discussion with the author about my feedback.

Then I did my first GYWO discussion post of the year, about repairing and maintaining a healthy relationship with your writing – which felt very apropos to me at the moment!

I also submitted Legacy to two more agents, as all my previous submissions had passed their response deadline.

Then it was back to the reflective novella, to comment on the penultimate section.

I really wanted to keep to my intention of ticking everything off my list for today (and doing a decent amount of work on all of them, rather than just the minimum) so I pulled up the short story I’d been working on and wrote the next scene. I didn’t write much new fiction in 2022, so it felt hard but also good to work on this.

After lunch, I finished commenting on the current reflective novella and sent it back to the author for review and approval.

Then I went back to the Darkness outline and did some work on that. I still wasn’t really feeling it – but then I had some ideas during meditation class about potential subplots and came up with a way forwards I was a bit more excited about.

 

Tuesday:

My reflective novella client sent me the penultimate book so I read and commented on the first half of that this morning.

After lunch, it was the first of the resurrected Revision Club focus sessions! A couple of the other members turned up and it was fun to catch up with them.

I worked on the Darkness outline, setting out the scenes in order and coming up with ideas for a couple of subplots. I ended up with a rough list of 63 scenes, which should add up to 78,000 words – which felt pretty good, if rather daunting! In an ideal world, that’s 21 weeks of solid work at one scene per ‘work’ day each week. And, since I’ve tenuously allotted myself 26 weeks to write the draft (February to July inclusive), that seems eminently doable, doesn’t it?

Since the other Revision Clubbers were keen to carry on for a bit, I went back to the superhero short story and added a few more words, though it already felt like I’d done a lot of work today! I also did another agent submission for Legacy and wrote a review of the immersive theatre experience we went to over the weekend.

 

Wednesday:

I finished an audiobook and wrote my review.

 

Thursday:

I completed comments on the penultimate reflective novella and sent it back to the client for review and approval, clearing my slate of client work before going away next week, so that felt good. If only I had some projects lined up for when I get back…

In the afternoon, I knuckled down and finished the first draft of my superhero short story. It wasn’t as good as I’d hoped, but at least it was done. I posted it on the TL;DR Slack for feedback comments, with a view to improving it before the submission deadline at the end of the month.

Then I went back to Darkness and updated my outline on World Anvil. The subconscious crew had done their work well and presented me with some additional ideas for my approach, so I made a note of those. I also came up with some more notes as I was transferring the outline, so I added those in too.

I had a flash of inspiration during my afternoon meditation class (that seems to happen quite a lot – which is both good and bad…) and started a whole new short story for an upcoming submission opportunity.

 

Friday:

I worked on my new short story for a bit this morning and also read a story by one of the GYWO writers and provided some feedback.

 

Saturday:

I logged onto the One Story Writing Circle, introduced myself and set my year and month goals, for both writing Darkness and submitting completed stuff.

One of the GYWO writers asked me about what I’m working on and that prompted me to compose a pretty decent pitch paragraph for Darkness, which was great!

 

Sunday:

I made a couple of amendments to the superhero story, based on feedback from TL;DR and also inspiration about a new title.

I also did a ton of submissions, since there were a load with deadlines at the end of January.