Summary:

First full week of UK lockdown, which initially looked like it wouldn’t be a productive one on the writing front. But this was turned around by fantastic people running workshops and retreats online, and a series of three days at the end of the week where I made real progress on fiction for the first time in ages.

 

Tuesday:

A friend of mine who normally runs face-to-face freewriting workshops set up a virtual version via conference call this afternoon, so I dialled in and it was a lovely 90 minutes.

 

Wednesday:

I did some submissions.

I also wrote a couple of reviews and helped Bear with his first post about our recent trip to Centre Parcs.

 

Friday:

I edited the most recent podcast episode.

Later, I sat down to try and to a proper session. I started with a freewriting prompt, which got the juices flowing a bit. I edited some existing pieces to fit the requirements of an upcoming competition.

Charlie from Urban Writers Retreat sent an email out about some online retreats she was planning to host over the weekend, so I put together a plan for what I wanted to work on at the first one.

Then I went through my unassigned pieces and found places to submit them.

 

Saturday:

I logged on to the UWR online retreat and posted my goals for the day.

Then I started off by finally cracking on with some more of the edits for Colours. I completed two columns on my editing plan by the end of the first session, which was an excellent start and the first progress I’ve made on Colours in quite some time.

In the second session, I brainstormed and wrote notes for two upcoming short story submission opportunities and also wrote a blog post about my experience of the lockdown so far.

Later in the day, I completed the first quarter reflection exercise in my writing diary and planned my writing schedule for April.

Great day all round!

 

Sunday:

Slow start today, but I logged my intentions on the UWR online retreat, made a list and set to work.

I brainstormed ideas for my prompt from the TL;DR Flash Fiction competition.

I considered the next edit suggestion for Colours and added some notes to my editing plan.

I helped Bear with the next post in his Center Parcs series.

Later, I wrote the first scene of a new short story, for an upcoming anthology call.

I finished off with another couple of submissions.

So, another great day, which didn’t initially look like it would be, but became so by slowly and steadily working my way through a very specific task list.