Summary:

On every day but Monday, I intended to go through some of my filled-up writing project notebooks and type up anything I want to keep or work on further.  But I’ve been very low on sleep this week and found it impossible to motivate myself to do this, despite having plenty of time.  I have subsequently felt very unproductive as the week has gone on, even though Monday was very good.

My scheduled writing sessions in the week are great – but I think I need to consider dedicating more time at home to writing projects or writing admin as well.  After all, just because I’ve scheduled a writing session doesn’t mean I can’t work on stuff at other times as well!.

 

Monday:

Ann was initially unavailable for our usual writing date, so I got up early and headed into town to see if I could recreate a productive atmosphere on my own.  I went to Good & Proper in Clerkenwell, which proved very conducive to achieving this, with a great range of tea, friendly staff, comfortable seating, free wifi, and nommy food.

I started off by writing reviews of the three films I saw yesterday at the London Film Festival.

For the last couple of weeks, I’ve been completing image-based prompts from Seempli, which have been tremendous fun, and have certainly made me more observant of my surroundings, and more open to viewing things in a creative way.  Today’s prompt also involved a writing aspect, asking me to compose a passage of exactly fifty words, inspired by my photo.  Writing to a specific, very small word count is always an interesting exercise, and I really enjoyed completing it.  I also wrote a blog post about the site, highly recommending it.

Ann managed to join me after all, two hours into my planned mammoth writing session, which definitely kept me at it longer than I would have done otherwise.

I finished the first draft of the short story I started last Monday.  The competition deadline is 31 October, so I planned to run it past Write Club for feedback before submission.

I did a first pass on an old story that I want to expand to meet a competition word count.  I’ll need to come back to it again to add in a bit more, but I don’t want to ruin it by putting in unnecessary material, so I’m taking it slowly.

Lastly, I brainstormed the opening of what used to be the comic book series idea, gradually preparing to break new ground by actually starting the narrative.

So, overall, it was an extremely productive five hours!

 

Friday:

I spent a highly enjoyable hour on the phone with my Write Club buddies.  They confirmed what I had feared – that the competition entry I finished on Monday is more of an anecdote than a short story.  So, we brainstormed ways to make it more dramatic, and ways to bring the characters more to life, giving me plenty to think about.  It will need a complete re-write, but it will be improved out of all recognition once that’s done.