Summary:

 

Lots of focus on writing this week, but I perhaps overestimated how much my brain would be prepared to put up with. It’s good to have lots of things to work on, but I need to be realistic about what I can achieve, and also make sure I schedule in time to relax!

 

Tuesday:

 

I created a new tracking spreadsheet for both words and number of days worked on writing projects in 2018. My GYWO pledge for this year is 120 days, but I’m hoping to exceed that by quite a bit, and I’m still going to track my words as well.

 

I posted my final reviews of 2017 and also totalled my reviewing stats for the year.

 

I helped Bear post his photos from New Year.

 

I made a comprehensive list in my Self Journal for tomorrow’s planned full writing day.

 

I found and joined a fanfiction prompt comm on Dreamwidth because I’d like to write more fanfiction this year as a regular thing, and the previous weekly prompt competition I took part in seems to have ceased. I don’t know where I’m going to find the time for this, but I decided to subscribe for a bit anyway to see what happens.

 

I submitted a short piece to a literary magazine.

 

Wednesday:

 

I set off for Good and Proper early, so as to get a full day’s project work done before dinner in town.

 

I had an ambitious list on the first page of my Self Journal, and launched in with the next two scenes of Colours. I really have no idea what I’ve got with that, but it’s trucking along nicely, with me planning two or three scenes ahead each time. At some point, I’ll have to give it a read-through to see it if works, and then properly plan out the second half, but I’m happy just adding new words at the moment.

 

One of the things I want to add to my usual scheduled writing time this year is reading reference books about writing, so I finished a chapter of Wonderbook and wrote notes on it.

 

I’d decided I wanted to keep up with some short, speedy composition while working on the two novels, so I brainstormed some ideas for this week’s Hour of Writes prompt (A to Z). I then tried freewriting a possible entry and came up with something completely different to any of my notes. It wasn’t great, but there were some bits I liked and it at least allowed me to feel like I had created something new, which was complete. I’m not expecting to get a very high score for it, but never mind.

 

Then I went through my revision notes for Artisan and made a structured plan with the series of steps I need to take to create a new outline for the next draft. It felt good to put this into a proper list, so it felt more like an achievable project, rather than just a huge and insurmountable void.

 

I moved tracks again and wrote a brief piece of fanfiction, based on one of the day’s prompts in Fic Promptly. New year, new fandom – My Little Pony, of course!

 

I went back to my Self Journal and completed a to-do list for my next scheduled writing day on Saturday, as well as reflecting on today’s accomplishments.

 

I finished up an awesomely productive day by typing up some notes from an old notebook, and thus achieved progress on all the different types of writing projects I had planned to do over the course of the day.

 

Friday:

 

Charlie from Urban Writers Retreat always starts the year by running what she calls Writer’s Block Detox, which consists of daily writing prompts emailed to those taking part for a month. The idea is to set a timer for five minutes and just free write whatever comes to mind. I certainly don’t have a problem with writer’s block at the moment, but I decided to take part anyway, because it’s useful to loosen up the writing muscles in this way, and fun to produce very short, random bits of fiction that are unconnected to my mammoth novel projects. So, today, I took a few minutes out of my working day to complete today’s prompt.

 

Saturday:

 

I went through the annotated version of Artisan with my husband’s comments on it, changed various things in the current text, and added new sections to the master revision plan. It seemed like an awful lot of work still to do, but I’m quite excited to get back into it.

 

I completed one review of an audiobook I finished this week.

 

I did the Detox prompt of the day, which had a very different feel to yesterday and didn’t produce as many words, but was still interesting.

 

I did my marking for Hour of Writes – I’d forgotten about this aspect of the competition when I decided to start doing it again, but it’s not too much of a chore, really.

 

Charlie and Amie, who ran the Six Month Novel Programme last year, sent me a book about editing for Christmas, so I read the first chapter and made notes.

 

I didn’t get nearly as much done as I would have done out of the flat for the day, but it was progress at least.

 

Sunday:

 

In the morning, I reviewed my plan for Artisan and saw that it was good.

 

I also read the next chapter of the self-editing book, and added the various opportunities from this month’s Writing Magazine to my rolling submissions spreadsheet.

 

Despite the desire to stay in my warm flat and just watch TV for the rest of the day, I went out early to a Let’s Write Together session. I started with today’s Writers Detox prompt, and then went on to write some more Colours.

 

The other people attending the writing session either didn’t turn up, or didn’t spot me in the crowded pub, and the environment wasn’t proving conducive to productivity, so I left after about an hour. I thought about trying to do more when I got home but decided I was trying to do too much with my weekend and gave myself the rest of the day off to relax instead.