Friday, April 25, 2025

Short stuff!

Welcome, I’m Mary Louisa Locke, the author of the USA Today best-selling Victorian San Francisco Mystery series and the Caelestis Science Fiction series. In this daily newsletter, I reflect on my life as an indie author trying to age gracefully. Occasionally, I will also publish some of my shorter fiction in this newsletter to read for free.

Daily Diary, Day 1696:

Yesterday, as I expected was a little different, in part because with my noon zoom meeting there was no way I could get in a second walk before lunch. In addition, somehow Wednesday night I tweaked my back, so all day there was a sore spot in lower left back. I felt fine during the first walk, but sitting, not so much. So, by late afternoon, I started on advil. This morning, so far, there was only a little twinge, and after yoga this morning and cleaning it seems to have gone.

When I look back at my notes, I saw it has been well over 2 months since I last took any advil…so that feels like really good progress. Normally (ie before last year), I might find a need to take some advil every couple of months, for a headache or a pulled muscle or arthritis flare up somewhere, but seldom for no more than a day.

Despite back, I continued to follow the pattern that I established this week, which is routinely alternating between reading and writing. So, when I would hit a new scene or chapter in the book I was reading, instead of looking at email, etc. I would open up file and start to write on Mr. Wong to the Rescue. I would do that for about 20-25 minutes, then stop, often mid-paragraph, and open Kindle and read. Since the book is a bit of a page-turner, I found the desire to get back to it actually motivated me to continue to concentrate on my writing, with the reading as my reward.

The effect of this on Wednesday was that I actually got over 1000 words written, and even yesterday, in the midst of doing chores, walking and getting ready for the noon zoom meeting, I also got a couple of chapters in my book read, and 400 words written! Both which also helped me ignore the twitch in my back. By end of the day I got in the second walk before dinner and over 600 words total.

Today, I’ve done yoga, cleaned, ordered groceries, scheduled a phone call right after lunch, and as soon as I post this I will do first walk. We also scheduled to get our Covid boosters this afternoon, so I will see if, when I get back I will be up for second walk (since with grocery arrival, might not get it in before lunch.) I will be very curious to see if I get much reading or writing done this very busy day!

Some more spring photos!

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