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, including my struggles to maintain a balanced life, what I listen to, read, and watch for entertainment, and occasional bits of information I’ve gleaned from doing the research for my novels.
Daily Diary, Day 1227:
Yesterday, when I added pranayama yoga (breathing) to my regular day of exercise, I ended up spending 2 hours and a half doing some sort of mild exercise, so I guess I should be pleased that I also got 555 words written.
Today, as usual for Thursdays, I have a busy day planned, including two phone meetings after my noon zoom meeting. Sometimes these Thursday meetings eat into the time I have to do Pilates, and the meetings will take up all the afternoon, so I don’t expect to get as much writing or exercise accomplished today, but lots of service and social contact with others! Again, its all about balance.
In addition, I am feeling so satisfied by the variety of the kinds of exercise I am doing, each in manageable chunks, that I feel more relaxed about how much I do in any one day. Now all I have to do is maintain this pattern and enjoy the way it is making me feel stronger day-to-day.
Not feeling quite so satisfied with the pace of my writing, however. The main problem I’ve noticed is that I am having trouble not editing as I go along, even though this probably slows the process. That would be all right if I was sure this will shorten the editing process once I’m done with the draft. But I’m not certain of this. So, I am going to try harder going forward to setting a timer and not taking a break (to look at emails, etc) until the timer goes off (and no editing as I go along.)
Once again, I’m pleased with the level of response with the poll I put out on Tuesday. I already have 72 people who have answered, and there is one more day for people to go in and answer the two questions. I will have some more questions to ask (and discussion of these results) in Saturday’s post.
We woke up to very high winds again, and streets wet, but not as cold (cloud cover keeps the day’s heat in somewhat). This meant I wasn’t as cold on the walk (hat and scarf did their work) and now I have an hour and a half to some writing in before the rest of the day’s activities.
My step-sister Alice sent me 3 Christmas amaryllis bulbs for the holiday, one had a shoot that had started and got sort of warped in the shipping, but it is the one that has now bloomed and the color is fantastic!
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