Weekly Writing Intentions: January 14, 2023
Daily Diary, Day 865:
Mostly, what I want to achieve this week is to duplicate this past week's success in having a good balance to my life. This past week, despite a day where our short trip to meet up with good friends meant a short writing day, I still achieved a total 5061 words, so I made my goal of 5000 words a week. My intention is to meet that goal this coming week as well.
This puts the manuscript currently at 111,500 words, and it looks to me like that I will end up with about 40 chapters (currently on chapter 33). This is much more like the length of my historical mysteries. Still holding out hope I will be able to cut a good deal in editing, but one of the great things about being an indie author is that I can tell the story I want to tell, not what an agent or a publisher wants me to tell. Then it is up to readers if I achieved my goal of telling a good story. My last historical mystery novel was nearly 140,00 words and it currently has a 4.6 star ranking on Amazon, so I know that in general my readers are ok with longer stories.
This past week, despite this trip and the obstacle of rain, I did get some exercise done everyday, averaging 70 minutes a day. I started this week well, with 55 minutes of thorough cleaning and a 50 mins walk today. I made sure I got the walk in before today's rain started and I am hoping there will be a bit of a break tomorrow, before the next storm, so I can have at least a short walk.
This week I also had a fair number of phone calls, including a delightful catch-up with my oldest friend in a 2 hour call last evening. We have been fast friends for 45 years, although we have lived in the same city for only two short times. We both got our PhD's in history, had careers as professors, have daughters and grandchildren (she has 3, I have 2) and we are both in our 70s, and we both are writing--she is working on a non-fiction book. And we can find a lot to talk and laugh about.
Needless to say, I hope to have more of these phone calls next week that keep me tied to a wider community.
And for next week I will continue to devote time to listen to my audiobooks (I am really, really enjoying the Flavia mystery, the narrator does such a wonderful job of the voice of a precocious 11 year old girl.)
If I achieve all these goals I will be very content.
So, now for some pictures of the weather! The first is this morning on my walk, still some blue sky and this very odd cloud pattern. Then after lunch, the first rain came in, the typical light misty rain we get a lot. And just now, it is raining harder, and the street is beginning to develop little streams running down hill to the drain at the bottom of the street. This is supposed to last off and on most of tonight and tomorrow morning.