Weekly Writing Intentions: Saturday, October 7, 2023

Daily Diary: Day 1132:

Well, this week I excelled in exercising because I’ve done a good job of adding in chair exercises for balance and strength. In fact I averaged just under 2 hours of exercise a day, including cleaning, walking, and chair excercises. Even more exciting, this new regime, plus some new tweaks in my diet, has finally resulted in the needle on my scales moving down. This is not a vanity issue for me, because all this has done is increase the number of my wrinkles. What it does do is help keep my blood sugar lower and my sweat pants even more comfortable!

In the writing arena, I haven’t been nearly as consistent. Again, up and down, for a variety of reasons, including finding myself putting all the other tasks on my to-do list, including this newsletter before the novel.

There is nothing intrinsically wrong with this, because I frankly enjoy all the things on the to-do list, and there isn’t any external force saying I have to get this novel done by such and such date. But, I would like to make better progress.

Yesterday, after I saw an announcement about NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month-which is every November), I thought about the fact that I have used this external motivation a couple of times and it really helped me get my writing up to speed. In fact, I got 30,000 words of my last book, Tides of Acerba, done last November by signing up.

So, I thought that maybe if I treat the period from now to November 30 as if it was all an extended NaNoWriMo period, maybe I could be close to finishing the first draft of In Ddaera’s Embrace before the end of the year, and that feels like a worthy goal.

What this essentially means is putting the novel writing first, using the timer to do sprints, and also trying not to stop to fill in details (just putting ???) while doing these sprints.

It would also means making writing posts a secondary priority (which means doing the posts later in the day, when I have reached writing goals), and except for the scheduled phone calls, letting everything else go unless I have time over lunch or dinner.

So, that’s my intention for the next week, to see how this works. I started this new regime yesterday, and I got 1,200 words written, which is the only reason how I was able to get my average word count for last week up to 485 words a day. So I hope I can at least maintain this 5 days a week.

This morning I’ve made a good start, having cleaned and then written 400 words by 8:30 AM when it was time to take a break and walk. I will now get back to writing, which gives me another 2 hours of sprint time.

Here is a spider under our deck who has been just as busy as I have been this morning (and whose web has caught the morning fog!) Also seemed like a good addition to my Halloween theme this month.

In case you aren’t sure how you got here, I’m Mary Louisa Locke, the author of the USA Today best-selling Victorian San Francisco Mystery series and the Caelestis Science Fiction series. This is my newsletter reflecting on my life as an indie author trying to age gracefully. If you aren’t already subscribed but are interested in doing so, you can subscribe by clicking the little button below. If you enjoyed this post, please do click on the little heart and/or share with your friends, and I always welcome comments!