Weekly Writing Intentions: Saturday, Sept 9, 2023
Early walk, coyote sighting, finally getting some words written!
Daily diary, Day 1104:
Pleased to report that I was able to keep up the exercise schedule last week, averaging 101 minutes of exercise, getting in a walk every day (and five of the days getting in two walks), and all but one day I got in 10-15 minutes of PT and pilates exercises.
Not sure about this coming week, simply because we have entered a brief spell of fairly excessive (for us) heat, hitting the nineties on the thermometer on our back patio yesterday in the late afternoon. This means I didn’t take my second walk yesterday, nor will I probably do so over the next few days, which will make it harder to even hit the 90 minute a day goal.
This morning I got out on my walk at seven, which is about an hour or two earlier than usual, and at nine it was already in 79 degrees. The early hour of my walk meant that I ran into a coyote that my husband has seen a couple times this week, trotting back to the canyon. Not a very clear shot, but he was going along at a pretty fast clip.
I’ve also done my cleaning in two bits this morning, but I will wait to do the PT/pilates exercises until before lunch, when we will have turned on the A/C, which we did before lunch yesterday.
On the other hand, this heat spell is supposed to dissipate by Tuesday, so I should be able to get back up to the 2 walks a day then. Therefore, I am going to keep my goal at at least 90 minutes, 2 walks and some PT and pilates every day.
I am also pleased to announce that with some very careful tweaking, I have gotten my blood sugar under control for the past week. It really does appear that a little change in the protein shake I drink with meals was the culprit. So, I now have added cutting back and carefully weighing that drink for each meal, and that has done the trick.
As for my writing, not quite as stellar a performance, but I could see improvement over the week.
I suppose I could blame this on having a fair number of scheduled and unscheduled phone calls, and working on some promotional material. I also had my retinal exam, but this really took very little time because this year it didn’t include the field exam that I hate. They flash lights all over the place and you have to click a mouse every time you see one. Makes me nervous. I feel like I am missing ones or clicking before I even see one—in short it triggers test anxiety! Anyway, this year the exam existed of a quick vision test, and for once I actually was able to see the line of letters at the bottom of the chart (with both eyes), and they took a retinal photo and gave me a pressure test, and I was done in 10 minutes.
But mostly it was a slow week in writing because I kept going through the usual beginning of a story dithering about how much back story to put in. I finally threw up my hands and told myself that I can cut out or shift whatever I put in later, and just get on with the story. As a result, yesterday I got 965 words written, which got my average up to 484 a day (if you don’t count last Saturday when I didn’t get any new words written and actually cut 64 of the words I had written the previous week!)
Next week is the usual, scheduled phone calls and zoom meeting, and I have a newsletter to put out, as well as a substack recommendations post to do for Thursday. However, if all goes well, I expect to improve my daily word average, so that is my weekly writing intention.
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 for free 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!
I know what you mean about the heat it’s been over 90 here for a few days. Nobody told Mother Nature summer is over. 2 of the dogs are hopeless in the heat and the other has her poorly kidneys. I really miss my walks. I could just blame the dogs but I suffer with it too. I know exactly what you mean about the chasing the dot eye test. I always think I have got it wrong 😑 😀
I know what you mean about the vision field test. I like to call it "the most boring video game ever" but I'm always worried about my score.