Weekly Writing Intentions: Saturday, November 10, 2023
Daily Diary, Day 1167
I was semi-successful this week. I averaged an hour and 45 minutes of exercise a day and figured out how to walk after dinner, in the dark, so that I can maintain the 60-70 minutes a day walking. The beginning of the week (Saturday and Sunday) I continued to get a good number of words written. Not quite what I did the end of the previous couple of days because I was actually writing new words. However, starting on Monday my word count dropped precipitously.
This was partly because I discovered that I really needed to rearrange the order of scenes to make the pace flow, which ate up most of my writing time for the rest of the week. In addition, I had a number of unscheduled phone calls, which I really did feel I needed to take. And there were three medical trips.
Two were for adjusting my glasses, and after yesterday’s adjustment, I think I am set for now. But I really need new frames, and I am overdo for yearly eye exam, so I scheduled appointment for Dec 15 (first available.) The other trip was for some more lung capacity tests, which were all normal. And, I had the wonderful news that I had lost 7 lbs in the past two months. I have been down to that difficult middle body fat for over a year, and nothing I had been doing seemed to budge it until I cut out pretty much all carbs and started measuring my protein drinks. But that did the trick, and I am feeling so good about the blood sugar and the slightly smaller waist that I’ve added in a cracker at dinner (smile!)
Needless to say, all these trips wiped out large chunks of my day. Nevertheles, I can be proud that for the whole week, I did average 917 words a day. This was much better than I had been doing before starting National Novel Writing Month, and the manuscript is now at 38,000 words. My goal is 75.000 to 80.000 words. In terms of the plot, I feel I am almost at the half-way point, so unlike the last book, I don’t think I am going to have to do a lot of cutting.
As for this coming week, my priority is going to be my health and accepting that I may not get a lot written.
Monday, relatives we haven’t seen in years are going to be in town, just for that day, so I know we will be spending as much time as we can with them. Tuesday, I have a morning repeat of CT-scan. I am also hoping to schedule a company for later in the week to come and give us an estimate of what it will cost to completely gut and remodel our bathrooms. We have been putting this off because it is so expensive, but listening to a friend talk about her immune response to mold in her bathroom, I know I have been in denial about the mold in my own bathroom. It is really possible that this has been playing a role in my long term sinus issues.
None of the bathrooms have had anything but cosmetic work done on them (which I did myself about, wow, can it be 25 years ago!!!). That means the shower and tub and sinks in the two full baths, and the sink in the half bath, are now all 50 years old. Yikes.
We did get new toilets about 5 years ago, the high kind, which I love. But it is time to also do things like put in grab bars, convert the tub into walk-in shower that has a seat in it, and in the process make sure there isn’t any mold in the walls. So, as you can see, health (and friends and relatives) will be my priority, and I will celebrate any new words written, no matter how few.
Oh, I forgot, also on my agenda for this coming week is to take down the novella I have been putting up on substack (which I will do on Monday) and start the process of republishing it. This means reformatting the new version, working with my daughter to republish it on Amazon and publishing it for the first time on Draft2Digital, which will get it into other retailers. That will all take time as well!
Wish me luck!
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!
Just a comment about putting in the walk-in shower. If you have the space consider a rain head shower at the end where you will stand and a separate hand held unit where you put the seat. We had done this when we did our major remodel and it has been a life saver as I subsequently had both hip and knee replacement surgeries and make use of the seat and hand unit all the time
Jake and I are doing this to the flat in London. We're even widening a couple of doors to be wheelchair workable. We both like the idea of being able to stay in our home.
You shouldn't have a problem with the handheld reaching the seat. Mine does fine.