A ROW80 Check-in? Yes!

Change time to my blogging schedule….  yet again.  To answer Kait Nolan’s question on the ROW80 blog for this check-in, no, I’m not reluctant to break the chain now that productivity has become something of a pattern.

Well, break is the wrong word.  No breaking please…  let’s keep this train on course.  But changes need to be made; things can, and should, be improved to help maintain the progress I’ve made.  Changes like this one….

Monday I explained the changes that were coming.  Maybe stating them was a trigger, but not long after, I was digging into the widgets in my WordPress tools and adjusting the sidebar to reflect the change.  And yesterday after my WIPpet, I made it official.  No more of these massive “all-in-one” posts where I try to cover Life, Liberty, the ROW80 and everything else that happened to occur between check-ins….

So if you came here for a Wursday post…  sorry to disappoint.  But the WIPpeteers are doing their thing and would love it if you stopped by for a visit and some bloglove.  And if you’re here for the ROW80, then you’re in the right place.

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Chug-chug-chugging along….  That’s my check-in.  After Monday’s distractions, I…  well, I really don’t know what I did…  I just did it.

• I wrote, because it was time to write.  I wrote over 850 words a day.
• I did daily character development and reading and research and planning, because it was time to get some details straightened out.
• I exercised because it was time to do it…  because I’d set that goal, and it was time to get the body moving.  Yesterday was another of those crappy headache days…  and I went to karate and did my very best for an hour of kicks, punches, jumping-jacks, band-tag…  and by the time I was done I got the camera and took a walk and got (I hope–I forgot the tripod in the car) were some wonderful sunset pictures.

This all means I have more changes to make.

I have ignored my photography.  I enjoy it, but I ignore it.  Something always seems ‘more important’…

No more.  I am bringing back the First Friday Photo blog.  And I’d love to have people join me–any takers?  Just one picture every Friday, something that caught your eye and inspired you to click/push that button.  I’ll be using my “official” blog A Garden of Delights, and will post a linky there the first Friday of every month for people to join in.  Let’s capture our imaginations together. 😀

And for all of us…  let’s keep chugging along.

Not Sure… But Prepared Anyway

Well come, well come all!

It’s WIPpet Wednesday, a friendly little bloghop where writers post small (often random) samples of their most recent Work In Progress for your (and our) enjoyment.  The only rule we have (besides being nice and constructive when we comment on each other’s work) is to make our snippet somehow involve the date in the post.  Most of us count the number of lines or sentences we post (sometimes using convoluted maths to do this).   Sometimes we use the date as a theme…

Today it’s maths.  Taking the first three numbers of the date, I added the first two and subtracted them from the third for three…  three paragraphs from a backstory section of Singer of the Swan Song, book two of the Swan Song Series.

He didn’t know why, but Ytramli did not like the sound of Cleansed.  The girl was a princess, more so, she was the heiress…  There was nothing about such a person that could be considered unclean or wrong, at least not in his opinion.

Besides, anyone who laughed the way Atyriia had, cried as she had…  To become so silent.  What had been done to her?

He gathered up a handful of the ointments and vials he thought he could spare easily and brought them out to the main room.  Yes, he would probably have to return the rest, but maybe he could also plead his case to the Healer and be allowed to keep them.  Maybe…  Ytramli wondered if perhaps not bringing the items would be seen as further theft or if he could persuade the women to allow him a few… a few for the journey he knew he needed to make soon.

And that’s pretty much it for me this week.  A shout-out and cheer to our hostess with the mostest, KL.Schwengel at My Random Muse for maintaining the WIPpet Wednesday.  If you’d like to find other WIPpeteers, this is our linky.

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Some trails lead to everywhere…
(a cemetery near Kenilworth)

One last bit…  there is no ROW8 check-in today.  I’ve adjusted my schedule bar on the side to show the change, but I wanted to explain why I chose this.  Time is a part, of course.  It’s easier to read (and write and schedule) a shorter post that doesn’t involve an update.  Not to mention, I’m always being told to write what I like to read.  I prefer to read posts that focus on one topic.  I don’t mind links to extra directions I might want to explore, but I like the  cowtrails to be a bit more self-directed.

It took me some time to figure this out, and I’m still not sure this is an all or nothing thing for me.  Sometimes a meandering post can lead me to wonderful creative insights into the blogger’s mind and then to character development and then…

But for now, I’m going to try this new way of doing things and see what happens.  And I’d love your perspective on how it works out.  Thanks!

Oh So Very Distracted

With many apologies

In the grand scheme of things, a few days of “I can’t get it together” will be nothing to worry about…. really, nothing to worry about. I should get on with my day-to-day business, my writing and all will resolve itself.

Only problem is… distraction.  Oh, how many distractions are out there!  I wish I had Ted Geisel’s whimsical artistry on hand–I would have a new book out within the week.  For the moment, I’m indulging in a bit of Photoshop.

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What I’ve Done and am Doing

It’s Monday, so officially it’s a day late for my ROW80 check-in.  Except…  like posting Wursday WIPpet last week, this lateness is intentional.  But instead of explaining this every week, from now on, my ROW80 check-ins will be on Mondays and Thursdays.  This is to open Sundays for other projects stewing in my brain, as well as to set my WIPpet Wednesday posts on their own instead of blocking them together with the ROW80 and so many other things.  Yeah, more posts…  but I can plan my posts ahead of time easier.

Over this week I will be adjusting my sidebar to reflect the changes in scheduling.  I’m still tossing the idea of bringing back the Friday Photo about.  Not sure how I feel about that.  It was good in some senses…  I spent a lot more time doing post-processing on the pictures I took.  It also ate up a lot of headspace when I wanted to get writing done.  And now, Fridays are insanely Real Life Busy…  That should change as the school year winds down.

In the non-blogging world, I have done more plotting and planning my next WriMo jump (JuNoWriMo followed by the July CampNaNoWriMo).  I still have a small bit to finish before I “win” the April camp, and having hit something of a block between last Wednesday and now, I’ve decided to use the rest of my ~3K  to get some outlining done.  The nice thing about the camps is that writing is writing.  If all goes according to plan, I’ll have a decent amount of the legwork done for this June… I’m really looking forward to that being the case this year.

Beyond that, I’m holding to my goals… mostly.  I’m at that point in the writing goal, when I need to stop just freewriting and start pulling pieces together into something cohesive and readable.

For example:

• Last night for our local NaNoWriMo gathering, I found myself unable to focus on the task of story writing.  I probably pulled about 600 words or so from the session.
• Saturday, all I did on my stories was to create notecards in Scrivener for new scenes I wanted to write in my Was Long Variation and part of Swan Song.
• Friday…  I wrote, but I had such a vicious headache for most of the early day that I didn’t get much done.
• Thursday (evening) was my glory day.  Besides posting a WIPpet and check-in here, I also added another 2k in story for the Swan Song series.

I’m mostly on track with my other goals.  I wasn’t as active as I probably should have been, and I haven’t even tried a push-up since Wednesday (sorry, muscles), but I made a point to avoid sitting to long, get out and get fresh air, even on Friday.  Of course, I’ve gotten plenty of character/story time in otherwise….  enough so that I was given something of an epiphany last night when, while looking over some notes for possible character development that I hadn’t been using, Valistii and Vissellii both started clamoring in my mind with “This!  See…  THIS is how you should write it, not the nicey-nice way you have been.”  Then Vissellii called her brother a rude, selfish baby, and he called her a brat, and then she threatened to tell their mother on him and pushed him, and he grabbed her wrist and twisted it behind her back, and….

Again, with apologies…

Triplets….  at least I got them to settle down before they drew their knives on each other.  Though I’m not sure that redirecting that energy toward their step-father was necessarily the best idea.

Anyway…  this is where I am.  How about you?