It’s SaturdaySunday(!) again, and as always, time seems to have flown by since my last Stream of Consciousness Saturday post. Time for a new one (with a new prompt I daren’t use here[against the”rules” this week, you see])… especially since this week isn’t my WeWriWa post week and I missed my Wednesday WIPpet too.
Mostly I’ve been running away into an imaginary world created by Victoria Thompson in her Gaslight Mysteries novels. Why I’ve been running? Life has been… interesting lately. Not bad-bad-bad, but more emotionally difficult than I needed right now.
It’s my propensity for chasing after windmills and trying to fix problems that aren’t my own.
There are times I’d like to trade places with those that I am helping, to be the one receiving the help and not offering, not feeling obliged to give it. And I do feel obliged… not so much because I was asked to help (oddly, I’m less inclined to help when I am asked as when I sense a need and am not).
Eh… I shouldn’t dwell on the crazy. It’s almost a new week and, deals with God not withstanding, I don’t have to keep going this way. Don’t have to look back to know what I need to do to go forward at the moment… the path is clear (muddy, but clear). The moon is lighting it well…
So, I finally cleared a thing off my (unofficial) To Do List. A while back I made a deal with fellow ROWer Caren Rich that if I would watch some James Bond movies she would watch some Doctor Who. Two big “names” in the entertainment industry with very different crowds….
It’s all about the PPK
We had reasonably good time each with the first showings. I asked Caren to watch the 10th Doctor episode Blink; she had me watch the Pierce Brosnan “Bond finale” Die Another Day. With both of us having fun with this “new to us” experience we were both up to try another round.
I chose Dr. No, the very first in the Bond dynasty, as my next ‘to see” and suggested a two-for of two of the more popular episodes from the 9th Doctor’s tenure (since Christopher Eccleston basically helped reboot the series with shows like these): The Empty Child and The Doctor Dances.
Mea Culpa! I had no idea that Caren didn’t like gas masks, and they are EVERYWHERE in this World War II era two-parter. She hated it, vigorously.
Me? I just watched Dr. No today as my part in this little trade. Can’t say I hated it. Can’t say I loved it. It was better than I expected (considering how dated the effects are), and now I can see why so many women went gaga over Sean Connery back then (though.. no, sorry). A good basic action flick… nothing special in any way and so very, very “white-washed”, imho. I could watch another 007 and probably enjoy myself, but I feel no need to see out any of them given how many other wonderful shows are out there.
Though, I would LOVE to have Dr. No’s underground hide-a-way.
I wish it was a shot of the whole place, not just the dinner table
Row80 Check-in & Assessment
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CRAFT
Goal: spend ~three hours a week delving into writing craft related learning
Progress: oddly, I spent a lot of time on articles relate to writing this week, as well as a fair amount of audio-book time listening to authors describing their processes
Goal: Hand-write new words daily! (the Five Sentences thingie)
Progress: *hangs head*, missed two days though for the noble reason of family time (granted the family time mostly involved doing Pokémon Go outings with Boodle; we did a lot of walking and talking together)
Goal: typing two pages a day of old notebooks into the computer
Progress: missed the last two days, but had been averaging 3 pages a day before that
SOCIAL
Goal: maintain local critique group submission of excerpts and critiques during non-NaNoWriMo months
Progress: July… CampNaNo, so nothing going
Goal: return to regular posting in the WIPpet and WeWriWa blog hops
Progress: steady progress and no progress, respectively
Goal: sponsor duties for the ROW80 twice a week
Progress: on track, though need to post this before I will go visit anyone else
PERSONAL
Goal: Explore my creative side daily
Progress: I actually took out my purse notebook and sketched a face (I couldn’t login to Pokémon Go and made use of the time—it worked)
Goal: Daily languages (except Sundays)
Progress: daily, yes: all of them, no (Latin and German have been more of an every other day thing)
Goal: daily exercise amounting to a minimum of 30 minutes a day
Progress: either Pokémon Go or swimming pretty much every day, so aceing this
Temporary!Goal: write and submit my sponsor post
Progress: Ugh… so very ugh. I am fighting myself so much here. I am learning a lot about what I should not write (for all those wonderful muses out there who were saying that maybe sharing my struggles and “wrong words” might be exactly what the post needs, I apologize… but disagree, since I’m sure pages of mourning family, pets and friends will help no one save myself; that said, I’ve been able, through this process, to rediscover and relive and remember all the richer)
That’s all. That’s plenty. And… because this is a lovely photo of my favorite breed of dog, here: Enjoy!
Our Nina had been a copper–miss her still (photo cred: Tapscott94)
Today feels like… well, like Monday in a way. The song fits.
It’s not like it’s been a bad day so far, nor a busy one… there’s just this edge of anticipation that says “Watch what you promise, be careful what you do–you’re going to need to be ready for something big soon.”
I wish I knew what. Energy comes in different kinds, and it would be useful to know whether I need the kind that will be able to empower me during sudden, random bursts of activity or something more durable… something that will get me through days, possibly weeks of grinding
For now, it has to be one day and then the next and then we’ll see after that… Tomorrow, for example, is the happy but also busy event of the Boodle’s piano recital. He’s got his three pieces down and shouldn’t have too much problem, but because of scheduling conflicts, we have a lot of racing before the recital starts tomorrow that could make things stressful for him.
Two years ago he had his first recital. He wrote this song for it.
Row80 Check-in and Assessment
Goal: working through three chapters weekly of James Scott Bell’s Plot & Structure (including exercises)
Progress: still detoured, and I’ve done nothing else of the type
Goal: catching up in my local critique group (including submitting something this week)
Progress: one and half crits done, so halfway
Goal: typing two pages a day of old notebooks in
Progress: had a happy burst of progress yesterday, but still a page behind; I’m in a happier place to see some progress for a while though, so hopefully this coming week will be easier
Goal: (VIG) Write new words daily! (the Five Sentences thingie)
Progress: I fell down here this week; I got nothing written, and only last night was I able to stop thinking about my backlist of projects to spend some quality talk-time with my characters. Thankfully they were there to spend time with me! *
Not Goals but Progress Anyway:
Duolingo — daily progress
JuNoWriMo prep — nothing on my work; have gone through most of the Featured Author posts and returned them to the authors for review and corrections
“Inspirational Posts” — this may sound like an odd goal, but if I’m going to sponsor next ROWnd, I need to think one up; I’ve also been asked to write a PEP-talk post for the JuNoWriMo, and while I have an idea for that, I need to flesh out a rough draft this evening for Becca’s review
Watch a James Bond movie — did it; watched Die Another Day Wednesday night. Liked it enough. I think my son would enjoy it more than me, but I liked the mix of humor, absurd plot devices and dastardly bad guys against the cool collected hero. What surprised me was my feeling at the end about Bond and ‘his women’. Yes, he got the girls, but his consideration for them as people seemed genuine too. A telling bit with the double agent Miranda Frost came after Bond sent Jinx to save her. It wasn’t to ‘save the pretty thing‘; to me it came off as ‘she is a fellow agent and deserves warning that the crap is going to hit the fan’. And I liked how casual both he and Jinx were about sex. Just two people having fun, doing their jobs, living life without messy emotional crap involved. They made enough messes everywhere else…
That’s the way this ROWnd just seems to be. Every week I think I’m going to add some goals, and I just keep sliding by instead. The one goal I’ve made for myself since the round began (add something creative to my day) has been mostly satisfied by adding extra curlicues to my handwriting.
I guess it’s part of the process. I’m learning what works for me and how to ensure that most of the things I plan for get done and allow some wiggle room for things I say “Yes” to when I didn’t consciously allocate any time to extras. I still have an issue with not knowing how to say “No” to things or, at least, when to say it. But the commitment I’ve made to myself with these smaller goals seems to be working most of the time. I have seen steady forward progress this this ROWnd began. I can’t call it the fastest progress, but it’s been consistent in most every area. Even my biggest “failure” (the plotting book) has resulted in other forms of progress for me; I am reading more craft-related websites and following more writing-related podcasts again where I had stopped almost a year ago.
So, once again, I move forward to another week to see what might be changed or tweaked. Some things will be cleared from the schedule such as edits on the Featured Author posts, but then it will be uploading and arranging the pieces for the JuNoWriMo website. The week after that will be sprint-hosting on Twitter.
For now… tomorrow is another day. And the Boodle’s piano recital.
* Just in case I hadn’t mentioned before, these Five Sentences for me are something I do off-line. I have gotten some story-like writing done via 750words (as well as a lot of brain-dumping and idea exploring), but I try to write something by hand regularly as well. I find it’s good for the soul, and somewhat satisfies my need for a creative outlet.
Many Worlds From Many Minds 