So last Friday I had said I was basically in a slump and overwhelmed by everything I needed to do, suffocating and drowning under the weight of it all. My three days away that put me even further behind didn’t help all that much. At least, it didn’t until late Sunday night into Monday morning.
Maybe the break away from staring at it all was what I needed. Or maybe it was the sense knocked into my head that helped late Sunday night. I’m not entirely sure which. Perhaps it was a combination of both. But I woke up Monday morning with my head slightly more stable on my shoulders and a slight bout of determination in my gut.
And I think, I think, I may have found a plan of action that is going to work for me in playing catch up and not falling any further behind.
Monday morning I spent about 40 minutes in which I wrote down everything I needed to do, categorized them into parts (NaNo writing, camping writing, cleaning, flash fiction shards, blog hopping, etc), then further categorized them into weeks in which I could do them. Weeks 2, 3, and 4 of July. After that I further broke them down into even more manageable parts by spreading them out over the weeks and over the days of the week.
I basically wrote myself a routine schedule that would only vary slightly based on days off from work. In the end, it turned out to be about 8 or 9 major things on the to do list for each week, which was better than trying to cram them all into one week, let alone one day.
For instance, I have three camping journal entries I need to write; and there are three weeks left of July. Therefore, to not make that seem so daunting on top of everything else, I broke it down into one entry each week. For my flash fiction pieces I post on Wednesdays and to Wattpad I had said I wanted to do two a week to make up the ones I missed during the computer crash. So I broke that down into doing an old Shard my first day off work that week, then doing the new one of the week on Wednesday as per my regularly scheduled blog post on Wednesdays.
My task of overhaul cleaning some of the rooms in my house for a yard sale got broken up into more manageable and less looming tasks, as well. This week was to finish with my room (which I only have to go through my drawers now). Next week I’ll go through all the children’s chapter books I’m going to sell and figure out a plan of action for the next room. Then I’ll have two weeks to finish up that room and be ready for the sale.
Another instance would be catching up to par for NaNo. I’m still just under 6k below par, but I worked out if I do 2k each day for the rest of this week, I can be back on par come Saturday. Maybe Friday even as I normally write a few hundred more words over 2k. Once I’m back on par, it’ll be easier to keep up 1k a day or a little more.
(Blog hopping gets me a nice chunk of writing done. I do a pattern of write so many hundred words, then blog hop that number of snippets for every hundred words I do. So, it’d be something like write 500 words, blog hop 5 snippets and so forth until I reach the end of the thread. There’s anywhere between 20 and 24 snippets a week, roughly. So that’s a decent bit of writing right off the bat at the beginning of the week!)
And speaking of writing! It’s a NaNo month, I should be talking about writer woes and joys!
Enough of me rambling on about my Plan of Action!
(You know you’re an author when you name your detailed to do list. *Facepalm*)
Remember that scene I had started and just felt meh about last Friday? The one that I should have been excited and bouncing in my seat for. Well, in my quest to get back on track yesterday I dove back into and found the excitement again!
I pushed through the slump and just started writing and found the flow again. I unexpectedly broke up what I thought was going to be one chapter into two chapters now just for a suspense factor, but hey, I’m just glad I’m writing it!
My protagonist isn’t too happy with me, though. Between being attacked by creatures and then… I won’t spoil it. (I know, I’m evil.) Let’s just say I’m quite sure she’s about ready to curse me and someone else. Hehe. Then again she wants to smack me a lot, so, what else is new?
Now that I’m talking about the scene I really want to get back to it and keep writing. I ended up doing 600 words over my 2k goal yesterday because I just couldn’t stop where I was. Where I stopped was even a “do I have to stop? It’s at the good part!” kind of reaction, but it was also the climax of the scene, sooo… I knew I had other things to do though so I made myself close out the Word doc. Sadly.
Since I still need 2k today, I think I’m going to go get writing now that I’ve excited myself again. Time to have some fun with some nasty creatures and a disgruntled witch. *Cackles* Stay tuned for Friday for if my character decided to curse me or not for this twist!
Darkling Dreams 