Hazy Shade of Winter

Time, time, time, see what's become of me
While I looked around
For my possibilities 

~Simon and Garfunkel "Hazy Shade of Winter"

It's Wednesday.  It's ROW80 check-in day.  It was supposed to be a snow day, but it got to almost 40 degrees before 7 a.m., and everything melted, so now I am sitting at work, too cold, huddled in my chair, looking out at a soggy gray landscape and feeling rather dreary and uninspired.  And cold.  Did I mention I'm cold?  I am.

Still, the ROW must go on.  So here's what I've been up to the past few days:

• Answering the questions from H.E. Roulo's article "A Simple Novel Outline--9 questions for 25 chapters."  I'm not sure how useful the info on putting chapters together is going to be, but the questions themselves have helped me get to know my MC better.  I'm on Question 6 right now and will be finishing up the whole thing today or tomorrow.
• Researched my MC's career to help me pinpoint a few things about her that I didn't have clear ideas on.  I didn't think I needed more info, but the aforementioned Question 6 led me to a few questions of my own that needed answering.

That's it.  I haven't exercised, but now that I've made that public I plan to do my workout as soon as I post this so I can feel a little better physically and mentally.  I also haven't been spending time just relaxing and letting myself enjoy time away from being busy.  I did fine with this last week so thought it wasn't something I had to really give much attention to, but I think I might have been mistaken on that one.  Tonight, there will be knitting and TV watching and brain rest time.  There will also be time for putting away the Christmas tree ornaments that are lying on the table waiting to be wrapped and stored, but that won't take long, so I will have plenty of time for relaxation, too.

The plan for Thursday-Sunday:

• Keep doing some sort of writing every day for at least 10 minutes
• Exercise three times
• Get the Christmas ornaments put away!
• Read through my story so far to get myself fully back in the storyline
• Write about what I want to have happen in the next parts of the story to start generating some ideas and get the story moving again

Somewhere in there you might find some hot chocolate and a jigsaw puzzle put up on the table the ornaments are strewn across.  It's the perfect weather for that sort of thing, and I do need to get in that R&R!

See you Sunday.