Writing, Writers, Written

Has it been a month?  I have no idea where the time went!  Actually, that's not true.  The time went to working on novel plans, reading about novel planning and outlining, gearing up for NaNoWriMo, and many other noveling type activities:

Yep, it's that time of year again, lots of words and lots of event planning as one of the MLs for my region.

Oh, and I had a birthday in there with a fun outing to take photos at historic cemeteries: 

Historic Columbian Cemetery, Portland, Oregon

I also had something of an epiphany over the course of the last month.  I realized that I really enjoy the coaching work I've been learning.  I want to be a creativity coach.  But it isn't my number one passion.  My number one passion is writing, and I haven't been giving it the attention it deserves in part because I somehow gave myself the idea that to be a coach that had to be my number one passion and get almost all of my time and attention with everything else--including writing--getting what was left over.

And I realized that this isn't working for me. Really, I knew for a while that how I'm doing things isn't working for me.  But I didn't quite realize that I had this attitude about coaching and writing and their places in my life.  When this came fully into my consciousness, I was so surprised!  I knew right away this wasn't the right way of thinking about this and running things, not for me.  So I have given myself permission to do what needs to be done for my coaching--take classes, write my newsletter, start building up my website, open things up for clients.  But I also gave myself permission to read all of the writing books and excellent stories I want--all the ones that inspire me and make me want to grab a pen and write things down.  I get to spend as much time as I want playing with my writing.  This feels so exciting!  I am happy with this.

This time of year, the writing is easy, too, so that makes all of this even more exciting.  But as always I'm thinking ahead to the non-NaNo parts of the year and wondering what to do when my enthusiasm flags.  And I think I might have found something for that.  It's a writing challenge called A Round of Words in 80 Days (ROW80).  You get to set your goal for the 80 day time period.  You check in twice a week to report your progress and see how everyone else is doing.  And this challenge repeats throughout the year, so there's always someone to check in with and help with that motivation thing.

Writing and ROW80 Goals

First my overall writing goal:  I intend to write and revise my current novel, Ordinary Girl, get it to readers for feedback and do more revisions (repeating that two or three times as needed), and have it ready to pitch to one of the agents at next year's Willamette Writer's Conference which is August 3-5, 2012.

For this round of ROW80 which ends December 22: I intend to write 65,000 words between now and then.  My hope is that this will give me a complete if somewhat sketchy first draft to add to and revise come January. After NaNoWriMo is over, I intend to write 5,000 words a week.  Some weeks I may write five days, some I may only write three.  My schedule tends to be shifty, so I'm going to try out a weekly word count goal instead of a daily writing goal.

On a final note, I've stopped reading The Artist's Way.  I am continuing the daily pages as I find those really useful, but I still can't get into the exercises like affirmations and some of the other things.  So once again I will set it aside with the possibility of a revisit at some point down the road.

Thanks for sticking with me 'til the end here everyone.  Stay tuned for novel updates--they will be coming!

Morning Pages Reboot

Yes, I have fallen away from my morning pages.  Again.  For a few weeks, I fell away from pretty much everything except the daily necessities--work, food, exercise, sleep.  Last week I was in Chicago for eight days visiting my mother in the nursing home.  She's doing great and will be going home next Friday after a bit more physical therapy, but getting ready for the trip when I didn't know if she was going to be okay, plus the travel itself, plus a death in the family here at home while I was gone left me completely frazzled.

But today is a new day.  And the start of a new month.  And like a brilliant fairy godmother, Jamie Ridler sailed in with a morning pages group check-in for September.  How perfect is that timing?

So I'm in.  I'm stepping back into my daily pages (because I still don't do well when I try to do them in the morning).  I'm stepping back into reading The Artist's Way.  I'm stepping back into my novel.  I'm stepping back into my life and taking it forward again. There's a lot to do, many tasks involved in setting myself back on my path and moving ahead, but as I always do I will start with the words and go from there.  Thank you, Jamie, for this perfect idea at the perfect time!