Sep 21, 2009

Breaking the Pattern

This weekend was a complete bust as far as productivity went. I spent a lot of time in my office sitting in front of my computer, but other than the blogman post yesterday I didn’t really do much of anything.

Lately I seem to be doing good with my goals and progressing nicely with my writing at the beginning of the week, but as the week goes on I seem to peter out. Today I seem to be breaking the pattern because I feel motivated to do absolutely nothing. Don’t feel like updating my blogs, checking my e-mail . . . don’t even feel like reading. I guess it’s just one of those days.

I can only hope that I’ll do better as the week goes on.

RECAP

Last week’s goals were: start writing ahead in my serial, do a Pantoum for the Passion for Poetry, start keeping up my journal again, make time to read.

I actually wrote two chapters of my serial last week, so chapter six was ready for posting before I even left for school on Friday. Maybe there’s hope for me for NaNo yet. :-)

Also managed to get the Pantoum post written early. I even scheduled to post at the proper time because I find I’m a little crunched for time in the mornings. I have two extra poetry forms in the can, but I don’t have poems for them yet. In other poetry news, I have had a poems accepted for a themed anthology. Not much money involved but they will be sending me a contract to sign.

I did start keeping up my journal again, I’ve written in it every night for a week.

Believe it or not, the one goal I didn’t complete was making time to read. I’m wondering if that’s why I did so well on my writing goals last week, I was in more of a writing mood than a reading mood.

This week’s goals:

Continue moving ahead with my serial. I want to have two extra chapters by the end of the week. If I do an extra chapter a week for the next few weeks I’ll have a surplus during Nano.

This week’s poetry form will be the Ottava Rima. I would also like to get the poem examples written for the two forms I have the posts done for. I also need to get my “poemwork” done for my poetry group tomorrow night and I have to make a decision on what poems I want included in their yearly anthology (the deadline is Friday).

Keep up with my journaling. I’ve been doing good so far, now I just have to keep up the momentum.

I know what book I want to review for the AW book blog chain so I’d really like to get that done before my turn comes up. The other blog chain is for a flash fiction piece so I really can’t prepare for that one - I have to wait for my prompt.

I started off strongly doing the timed writing prompts on my Random Writings blog last week, but then I missed Friday and Saturday. Let’s aim for the full seven days this week.

Read every day. It’s a sad situation when I have to make reading one of my weekly goals. I blame the start of the new season for television on my not reaching this goal last week. :-)

4 comments:

Benjamin Solah said...

Good to see your goals are going well.

Are you reading interesting books? Sometimes books don't work for you and you just need to put them down and come back to them later.

Some books I just blitz through and want to make time to read, but others you need to force yourself.

Dolly said...

Last week seemed to have been rubbish for all the people I follow. For me it was total disaster. But I decided that instead of beating myself up about the stuff I couldn't work on, I would just focus my creativity elsewhere, even if it wasn't writing.

I haven't gone to productive level yet, but I think it's helping. I make myself such long lists of things to do that none of it gets done.

Perhaps one or two thing at a time might help.

C R Ward said...

Ben: Yeah, I'm like that too (the some books just blitzing through and others . . . not). Eventually I'll go back to a book I was having trouble getting into and think "Wow, this is great! Why didn't I finish it before?"

Lost: At least I'm in good company with my non-productivity. :-) My problem is that I'm stubborn and I tend to try and force myself to get some writing done even if my heart's not in it. I like your idea of just focusing on one thing at a time.

Jamie D. said...

Wow, great job on getting ahead with the serial chapters! That's gold right there. :-)

And I'm the same way - good writing week = less reading. And vice versa. I'm pretty sure it's just due to the fact that there are only 24 hours in a day, and we just can't cram all the stuff we want to do into each one. Well, that and the new TV season starting (which has already derailed me this week).

If it makes you feel any better, I have reading time scheduled in my PDA along with my writing times...

I really want to get over to your other blog and do those writing prompts. Maybe I need to schedule that too! :-)

Hang in there...onward!