Tuesday, October 16, 2007

A New Day

Arguably every day is a new day. However, not every day does one embark on a soul searching, kick yourself in the butt journey. See kids always have someone harping on them to get things done. Even employees have a manager or fellow employees hanging over them to ensure they get their tasks done. Unpublished authors rising out of a slump have no one, save for perhaps if they're lucky a handful of friends to verbally give them a kick in the pants. Granted, often times those same friends are sharing passage on the same boat.

So, thanks to my wonderful friend Lorie Hartt who introduced me to the whole 70 days of Sweating with Sven (and from the looks of it, he'd be quite fun to sweat with) I embarked on a new course for my writing. I've been dithering away at nothing, under the guise of revising the same manuscript for far too long now. (Just ask Lorie, she'll tell you) The whole concept of 70 days is a great one. You have from October 15 to January 15 to complete a 60-100k manuscript, or string together a couple of novellas, whatever. You have 23 'free' days, weekends, religious holidays, that sort of thing. I don't know if there's any hard and fast rule that says you have to take those days off, but I suspect if you want to write on your 'free' days, well then you go right ahead and type your wee little digits off.

This couldn't have come at a better time. A couple of days ago I was organizing my office (yet another thinly veiled disguise of the nasty procrastination virus-granted, it was needed desperately) and found a long lost notebook filled with story ideas. I knew it was around, just wasn't sure where.
My foot's been firmly in the stirrup for a while now, but I've been hopping around trying like a rabid flea to get the 'umph' up to lift myself into the saddle (Not unlike when I really do try to mount my horse, but that's another story) 70 Days of Sweating with Sven will be the leg up I need to breathe life into those ideas.

So, I've set my mark for 750 words per day. Yesterday I wrote 910 in less than two hours. Yay me. Today I'm setting my agenda. At 9am, much to the delight of my dogs, I'm going to take them to the park for a run, where I will give considerable thought to where exactly I'm going to go with the scene I left off in. At 10ish I'll return, hopefully with some concrete idea of where and what to write next. 11:00am I'll get ready to head to work. 12:30 I'll come home and carry on writing, then once I hit my daily goal, I'll go ride Lee. Come home, get supper started and carry on with revisions. That endless manuscript still has to be out by month end. And then there's the simple matter of critiquing for a chapter member that I have to finish. All that sprinkled with bottle feeding two kittens. Oh and trying to get a date planned for a dinner for a group of people who all have varied and hectic schedules. My work is definitely cut out for me today. But that's good, b/c I have a trail set out.

Until tomorrow, or tomorrow's tomorrow, Jordanne

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