Hey friends! Welcome to my weekly ROW80 update!
Here is my goals for the past week and how it went:
- Writing: finish pre-edits on DG, and start new WIP, which is called BREAKING THE REINS (BtR). And edit when the next set of HHSW edits come to me. Monday: kid didn’t have school, so I did nothing writing-related. Tuesday: wrote 3400 words. Wednesday: wrote 2800 words. Thursday and Friday: couldn’t wrap my mind around anything (I think I’m close to a burnout—will have a special blog post about it next week) so didn’t write.
- Reading: read book #58 of the year. I’ve read a novelette (12k words) and book #58 and book #59.
- Social media: I want to spend LESS time on twitter and blogging—so I can get more writing done! I should have spent less time here, but with the imposed break, I ended up online more than I wanted to.
- Exercising: at least 4x. Six times.
So, yeah, not so good on the writing front. So much has been going on, and at the same time, I feel like I’m not doing enough. It’s frustrating. As suggested by Jani Grey, I might be close to a burnout and in need of a break. That’s why I didn’t write from Thursday and on. So I could get that break. But even not writing, the mind is still in overdrive. I can’t stop it from going over ideas, plots, and scenes. I’ll try to go back to writing tomorrow (Monday) and see what happens.
I’ve talked more to Jani, and I might try to get my muse going by totally pantsing—she likes this. I might abandon all my current ideas and just write out of my mind, without planning one bit, not even characters names and backgrounds. Just for creativity’s sake. It’ll probably be a mess and not fixable, but I need to get the muse out of this burnout somehow.
Anyway, my goals for next week:
- Writing: Just write. Anything. And edit when the next set of HHSW edits come to me.
- Reading: read book #60 of the year.
- Social media: I want to spend LESS time on twitter and blogging—so I can get more writing done!
- Exercising: at least 4x.
Checkout how the other ROWers are doing here!
Have a great week, everyone!
Cheers,
I’m not surprised you got no writing done with kids home from school. I’ve tried to get stuff done when babysitting and have never had much luck. Sometimes a break is a good thing.
Have a good week. x
You do have to pay the muse every now and again, stressing her and you will do you both no good. I like that you are listening to yourself and trying something out, we all can probably do more of that. Have a great week, Juliana.
Oh no! I don’t like the sound of “burn out”. Still, you got word count in and you smashed the exercising goal to bits. I must say that might be a good idea re: the creative “vomit” approach. I hope that eases what you’re feeling. Good luck!
Ohhh, hope you’re not strecthing yourself too too much! Congrats on getting the word count and don’t forget to get some time for yourself…It’s important to keep the balance!
Social media is a time funnel to the underworld, but it’s a necessary evil. The trick, which I haven’t mastered, is to limit the time you allow yourself to be “on.” Blogging, though, has real value to a writer, and in the long run, I don’t think it’s wasted time.
I’m in the process of reading, Write It Down, Make It Happen by Henriette Klauser, and what you describe in your last paragraph about pantsing might be just the ticket to get past the burnout.
Have great week!
Don’t be too hard on yourself Juliana, and take a break if you need one! Writing should remain fun :) I hope you have a great week, with or without writing!
Oh chica, make sure you take great care of yourself. Less social media time sounds good but is tricky! Take care of yourself this week.x
I just can’t get over you being on book #60. Wow! I wonder how many books I’ve read this year because I have a feeling it’s about half that. Good for you!
Best wishes with writing this week! You still logged a good word count this past week. I like the idea of freeing yourself up to just write whatever and get all of that energy out on the page.
Social media can be a real time sink, can’t it? I’ll tell myself, “okay, I’m going to see whose birthday it is on Facebook, check to see if there’s activity on anything I commented on, and THAT’S IT,” and an hour later I’m still flipping through it. I’m spending more time with Twitter (that’s one of my goals), which I find much more useful. Sounds like you’ve been doing well. Keep it up!