Month: March 2021

Happy March and Hello, Spring!

We’ve had some snow storms recently, but the days have been getting longer and we’ve had some warmer days. I’m so looking forward to spring!

It’s hard to believe that it’s been a year since we’ve been living with this pandemic. It would have been this month a year ago, in the beginning of Lent, when I last experienced normal life as I knew it: Sunday services; daily visits to the gym; and monthly writers’ group meetings.

Sunday services has become Zoom virtual services. Daily visits to the gym have become daily visits to my home exercise spaces. The monthly writers’ meeting shave gone virtual.

One blessing that has persisted is that the writers’ group meetings have become more intense and participatory for me in a way I didn’t experience before the pandemic.

Prior to the pandemic, I was limited to what I could attend in person. If I didn’t have the time to travel or if there were conflicts, I didn’t go.

Conflicts still persist, but they are more easily managed now. I attend one meeting but not the other. But I don’t have to worry about travel, when attending the meeting simply requires that I be in front of my computer at a specific time.

I now have the chance to work with two different critique groups. That is a pandemic blessing, I must say. I have my local RWA chapter: link and the ACFW chapter: link, that covers my geographic region of people living in the Northeastern U.S.

Even if we were to go back to normal, I don’t want to give any of that up.

So what’s happening in my writing world? I noticed something a few weeks ago. I writer I follow on Twitter uses the pomodoro method, of setting aside a specific number of minutes just to write in blocks and chunks of time: link.

That reminded me of something. I used to keep better track of my word count. I don’t know why I stopped. I became content with finishing a draft in four to five months, which was fine, in my view, reasonable progress.

But what did that mean in terms of word counts? I began a new project on December 3 of last year. By the end of January, I had almost 20,000 words. I was writing on a regular basis, I was sitting in my chair at my desk. I did the math. That amounted to 500 words per day, about a page and a half.

It occurred to me that was paltry progress. I decided to try and do better. What if I wrote 1500 words per day, about five pages? What if I wrote 3000 words per day, about ten pages? 1500 words is a scene. 3000 words is a chapter.

At 500 words, I’m either dealing with major distractions, or I have the making of a scene that I really need to flesh out. I might be struggling with something. At 1500 words, the scene looks complete. At 3000 words, I have two complete scenes.

I’m not a Nanowrimo person, but I pushed myself to write as much as I could during the month of February. I aimed to minimize distractions. At some point, I was doing even less working out. The end result was a completed first draft by March 3. I can’t remember whether I ever did that before, complete a draft in three months, and with this word count, almost 55,000 words.

I still have work to do in revising. Even now, I can think of some edits to the final chapter. It seemed complete as I could make it when I finished it yesterday, but I know there’s more I can do. But at least I’ll be able to workshop it with the critique groups. There’s a writer’s saying, you can’t revise an empty page, and that certainly applies.

So I’m doing a serious juggle. Austin is almost ready for publication. Helena is in the pipeline, visiting with the editors. Then I’ll have a nonfiction piece to work on at some point in time. The important point is that with this draft out of the way, I can focus on other things while I work with the critique groups in revising.

What about my reading? Well, if you’re writing less, there’s more opportunity to read. So I haven’t been reading as much. But I did get to finish Toni Shiloh’s book: link. Plus, I’m reading a new book for Lent: link.

I learned recently about some books that I was curious about. I borrowed them from the library. I should begin reading soon.

And here’s something from my alter ego, the stay-at-home wife in the kitchen. My husband likes tools, all kinds of guy stuff for doing all kinds of guy things. Me? These are my latest tools. Smile.

Best of wishes,

Barbara.

Copyright Barbara James. All rights reserved.