A Work In Progress

I swear, I’m going to become organized if it kills me. And it just might.

I finally had to admit the Kanban board was a bust. It’s not that it’s a bad idea, it just doesn’t work for me. I’ve been in such a dry spell that I don’t really have enough on the go to make it worth the trouble, and I’m pretty single-minded in my efforts to get my creative mojo back in gear – blog posts, prompt stories, and finishing Blood Ties, with a little editing thrown in.

See, the problem with spending all of your time at home is you have all the time in the world. There are no limits or deadlines, just endless time. So I got thinking about all this time, and what I was doing with it as opposed to what I should be doing.

I started with my old friend the list. I listed things I do daily, I listed things I do weekly, I made sub-lists and figured out the amount of time I spend on various tasks. Then I made a list of other things I could/should be doing.

I had the idea to figure out how much time I spend on necessities, like sleep or meals, and how much time I had left over, and then figure out a way to incorporate the other stuff I should be doing instead of spending so much time reading and/or gaming.

Honestly, it makes a lot of sense in my head!

What I’m hoping to come up with is a kind of loose schedule, not so much assigning a specific time for things but an approximate amount of time. This way I’m not stuck in a carved in stone daily routine, but I can be as flexible as I want - maybe spend a little more or less time on something as needed.

I have a nifty ‘to do’ pad that shows a week at a time and I’m thinking that I can sit down on Sunday nights and fill it out, listing things I want to accomplish for the whole week instead of just the day. It just might work.

You know, if I put half as much energy into finishing Blood Ties as I do in trying to get organized, I’d have the book done by now.

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Wordage Report

Editing – 5 pages
I ignored Visitation Rites in favour of The Bone Moon, and seeing as I got the story finished, I think it was a wise choice.

Blood Ties – 625 words
Did I say I was over the hump with them having arrived at the castle? Ha! That’ll teach me to speak in haste.

Blog Posts – includes the post for my regular blog, but not the prompt story.
580 (regular blog)+ 894 + 331 = 1,805 words total

Weekly Prompt – 615 words

Total Words – 3,045

New Prompt
This week’s prompt is from Springhole
One night, a nurse has a fit of insanity and finds a creature from the depths of the ocean.

Goals From Last Week:
Not nearly as many words on Blood Ties as I would have liked, but I got a few in and maybe the story’s moving along at a snail’s pace, but at least it’s moving. Maybe, like a snail, it’ll leave a beautiful, silvery trail . . .

The prompt story took me by surprise. I really, really wanted to do a horror story, but it just wouldn’t go that way. And then I thought maybe some kind of origin story about the dreamcatchers, but I didn’t want to step on any aboriginal toes. What I ended up with was kind of a folk-tale, but I incorporated a lot of my research on dreamcatchers in it.

I found the copy I’d started to mark up for The Bone Moon, and just continued to work on it until it was done, adding around 300 new words to it. It’s so satisfying to call a story done!

Goals For This Week:
1. More new words on Blood Ties. I may have got over the sticky part of them reaching the castle, but Jessica still hasn’t exactly met her father. The worst part is, I don’t even know how much of this whole section is going to make it into the final book.
2. New prompt story – This week’s prompt looks a little challenging – I’ll have to try and get an early start on it.
3. Continue with the edits but not, I think, on Visitation Rites. It almost needs to be rewritten, which is fine, but I don’t want to get into that while I’m still working on Blood Ties. So for now I’m going to edit some of my back log of flash fiction.

And there’s what I’ll be up to this week. How about you?