I’ve been playing the “what if?” game in my head a lot over the past couple of months as we finally closed on a house, renovated it, moved out of the old place. Not much time for writing, lots of time for thinking in there.

What I’m thinking is that it’s time for some changes.  For the past handful of years I’ve been trying to build a coaching business.  As always, I thought I had to do something else and have my writing on the side.  But my writing has suffered for that idea, and I really don’t like it. I want to have my writing be my main focus.  Yes, I have a day job. But after that I want the writing to be my big thing.  I will probably still teach some classes and maybe still lead the writing retreat I’ve been dreaming up.  But I want to be a writer first.

I don’t entirely know how this is going to look.  I’m thinking about things like pen names and new websites.  For now, I’m going to stick with this site and dive back into writing.

I’m taking a 14-week short story class that starts at the end of January.  Then in late April, right as the long class wraps up, I’m taking a weekend-long short story intensive. And then I’m going to submit stories!  In the long class, the final assignment is actually to write cover letters for our stories so we can send them out.  This feels like a pretty good start to focusing on my writing.

I’m also planning on getting back to being a regular ROW80 participant.  Round 1 of 2016 starts tomorrow.  Here are my goals:

• Write at least three days a week
• Focus on story writing and description work (I tend to be sketchy on my descriptions, so I need more practice on that) more than on free writing
• Go to PDX Writers Saturday workshops at least once a month
• Post regularly for ROW80 and check in on other blogs

This feels like a pretty good list to get the year started, and I feel like these goals all blend well with the class work I’ll be doing.  I’ll be back on Wednesday to check in.

I completely missed last week’s ROW80 check-in.  I’m surprised I managed to get to this today since Monday was a holiday so I keep forgetting what day it is this week.

I have loads of things going on (that whole buying a house thing really is like another job!), so I haven’t done as much as I wanted to recently with my story.  But I have made progress.

Last week I was ready to give it up.  I’m pretty much done with the read-through, and the verdict was not good.  I had lots of good writing but not much of a story.  I had no real motivation for my protagonist or my antagonist.  And the big finale I was leading up to? No real reason for it, not a big enough reason to make it necessary at any rate.

This was really disappointing because this story was the one I’d been holding in the back of my mind as the one, my really good story idea that was going to be really worth going back to and finishing.  And then it turned out to not be what I thought it was all this time.

I gave myself most of a week off to daydream and ponder and see if I could figure out how to make this into a viable story.  Not much came of it.  Then Saturday I was at my monthly knitting circle (I have the best knitting circle–Ph.D.s and academics and writers–we have the best conversations!).  Talk turned to writing, and I talked about my problem with my story.  Not much progress was made, but it was good to talk about it.  One proposed solution really didn’t work for me, but at least it was something to toy with.  I left still thinking I didn’t have much of a real story to work with.  Then on the ride home my answer came.

It does mean scrapping most of what’s happened in the story so far, but if I do this then it will actually be a story and not just a bunch of pages of interesting locations and dialogue and a few explosions.

Next step: planning and outlining.  I kind of want to get this done by the end of October so I can write the story for NaNoWriMo, but it looks like our closing date (if everything sorts out) is going to be mid-October.  So I’m not sure this is a feasible goal.  I’m going to call it a loose goal and go from there.  At least I have a real story idea now, right?

So what’s up with your writing life?  How’s everything going in your story?  Hope you’re having a great writing time!

It’s ROW80 check-in time.  I’m changing up how I do things to make it simpler for myself and more interesting and encouraging, at least for me.  Instead of “I did this, didn’t do that, didn’t complete the other thing” I’m going to do reports on what I did during the week.  In Kaizen-Muse Creativity Coaching we call it a Credit Report.  This one is going to be specific to my writing, but it’s the same idea.

This week I got to the two-thirds point in my Blood of the Mist read-through.  I also had some really good ideas for ways to make parts better and made notes about it (see those sticky notes poking out at the sides of my pages?) so I’ll remember what I wanted to do when I get back to the writing part.

I visited several ROW80 blogs and commented.  I’m glad to be getting back into that. It’s too easy to let things slip away even when it’s something you want to be doing.

I also had a tiny epiphany. I realized that I overestimate how much I can get done in a week.  That’s part of why I’m changing my check-in format.  The goals of “get the read-through done by X date” were more stressful than useful because I wasn’t hitting the goals.  And while some of that is due to my procrastination habit, it’s also because I do actually have other things I have to do every week, and doing my reading and note taking takes longer than I realized it would.  So my goals now are to keep checking in on blogs and to make progress on the read-through every week (although the time-keeper in my does think I’ll be done by this time next week).

That’s this week in my writing world.  What’s going on in your writing world?

It’s time for this week’s ROW80 check-in, and I’m just a little too tired to find a fancy image to go with my post.  ROW80 logo to the rescue!

Luckily my writing week went better than my image finding.  I’m not all the way through my read-through of Blood of the Mist–I’m never very good at figuring out how long something will take me.  I’ve made a lot of progress and have some really good notes about story ideas.

I think the story is good, too!  I think.  I can’t really tell.  I’m enjoying reading it after several years away from it, but to be completely honest I don’t know if I’m enjoying it because it’s good or because I really love this kind of story.  Is it good? Maybe yes, maybe no.  I know I’m liking it and feeling excited to move forward with it, and that’s the important part right now.

For the coming week I’m going to make a push to really finish this read-through and at least get started on scene notes.  I’m also going to do better at checking in on blogs because I completely failed at that this week.

I did one other big writing thing this week.  I signed up for a writing retreat in October!  I have always wanted to go to a writing retreat, and an opportunity opened up last night for a retreat not too far from home that I found out about after it was already full.  A group had to cancel, and suddenly there were open spots, so I snagged one.  I am so excited!  I am practically counting the days.

What’s going on in your writing life?  I hope you’re having a great writing week!  Drop me a note and let me know.

See you next time!