Tag: Backgammon

12,000 Words

by eileentroemel, posted in Life, Writing

Yesterday, I woke up and intended to write.  I started writing and didn’t make a lot of progress.  My day was somewhat putzy with conversations with my middle daughter and work.  I spent a chunk of time taking care of work stuff and waiting on business stuff for my writing.

This of course means I was playing games on the computer while I waited.  I enjoy the games but by the time I had lunch I was annoyed with myself.  Here I am alone in my house and instead of being productive, I was playing Royal Envoy, Backgammon and Rummy 500.

To be fair, I was waiting on Amazon to process my change in price on Wayfarer.  After I quit playing and got lunch, I started writing.  I wrote all afternoon.  I wrote well into the night.  I nearly forgot to eat but my stomach was grumbling at me.  I heated up supper and ate before going back to writing.

I quit writing when I couldn’t keep my eyes open.  I came to a scene where I wasn’t sure which direction I wanted to go so I wrote as far as I could and quit.  This was a little after midnight.

Turning out my light, I slept almost immediately.  Until 2:30 this morning when I woke up, looked at the clock and told myself I needed more sleep.  I dozed until 5:30, frustrated I told myself I was going to sleep.  I woke up again at 6:00 and gave myself 15 minutes and I was going to just get up.

I hate mornings like this because I wake up feeling groggy and grumpy.  The good thing is at 2:30 I woke up knowing what I wanted to do with that scene.  Now when I’m done with my morning routine of checking email and such, I can hit the scene and move forward.

Yesterday with all my putzing, I still managed to write 12,000 words.  I got so much further in my story and am pleased with all the scenes I wrote.  I have two more scenes in my head to play out.  Now I’m finding with this book that the characters and story are taking me to scenes I hadn’t expected so those two scenes will likely turn into several other scenes but for now, I am going with two scenes.

I have today and most of the day tomorrow alone still and I’m planning to make the most of it.  I will write the scene in my head, take a shower, and get breakfast.  At some point I have to pay bills,  However, if that doesn’t happen until after Ken’s home it isn’t a big deal.

If I put another 12,000 words into this story today, I’ll have met my goal for word count (and then some).  If the story is done in 12,000 words that would be very nice.  I’ll just have to see how it goes.

Time Sucks…

by eileentroemel, posted in Life
There are just some activities that suck up your time.  You say “I’m only going to spend ten minutes on…” and then suddenly it is hours later and you are still on that site. 
This week while I’m home alone all day I have certain goals – mostly to work on cleaning my office.  This means while I am checking emails and so on I have to avoid sites like Ravelry, Pinterest, and Facebook if I’m to accomplish anything at all. 
Don’t get me wrong I LOVE wandering around these sites.  I find inspiration and laughter and a lot more on the sites.  However, I lose time like it is leaking through a sieve.  If I want to accomplish stuff I have to not look at those sites. 
The other thing that sucks up my time is the Kindle Fire that was just handed down to me.  I’ve been setting it up and removing things from the carousel.  I like the format but Kindle missed the mark when they didn’t allow you to put things in folders on the Fire – now if anyone knows how to do that – they should let me know. 
Along with setting things up I’ve been playing games on the Fire.  Backgammon, word games, Phase 10, Skipbo, and so many more are on there, and last night I spent hours playing backgammon, and others.  I will not be touching it today as I have too much to do. 
I have a crochet to do list and the other tasks in the office I want to get done.  Since my gout is bugging me today, it will likely be a crochet day.  I have a long list of what I need to do for crocheting.  If I can’t accomplish one goal, I’ll work on the others.
However, I will be avoiding those damn time sucks as they steal away all my good time so I cannot get done the things I want to get done – even if they are fun to spend time doing.  

Domino Effect

by eileentroemel, posted in Uncategorized
Vicki went to bed early tonight, she’s got a cold.  I wandered into my desk with no more intentions than to play a few games and go to bed.  Mondays are rough for me – as I’ve said. 
This is not what happened though.  I started out answering emails.  A couple of my writer friends from a group responded to my request for them to answer interview questions.  These responses led me to working on the report for my book editing class.  From there I went to checking my school / work email, which led to my mail box nearly being full so I had to delete a bunch of stuff – like thousands of emails.  From there I checked my D2L account.  This is the school account where I have a link for each class and then I can turn in assignments, get information for the class and a variety of other things. 
That led to playing on Facebook.  I actually played the couple of games I was intending.  By the time I was done with that it was 10:00.  You would think I would just go to bed right?  Nope. 
While playing those games I was thinking about the story I turned in to my fiction writing class which I have to edit.  I switched over to editing it.  I have the first chapter done.  Oh it started out as a short story but I’m pretty sure it will be a novel or novella by the time I’m done. 
When I closed that for the night, I fell into my old habit of playing the Hoyle games I have on my computer.  I’m obsessed with Rummy 500, Spite & Malice, and Backgammon.  I have to play at least one game of each before I can go to bed.  I think I do this because it helps to shut down my brain.  After editing, I need the creative flow to slow enough so I can get to sleep and not have to pop up several times over the next hour to jot down just one more idea.
This lovely domino effect has led me to 11:45 pm and not in bed before midnight – yet again.  It is completely my own fault.  However, I’m glad I got all this stuff done.  It means I’ll have one or two fewer things to do over the weekend – I hope.