12,000 Words

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.

Domino Effect

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.

Procrastination

I think I’ve earned a doctorate in this.  Yesterday I worked on organizing, cleaning, and clearing out some of my office.  It was completely a procrastination attempt for doing my paper.  It always takes me a bit to settle into homework but this weekend I was off the charts with procrastinating. 
The good thing about that is I got my office picked up and organized a bit more.  I sorted through paperwork.  I filed, created files, threw out, and took care of a large amount of paper.  It was a very productive morning.  I got a bunch of tax stuff organized (yup it is nearly that time of year again).  I even found more articles for my paper.
Finally I settled down to reading.  For a two page paper I have ten articles.  I discarded fifteen other articles.  I have six pages of notes.  I worked most of the day with the procrastinating cleaning and working on homework.  Still no paper yesterday.
I spent the evening (after 7) with Vicki watching stuff on the DVR and crocheting.  I’m currently working on Stephanie’s afghan.  It is star shaped and takes me an hour to do one round.  I’m also working on a wrap for Vicki.  It is made with a large hook and simple pattern so I get a lot of progress with little effort. 
At midnight I came back to my desk with the intention of reading the final article and starting to write.  That didn’t happen.  I played on the computer.  I’m loving Rummy 500 in the Hoyle games right now.  However, I did send my professor for Fiction Writing my short story.  I have no idea how she will take it.  It isn’t due for a while so this gives me a chance to change it if need be.
This morning I finally sat down and wrote my paper.  I had to stop at one point to email my professor because it ended up being just slightly longer than three pages.  Fortunately she was quick about the turn around and told me that was just fine. 

All that’s left is editing it one more time.  I’ve read it through once and so has Vicki.  I will go through it one more time before I submit it.  My mini to do list is almost all done.  That is somewhat shocking.  I even added things to it as the weekend has progressed and most of those are done too.  I guess I did procrastinate but in a good productive way – if that is possible.