Ooops

It's Thursday. THURSDAY.

Do you see where this is going?

I forgot about the Monday Accountability Report. No wonder I get nothing done.

So--fast and easy. Last week's goals were, for Project #1, to finish editing 13 scenes (I finished 7), and for Project #2, to finish the final draft of the March story (finished the first draft).

Goals for this--ahem, almost-over--week:

STOP PROCRASTINATING

The video Shell doesn't want you to see

I'm no militant activist. How could I, spending my days in front of the 106K words of the novel I'm (supposed to be) editing? Yeah, yeah, the pen is mightier than the sword, and my fiction will, one hopes, one day have the power to make people think, to change minds, to influence for good.

But in order to achieve that, I must first pay the price. Perfect the craft. Put in those 10,000 hours. (Are we there yet?)

And still. From this my laptop, as limited as the scope of influence might be, there are a few things I can do. One of them is sharing this video, which got taken down from YouTube by the F1 people. I have no sympathy for you, F1 guys. Those millions upon millions you spend every year on engines, suits, advertising, transport? How about you *do* something worthwhile with it? There's enough hunger in the world, enough suffering. Take your pick. For goodness' sake, leave the playing with cars for a time when every child has one healthy meal a day.

A blog benchmark

Quiet Laughter has crossed the 50K-visits line. Thank you for every time you stop by, every comment, every share. You've made this happen, and I'm profoundly grateful.

You--yes, YOU--rock.

Accountability Week 3

I'm beginning to dread these #writemotivation posts. No, no epic fail like last week this time--I actually got quite a bit of writing time in. More than the allotted 4 hours a day most days.

But little to show for it.

So I'm celebrating--I stuck to the schedule (sort of), got into the discipline of sitting my meager butt down in front of the keyboard and starting. But I'm also moping, because in spite of this schedule and this discipline, both of which cost me a psychological arm and a leg, progress is slow.

Dog Day at the Beach

Coming soon to a beach near you :D

Accountability Week 2

So since I found #writemotivation via the awesome Damyanti (and thanks to K.T. Hanna for inventing it! I'll join the Roll Call in Sept, I promise), I moved these accountability posts to Monday. Hope you don't mind.

Epic fail this past week. Epic. Zero words written. Nada. Oh, we're counting emails? Okay, then log in my word count at +/- 1,000 for the week.

Embellishment--or insight?

Eternal gratitude, Janet Reid, for sharing this (a while back) and (more recently) this example on Spare and Elegant Writing.

Does this resonate as much with you as it did with me? How far are you along in the process of simplifying yourself? We all know adverbs must be avoided, substituted with stronger verbs. What other pitfalls have you discovered in your own writing?

Accountability Week One

Project 1--The Novel (A Mantra for Cats and Other Runaways)

This, my first novel, is finished... But perhaps it's a good idea to define "finished." The story is complete, from beginning to end. I've revised and re-revised, over and over. When I thought it was perfect, I pitched it at a writers' conference and got seven out of nine agents interested (one of which later turned me down). At said conference I met an awesome editor to whom I sent the MS (after another round of revisions). She came back with some powerful insights, which led me to a) cut the MS from 104K to 52K, and b) add entirely new material that heightened the stakes, made them clearer, that brought the word count back up to 103K.

*Sigh*

Writing? What writing?

I actually am writing--you know, besides the sporadic nonsense post here. But these posts are the model of regularity compared to that other writing.

What can one do, right?

Well, no. That's the point. I refuse to become another of those wanna-be writers that have five unfinished novels under the bed, which get dusted every now and then, get a couple of chapters reworked until said wanna-be runs out of steam.