Week 24: Writing week

(Jun 11 – Jun 17)

One of the things I do almost every day–other than sleep, eat, drink coffee, and generally decide that this is a perfectly acceptable way to pass most days–is write. I get up almost every morning (I take Saturdays off) and write for around 30-45 minutes. I log my writing progress in these sessions (what I’ve been writing, how many words, etc), and have been doing so for the last few years. However, I’ve not done much writing about my writing in these diary posts, so this week I’ve decided to focus largely on my writing endeavours for the next seven days.

Monday

The Elderbeast climbs into my bed during the night and spends the rest of it sleeping blissfully, all while routinely kicking me in the back. As such I am barely in a fit state to get out of bed when the alarm goes off, much less to sit down and write. Nevertheless, I don’t like to start the day without writing something, so I take half an hour to catch up on my diary posts (which I am more or less keeping up with, but really need to dedicate some solid weekly blocks of time to if they’re going to ever make it onto the blog).

Later in the evening I make up for things a bit by attempting a read-through of the first few chapters of my sci-fi novella. I’ve been working on this one for a month or two now, and the story and tone are shaping up nicely. Where I want to get to now is having a fairly solid first few chapters, so I know exactly what I’m building the rest of the book onto.

The read-through turns into a line edit of the first couple of pages, which is no bad thing, but doesn’t progress me as far as I’d hoped. On the plus side, I’m keen to sit down tomorrow morning and carry on with the edit.

Tuesday

I wake up at 5am and lie awake for a bit. Or maybe I don’t. I tell myself I’ll get up early and get in some extra writing time if I’m still awake after half an hour. It doesn’t feel like I get any more sleep, but the next time I check my clock it’s 6:20–ten minutes before my alarm goes off.

I take the ten minutes, then dutifully get out of bed when the time comes. I start to write but am continually distracted by the Elderbeast playing Fortnite in the room next door. The game itself is silent, courtesy of headphones. Unfortunately, the Elderbeast’s mouth has no such protection.

I do get some decent writing in, but unsurprisingly my concentration falters throughout…

Wednesday

I wake up earlyish again, long before my alarm, but somehow still manage to get out at bed when the alarm eventually goes off. I manage a bumper editing session (over 1,000 words) which pleases me greatly. Still on the first chapter of the sci-fi novella. Might even have something readable before too much longer.

Thursday

I accidentally turn my alarm off instead of hitting snooze (I smart, me), and wake up half an hour later than planned. Nevertheless, I still manage to wrap up the edit of chapter one. Decent. Ish.

Friday

Writing progress today is steady, but not mind blowing. I begin a rewrite of the third chapter of the novella with a 762 word chunk edited before I have to get ready for work.

Saturday

Saturday is my regular day off. I’ve found that the daily writing becomes a burden when I do it Every Single Day, so I long ago decided that I would reserve Saturday for a lie in–or, at the very least, to have one day in the week where I didn’t have to force myself to get up early. However, in latter months, Saturday morning has become my preferred time for food shopping. I like to get in there as close to 9am as I can manage, before things get too busy.

And, while it may not be writing related, the rest of the day was pretty awesome. I had a friend come round for the afternoon with her dog, and the Kinderbesten had an absolute blast. As did I, if we’re being honest here. Then, I had totally another friend come over for the evening to eat burgers, drink whisky, and watch Aliens.

You don’t typically get a better Saturday than that.

Sunday

I did not write today either on account of being sociable (my friend from last night having slept over).

The rest of the day was, once again, pretty awesome. We had the opportunity to visit some friends at their very first market stall, selling homemade treats for pets. Naturally I took the opportunity to buy several bags of tasty goodness.

After that I took the Elderbeast to buy some soccer boots, which was mostly exciting because it’s cool to see him getting into something that isn’t Fortnite, but also because the shop was having a sale and we got a sweet discount on some boots that the Elderbeast was very happy with.

Then, later in the the afternoon, some (qualified electrician) friends came over to install my oven. Yes–I now, once more, have a fully functioning oven! And it is SHINY!

So, not much writing, but a top weekend otherwise.

Watched

You’ll observe that I’ve gotten out of the habit of watching things during the week. I do, however, have my other weekly traditions. Friday remains horror movie night. Saturday is, as often as possible, Awesome Movie Night. Meanwhile, Sunday is reserved for ‘hidden gems’; typically Netflix movies that have missed the cinema (or me, up until now) and have gotten good word of mouth across the internet. Tonight, by request of the Elderbeast, we enjoyed a repeat screening of Carrie Pilby.

Read

Still reading Endurance by Scott Kelly. And, yes, still enjoying it.

Eaten

This week I completely I failed at my note taking in this department, so now we’ll never know what I ate.