Another Monday

Another start to a new week. I kinda fell of the face of the earth by the end of last week, didn’t I? I’d like to say it was due to extenuating circumstances, but that would be a lie and I promised myself I would never lie in this blog, even if it meant making myself look bad.

Last week the writing started to dwindle and finally petered right out. It was frustrating, because although I can blame the amount of school work for the early part of the week, by Thursday the school pressure was off and I had a four day weekend. A four day weekend where I accomplished nada.

Yesterday I started to get a little more motivation going, and I even printed off a couple of old stories to have a look at. The first one I’d been having a lot of trouble with the plot - it’s set in the not so distant future. After reading the latest version I have to wonder why I abandoned it. I appear to have overcome the plot problem and with some judicious editing I could call it done.

The second story was based on a poem I wrote in highschool, which itself was based on a newspaper clipping about a little boy lost in the snow. When I started it, it was actually four stories intertwined, but it just wasn’t working that way. There was the old man’s story, the creature’s story, the child’s story, and the father’s story. If it had worked the way I’d envisioned it, it would have been a really great story. Only I couldn’t get the four stories to weave together. They each wanted to wander off and do their own thing. I tried to write each of the stories separately and that was an even bigger disaster. This one needs to be stripped down to its basic plot - what is the story really about.

Okay, on to the goals.

Like last week, I missed Creative Friday again. I found a really cool story I’d started at one point called Comfort Zone but it was only half done and I have no idea where I was going with it, other than the point the main character is making was that her motivation for doing what she did was because anything else would have taken her out of her comfort zone. Then I was going to follow the link Benjamin gave me for Fiction Friday, but I just couldn’t come up with a reason for Santa Claus to be showing up in the middle of summer. :-)

So no Creative Friday, and no flash fiction last week.

Wrote one replacement poem for the AW anthology and lots of fragments.

Wrote three more assignments for my Human Resources course (and I’d better remember that I have the last one due tomorrow - something about unions and Wal-Mart).

Read many, many books. :-)

Goals for this week:

Absolutely no more gaming. Not even solitaire or spider solitaire. I’m going to make a list of other stuff that needs done around the house and if I don’t feel like writing I have to pick something off the list instead. (A sure way to get me back writing - I hate housework!)

Two new poems, one of which should be something to illustrate whatever poetry form I choose for Thursday’s Passion for Poetry. It was pointed out to me that I should put my money where my mouth is and if I’m going to talk about these different forms I should at least attempt them myself. :-)

No skipping Friday’s post. If I can do a 500 - 1000 word assignment in under an hour, there’s no reason I can’t be posting a flash fiction piece on Friday. If the prompt from Fiction Friday doesn’t turn my crank, I can always find a new prompt.

Pretty skimpy on the goals, but at least I’m not setting myself up to fail. And I have a huge pile of books waiting to be read so I think I’ll set up a reward system for myself. One hour of writing = ½ hour of reading . . .

If that doesn’t motivate my writing, nothing will!