…and (several) dollars…well, you know how the rest of it goes. I started typing a post for yesterday’s A Round of Words in 80 Days check-in, got about half-way through, and decided to just take the day off. It was a late start, not because of Easter, as I don’t celebrate Easter unless I’m home with my Catholic family, but because we were celebrating a friend’s birthday the night before and I had a hungover boyfriend to take care of. It happens. The whole weekend was slightly off for me, for a variety of reasons, but it’s a new day, a new week, and I’m ready to get back to work, eyes on the proverbial prize.
With a little bit of an adjustment to my goals. I’m kicking the drawing one to the curb. Drawing is good and something I need to do more of if I want to look into being a merchant/artist at the comic conventions here in the area, but, right now, it’s just a distraction from writing. It’s not fitting in with my routine, so it’s outta here. The only drawing I should be concerned with right now is the sketching for the painting that will hopefully become Soulless‘s cover art.
What about the other goals? I was starting to feel like a chapter a day of editing on Soulless was too much…editing and typing are completely different beasts, so I’ve decided to just edit as much as I can per day, and leave it at that. I know it’s important to have quantifiable goals, but I think, in this respect, I know I’m just going to edit the crap out of it until the end of the round, even if that means going through it three times or ten or twenty, depending on how I manage it, so I think this will work, as well as keep me from beating myself up too much if I only get a few pages polished up on some days.
I’m still going to try to get a story out every week. I’m a little behind on this, because I have a story to send out still that I’m in the process of typing, but it should be ready to go and shipped out somewhere by the end of the day. That’s my big goal today. Get this sucker out. I’m having trouble with a title, though, since “Super Scary Wolves Are Going to Kill Me” doesn’t quite set the right tone, accurate as it may be.
As far as 750 Words goes, I’m dropping the attempt to write a novel in 750 words a day, just because I was really losing the voice and I don’t really need to be working on ANOTHER novel right now. I’ve got Heartless to work on while editing Soulless and Serpent in a Cage is very close to completion, too, so another novel defeats the point of focusing on only one or two big projects at a time. Instead, I’m going to use 750words as a springboard for some of those short stories I want to finish each week. Every day, I’ll plug in a prompt and go at it for 750 words, and then pluck one out to focus on when it’s time to start a new story. I think that will help greatly when I’ve just sent a story out and I’m trying to think about what to do next.
Really, it wouldn’t be RoW80 without a goal adjustment at some time during the game. How’s everyone else doing? Have you felt the urge to go off the rails a little like I did? The way I see it, if you go off the rails a little, that’s just fine, as long as you manage to get back on track, which is what I’m hoping to do.
Don’t forget to check out all the other fab RoWers here!
Happy writing!
L.S. Engler 
You point out something important here: I’ve found myself to be far more effective if I narrow down my goals and really focus on a few. When I’ve had 10 goals to accomplish, I seem to piddle with all of them but never finish. Hope your goal readjustment works great for you. It sounds like you’re on the right track now! Best wishes with the editing. Have a wonderful round!
Thanks, Julie! I’m sure in a few weeks, I’ll be adjusting them again, but I think that’s the beauty of RoW80. It’s just as much about discovering what goals work as finishing the goals themselves.
L.S., it definitely would not be ROW80 if you couldn’t change directions and goals in the middle–that’s the beauty of it. I go off the rails, but as long as it’s more the closet-door-off-the-rails versus the high-speed-train-off-the-rails, I figure I’m good!
I’ve had the same difficulty with 750words–great for ideas, shorts, blog posts, even, but not sustained writing. I can’t really say why, but there it is.
One of my longest short stories came from 750words, so I thought maybe I could try something even longer, but I think you just lose a connection with a story that big when you’re only working on it in bursts and feeling obligated to do it. But I do think it’s a good exercise when I’m able to do it in the morning. It sets the tone for the rest of the day.
And my closet door comes off the tracks ALL THE TIME. Metaphorically as well as literally. Ugh.