I’m a couple of days late on putting up this post. I only have myself to blame. The lure of my first long bike ride in over a decade was too much for me to fend off.

Now that I’ve had a wee bit of time to recuperate (tender bahookie), here’s this week’s entry.

Review 3rd – 9th May 2021

My Writing Goals for Last Week

• Complete changes to Act 2a and 2b (part 1) index cards for Working The Asset.

Did I Achieve My Goal?

Yes and no.

No, I didn’t make all the changes as planned. Yes, I did enough that I’m now ready to move on.

Details

While making all the changes, I started to get this nagging feeling like I was wasting time trying to get all the cards just right. Every part of me was itching to get back to the real pre-editing I was doing last year—wow, I can’t believe how easy it was for other things to take over.

Eventually, I decided to stop and have a flick through the guide I was using (Sparking Story Drafts by H. R. D’Costa) to see where I needed to be to get back on track. Hmm.

That’s when I realised that the changes I’d been slogging through were going too far. In Sparkling Story Drafts, as with all H. R. D’Costa’s pre-editing version of outlining, the task of creating a story is broken down into action steps. And, it turns out that I’d been trying to complete three different ones all at once. Needless to say, I’ve learned a valuable lesson: after a break from work, re-read the section you were last working on.

What This All Means

I’m finally, finally able to get back to the action steps that lead to the actual writing of the story! I have two more editorial passes, which consist of multiple steps each, and then it’s on to a fairly clean first draft. Woohoo! 🥳

No Goals This Week

It’s holiday time for us, again! We’re celebrating our 24th (together) and 18th (married) anniversaries on the 16th and 17th. So, I’m going to focus on having a great time with my wonderful husband on our bikes. (Expect more bike trip photos)

But, if I happen to get some work done, it’ll be back on the Action Steps! Action Step 36.

Well, that’s it for this week. My next Author Journal post will be two weeks from now. Until then, thanks for reading. Take care.