Last week was a belter of a week! Yip, the days did wheech by, but so did the work. Here’s a look at how it went.

Review 10th to 16th June 2021

My Writing Goals for Last Week

• Complete Editorial Pass for Character (6/7) from Sparking Story Drafts by H. R. D’Costa
  • Action Step (AS) 38b
  • AS 38c
  • AS 38d
• Start Final Editorial Pass for Odds and Ends (7/7)
  • AS 39a (the aim was to get the first half of the task done)

Did I Achieve My Goals?

Yes! Not only did I achieve the goals I’d set out, but I completed AS 39a and AS 39b 🥳. I even made a start on AS 40, but it’s going to need another day or two to get it all done. (There are charts, calendars, local information, and weather data for Marseilles to put onto the index card outline and my editing/research notes.)

As of this post, I’m currently at this point in the final pass:

Ever since last week’s startling revelation of the obvious—that Thursday is my Monday—my time has been a lot less hectic. Actually, all the hecticness has reduced massively. I realise now that the hectic feeling is just that, a feeling.

It comes down to how I’d framed things—mindset if you will. I set out with Monday to Sunday as my set week, even though that hasn’t reflected my reality for some time now, and that caused me to chase my tail constantly. Now that I’ve reframed my week, it’s like I have a wee bit more time to work, to go out to play on the bikes, to unwind.

With that, here’s the week in review.

Review 3rd to 9th June 2021

My Writing Goals for Last Week

Last week was hectic. So hectic that by the time I got around to posting my journal, it was already too late—like Friday late—and I decided to skip posting it.

It’s not that I had a lot of unexpected things pop up. Nope. I knew about them. I just hadn’t set time aside for them in my planning. Well, that’s what I thought until the same issue occurred this week.

It wasn’t until this morning that I realised why I’ve been so short of time the last couple of weeks, and the weeks before my holiday time. The time-culprit is so obvious that I can’t believe I missed it. My schedule changed. Monday hasn’t been the first day of my week for a while now. Yet, I’ve been planning everything around it being that way.

The first day of my week is actually a Thursday which explains the major “noh” feeling I get on a Monday—my Friday. Therefore, I’ve decided to post my journal on Thursday from now on.

With that cleared up, here’s how last week went.

Review 27th May – 2nd June 2021

My Writing Goals for Last Week

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.

I can’t believe we’re into May already! Last week just wheeched by, and I’m still trying to get my head back round the right way.

As you’ll see below, I’m still working on making plot, motivation, stakes, and character changes to my stack of index cards for Working The Asset. In my fantasy version of pre-editing, it was going to be so quick and easy to make all these changes. But it’s not. It’s slow and laborious. Though, not as bad as doing it after writing 80K words.

The pre-edits are helping me craft a pretty incredible story (well, the kind of story I love to read, anyway), and I’ve had to remind myself often that I’m learning a new method and that it will get faster with each book.

If it wasn’t clear from the above paragraphs, last week did not go as planned. But, the story is growing into something that genuinely excites me. Something I know will be worth the hard slog. Something I can’t wait to share with other romantic suspense/action-adventure romance fans.

This last week was so different from my norm of the previous few months. I could get down on myself, or I can use it as a learning experience that I’ll take with me into my next holiday time (in about three weeks from now 🥳)

Review 12th to 18th April 2021

My writing goals for last week were:

• Make changes and clean up Acts 1 and 2a of the index cards for Deniable Unit #1: Working the Asset (DU#1)

How Did It Go?

Uhh, it didn’t really go. I got around 25% of the work done, and that was like pulling teeth.

Well, after my mandatory level of caffeine intake, I sat myself down like I usually do: herbal tea, some Ludovico Einaudi, my notes, and two stacks of index cards … but my normal work vibe was missing. I couldn’t focus on the job and struggled to get just one scene done on Monday.

On Thursday, Ludovico went from calming to fudging irritating and was promptly replaced by silence. I managed to clean up and change eleven card sides (two scenes), boiling them down to just four. I was finally starting to feel the work vibe coming back.

Or so I thought.

Hiya! It was a pretty good work week last week. No real distractions aside from the fact that I’ve run out of chamomile tea! It’s okay; I’ll rectify that tomorrow. 😅

Review 5th to 11th April 2021

My writing goals for last week were:

• Complete pages 40 – 52 (inclusive) of Story Structure Organiser Workbook for Deniable Unit #1: Working the Asset (DU#1)

How Do I Think It Went?

I’d mentioned last week that I’d have to do the bulk of the pages twice because I’m writing an action-adventure romance. This is down to the fact that these subgenre stories essentially contain two plots. Both of the plot threads share equal billing (50% each), and it requires a delicate balancing act to get it right—the same is true of romantic suspense, paranormal romance etc.

What I failed to remember in my scheduling was that with romance (the dual-protagonist kind that I write) is that the heroine and hero also have equal billing. Meaning, I had to do two sweeps for the romance plot. So, yay, more work. 😑

Onward.