You might have noticed that I didn’t post a blog entry detailing how I did with my goals in February. That’s because I really didn’t make any progress towards them, whatsoever. I joined a few friends on their Whole30 adventure last month (it ends on Wednesday), and my priorities suddenly shifted from writing to making sure I was able to have meals that fell within the very strict standards of the program. While my body was figuring out what the heck I was doing to it, I spent most of my time at home cooking, cleaning dishes, or looking up recipes. It was a very interesting lifestyle experiment, and I’ll be writing about it a bit later. However, it left me with little — if any — time for writing.
As a result, February is a lost month. As it stands right now I still have only one short story written, and that’s a re-draft of a bit of fluff I published about a year ago. I’m glad to have done the Whole30 diet, and it’s rekindled a love of cooking that I’m happy to have again, but it forced me to take my eye off the ball in a way I rather it didn’t.
So this month I’ll be trying to get back into the habit of writing (while trying to maintain healthier eating habits). That means waking up a bit earlier so I have at least fifteen minutes of writing time before work in the morning. I could also take my laptop with me on the train so I could get in more writing either going to work or coming back a few days out of the week. And I’ll certainly have to put my foot down in the evenings — I have about three or four hours of time when I get home, and at least 30 minutes of it has to go to writing.
Starting today, that means I’m hoping to have at least 45 minutes of writing time every day. It’ll be hard to do, but I’ve subsisted on a diet of meat, vegetables, fruits, eggs and nuts for 30 days. If I can do that, I can certainly do this.
I’m still working on a “commission” for Rask Husky that I’m tentatively titling “Tough Fit.” Hopefully that will be done in a week or so, and after that I’ll move on to the re-draft of the second part of the fluff story that shouldn’t take very long at all. Once that’s done, I’ll be writing part three of a serial I’ve been working on for an APA that I’m a part of, and then working on a “commission” for Elrabin that’s long overdue at this point.
That’s four short stories put away this month, with one of them being submitted for publication. It won’t quite catch me up to where I’ve been lagging behind so far this year, but it’ll get me closer. I can’t deny that I’m disappointed with what I’ve done so far this year, but I’ll be trying to channel that frustration into productive writing this month. After a number of derailments, it’s time to get this train back on the track.
From the Desk of Jakebe T. Rabbit 