The Night of Writing Exercises

Tonight I put down my various projects to focus on craft itself.  I did several free-writes and two exercises out of "The 3 A.M. Epiphany," by Brian Kiteley.  This book was assigned to me during one of my creative writing courses at the University of Utah, and I love it.  He did a second writing book called "The 4 A.M. Breakthrough" in 2009, and I am hoping to pick that one up soon.

Asylum Project

So I spent about a year and a half doing research and developing what I'll call the "Asylum Project."  Unfortunately the steam went out and I set it to the side for a number of months.  Today, I decided that I wanted to start refamiliarizing myself with it so I spent several hours looking over the plot, characters, and research.  I don't know if I am ready to begin writing it yet, but I feel the time is coming soon.

Hay Day! Netflix! You are the Devil!

So I accomplished absolutely nothing last night...why?  Because I couldn't keep myself off of Hay Day and watching "The Office."  I feel terribly guilty for it, like when you ate that last piece of cake even though it was supposed to be saved for your significant other...or something like that anyway.  The point is, I have a bad tendency to allow these distractions to carry me away from everything I have to do and I can't let that happen.

Twofur

This post will be combining last night and tonight...not that there is too terribly much or anything wild to go into details about.  Last night was pretty straight forward, I went to Shari's and after my free-write I got about two hours and got about 600 words done before coming to a complete standstill.  After that I came back home and worked for another hour on research and story development.
Tonight I didn't get any words written for "Ashes", however, I did complete my free-write and another hour and a half in story development.  Three and a half hours of sleep just doesn't work very well for me anymore.  All good though...moving forward still.

Shari's, Coffee, and Progress

Today has been a great night.  Following the last few days lackluster progress I decided I needed to change things up for the night.  After dropping my husband off at work and taking care of a few things around the house I packed up my writing stuff and made my way to a nearby Shari's.  I am always a bit leery about writing in public because I don't like being that, "oh look another writer" person.  However, after I get my cup of generic coffee, get my headphones on, and my pencils sharpened, I've gotten over that and I'm ready to go.

I didn't set any goals before starting out tonight.  I wanted things to be carry as little pressure as possible and just let go...I think I was pretty successful and I feel excellent about the progress that I made.

Project Name: "Ashes"
Today's Word Count: 1,466
Project Word Count: 4,172 of 7,500
Words This Year: 4,172

What I accomplished:

• Feeling confident about getting work done.
• Completed a ten minute free-write.
• Wrote for several hours.

Still Getting Changed Over

Still feeling headachy and tired all night.  The ability for words to even make it to the tip of the pencil eludes me.  However I did spend about an hour and a half looking over things I had done on the "Asylum" project.

Schedule Changes UGH!

My husbands schedule has changed for the second time in a month.  He was on a graveyard shift, then he went to a modified swing shift, and now he is back on graves.  This change has altered my writing capabilities momentarily...I just can't concentrate.  Hopefully, it is just readjusting and I will recover--I'm sure I will recover.

Completed today:

• Ten minutes of free-writing.
• Spent just shy of two hours doing research and staring at a page with my pencil in my hand.