Getting the Year Underway

So. I’ve had my week to recover. Spent some time judging contests. Spent some time thinking about story plots and goals for the year. (Goals sounds so much more do-able than resolutions…)

And next week, I’m going to be doing Candy Havens’ Fast Draft. I have a couple of people on my “team” to help encourage each other in writing 20 pages a day. (Ack!) And I spent this a.m. thinking on paper about the plot for New Blood. That’s what I’m going to be writing. I am not sure how I’m going to tie all the elements together, but I did think of one way to bring part of it in.

I’ve never really tried to write that many pages in a day, and since my longhand pages (yes, I’m still going to work in pen and paper) average out to just over one page of standard ms. typed, I’m going to aim for 15 pages rather than 20. That should be a good equivalent. It is going to be a definite challenge. Which means I’m going to have to go to bed at a reasonable hour at night so I don’t fall asleep in the afternoon over my paper.

I’ll try to report back in on Sunday–I do take time off at least one day on the weekend–and let you know how it’s going, if not before.

Hmm. Art class starts this week too, but I’ll have to finish my pages before I can go to town to paint. I started a portrait of my youngest and got enough finished to give it to the spouse for Christmas, but I need to finish it, cover up the pencil marks from the drawing, that sort of thing. I need to take pictures of the new paintings, but it’s too cold to do it today.

It is COLD outside. And snowy. Not much snow, but the dusting of snow is layered over a thin sheet of ice, so it’s very slippery. And very, very cold. With the two windows in my office, it’s even colder here, so I’m going to stop and go have lunch and warm up my cold little pinky fingers. (And all the other fingers too.)

Wish me luck in the writing.