Gray Mare’s Summer of Writing!

This is the first official day of Gray Mare’s Summer of Writing! 

I thought I’d just show a couple of the tools I’ll be using to keep myself on track.

The Daily Check List

Not everything has to be done every day.  And The Husband is off on Sundays and Mondays, so that’s my new weekend.

Sit Ups/Yoga/Arms and Walking are in my plan for every morning.  Naturally, when I take off work, the temps go nearly triple digit!  First thing in the morning should work, though.

Writing will definitely be every day.  Looking forward to huge blocks of time where I sit and convince myself to put words on the page.  I’ve been reading a lot about resistance lately (Steven Pressfield’s The War of Art deals pretty much exclusively with resistance and even Julia Cameron mentions it in The Artist’s Way), not that I haven’t been dealing with it all my life, but now I have some tools to outsmart it.

Editing will be a top priority on the novelette as soon as I finish the novella I’m working on now.  I have another two or three chapters of the Christmas romance, then I can put that aside and get some distance from it while I start the editing process for the story of my teenage take on my parent’s marriage.

Reading—well, that shouldn’t be too hard, considering I have To Be Read piles, plural!

Cleaning should maybe have been Decluttering.  We have way too much stuff and there will be days I’ll devote to Marie Kondo’ing this house.

Old Writing—I have some short stories on paper only that I need to type into the computer and save to a flash drive.  I also want to put them on my website, just to get them out there. 

Journal—I’ve always journaled but never consistently.  Somewhere in early 2020, someone online suggested that journaling would be very important, both to record the times we were living in and help us get through those times without losing our minds.  Still not uber consistent, I have managed to journal more than at any other time in my life and I want to continue that.  I was also just reading my copy of The Artist’s Way, that I’ve had forever and never cracked open until now…  One of the tools that Cameron suggests is writing at least three pages every morning of just stream of consciousness stuff to get the craziness in our heads out of our systems so we can concentrate better the rest of the day.   Especially needed with recent developments!!

Blog Posts need to happen Monday and Thursday, with a new, occasional entry about important books in my life.

Part of my time off needs to be about my health, so Calories and Steps will help there.  During the lockdown, I lost almost 40 pounds, 8 of which I’ve gained back since The Mom passed away.  Time to start paying more attention to food consumption and exercise.

And here are some books that I’ll be using for editing and working on my next writing project, the first installment of a mystery series.

So, tell me what you’re doing this summer in the comments!