Sunday, June 4

Be sure to check out the Wordo page. I finally have pictures of Leslie What and her Nebula. I'll be doing more work on The Wordo page in the next day or two, so more things to come.

On the writing front, I have one of my "desk" stories ready for The Wordo Christmas Anthology and the mail. As soon as I do get it out in the mail, I'll update the Storyboard. Maybe I can get a second "desk" story ready for the mail by next weekend.



Tuesday, June 6

Once again, check The Wordos page. I put up three more pictures. One of Leslie and two from the last Rockaway Beach weekend.

At the workshop tonight, I gave my story to Stephen Stanley for the Wordo Christmas anthology, "One Night A Year." Now I also need to send it somewhere else.

More later.



Sunday, June 11

Another year of Clarion is starting in East Lansing, Michigan on the campus of MSU. Our (the Web Rats') own Trey is there this year. I hope he has a great time and learns a lot. If you want to read online journals of the Clarion experience as it happens, go to Clarion Journals 2000.

I read these "live" Clarion journals to reminisce about my own year at Clarion in '93. This year I would like to take it a step further. As I continue the battle against procrastination, this will be a Clarion Challenge summer. I'm planning on writing six stories in six weeks turned in to my workshop. Plus, to help slay my internal editor, I need to get those workshopped stories in the mail as soon as possible. No critque should stop me from mailing my stories.

All I ask of myself is one page of fiction per day. I hope to use this as my foundation for the six weeks. One page, but perhaps more per day as I progress through the weeks. The first story is due June 20th.

I'll elaborate more later on the details of my strategies and tools to make this behavioral feat happen.

##########################
Something that has been helping me lately with energy and mood is excercise. I've started using a stairmaster after work. I'm now doing 30 minutes of cardiovascular activity. This is amazing! It didn't take me long to work up to that duration. I don't feel so lethargic after work anymore. As the summer gets hotter I usually get more lethargic (it's from working outside in the hot sun for part of the day). Not going to happen this year. I have the energy, but it still doesn't mean I'll write after work. Still need to work on the discipline part of that. But I think the excercise will help during the six weeks and beyond.

I also bought myself a Bowflex. Since Bowflex is located in Vancover, Washington, just on the other side of the river in Portland, I saved money on shipping by driving up there yesterday to get the machine. It seems I've gotten into an excercise kick. You have to understand that I have never been athletic. Gym class was devastating to my ego and self-esteem when I was growing up. As I got older, I learned the joy of excercise without the pressure of performance. I've learned to excercise for the joy of it. This gives me confidence on the physical level.

So not only do I have the cardiovascular excercise, I also have muscle building excercise. I probably don't need this much excercise--I'm doing both the stairmaster and the bowflex three times a week. Strength training alone doesn't give me the energy and endurance. I NEED the endurance and I WANT the strength training. I guess it's that short, underdeveloped sixteen year old still inside of me.

And I need to succeed at my writing goals. I'm good at (and by this I mean BAD for) putting off the excercise for the writing and vice versa. Procrastination is pervasive in my life. What I'm aiming for is doing all the things I want to do as I plan them. Call it self-actualization.

More later.



Monday, June 12

262 words written today. I had asked myself for one page of fiction and I delivered. It was actually pretty tough. I set the timer for thirty minutes but I didn't get going until ten minutes remained. When the timer rang, I resetted the timer for fifteen and continued to write. I reached one page before the timer ran out.

So that's all fine and good.

After getting an e-mail reply back from a fellow Wordo, I'm reconsidering Clarion six week goal. I had asked him for some advice on beating procrastinaion. He gave me some things to think about. Since I'm on the calender to bring a story to the workshop on the 20th, I'm still going to aim for that goal, but I'm unsure what will happen after that. I'll still do this "All I ask of myself is one page of fiction per day" thing. Some ambition is still burning inside of me, so who knows what will happen after next week.

Time will tell.




Tuesday, June 13

Rejection from Fantastic stories. Now I must get two stories out in the mail on Saturday.

####################

All I ask of myself is to write at least one page of fiction per day.

This seems to be working nicely the last couple of days, and Sunday there was some writing done. As for today: 333 words. That's a little more than a page. The timer was set for 30 minutes, I started out strong, stalled in the middle of that time, picked up the pace when only ten minutes remained. I still didn't have a full page when time was up, so I reset the timer for fifteen minutes. I then came away with 333 words.

These timed sessions are being used to stop me from just sitting there at my desk waiting, staring, and daydreaming. I could do that for hours. I try to write at least one page in that half hour. If I'm having trouble, get up and leave. Try again later.

I've posted my progress on our workshop listserver (under the subject Goals) and it gives me pleasure to post even this modest goal. I would even call it motivating.

This is starting to feel good. I wonder how long I can ride this thing. Perhaps I will keep that Clarion goal with this "All I ask of myself is to write at least one page of fiction per day" as the foundation, just as I had mentioned in a previous journal entry.

The story I'm working on now will definitely require days with more than one page in order for me to hand it in next Tuesday. Good thing I don't have to work at all at the day job this weekend.

I'm in a Clarion state of mind.

I see Trey has been busy putting words down at Clarion in East Lansing, Michigan. Way to go Trey!




Wednesday, June 14

Hey!

All I ask of myself is to write at least one page of fiction per day.

316 words written today. Thirty minutes plus an extra five. I see a pattern here. Apparently just sitting there staring is a warm up for me. I wrote as soon as I got home too. Then I went to Subway. I was starving.

I felt I really should do another session of writing because I need to hand in a story Tuesday, but I didn't. And I can't let myself feel guilty about that because I'll undermine the good feeling I have for writing something as promised.

The weekend, however, I may need to take it up a notch.

More later.



Sunday, June 18

Since I left you last, I've had some good days (where I made my goal) and bad days.

Thursday: 121 words.
Friday: 0 words.
Saturday: 274 words

Actually "good days" should not be plural, but let's not dwell on that. Saturday I certainly made a comeback. Today I'm unfocused. I'm torn between two different stories and I know one of them I can't possibly finish by Tuesday. There's a short-short I've taken a taken a stab at, one might even call it a micro-story, and there aren't many more words to write. It seems like I should have a story ready by Tuesday. After I'm done making my entry here, I'm going to get those 250 words.

Four out of seven days I did do at least one page of fiction. I'd like to be more consistent with time and place. Right after work when I get home and the first thing I do on my days off. That's the plan for this week.

I feel like I'm not working as hard as the writers at Clarion. :)

More later.




Tuesday, June 20

All I ask of myself is to write at least one page of fiction per day.

Tonight, after workshop: 290 words.

However, I did not turn in a story tonight. Yeah, I choked. I'm going to keep working on the longer story and hand it in next week. This one page a day (at the very least) will see me through.

I'm still going to do a story a week challenge and I'll probably see what my personal best can be. If I can make it to 12 weeks, so be it!



Tuesday, June 27

394 words written today. These are my first words after six days of no writing. Can you believe that crap! What have I learned? Not that I should miss a day writing, but when I do (and I have since I started this page a day promise), it's still easy to write the next day. Any more than two days, I'm in danger of relapsing into old behaviors and destroying what progress I have made.

Six days. The horror, the horror . . .

Another item of interest that pertains to writing avoidance: Last Tuesday after my writing session I felt my sentences were clunky and everything that came out of me was not perfect. Give myself a break, huh? Not too surprising that I missed writing the next day. Last night I proofread my story in our (The Wordo's) self-published chapbook "One Night A Year." I was pleased with what I had written. The story was "Recall" and I was satisfied with the sentences and what had happened in the story. I had the feeling that I can do this. I can write. I just need to keep going. While proofreading I remembered things said during critque when I handed it in to the group. I hadn't made too many changes to the story because I felt like I was losing what I had down on paper. "Recall" is what it is. The things I had learned during the critique goes into the subconcious to use on future stories.

It felt good to come to this realization. I need to focus on that instead of dwelling on sentences I think are clunky and imperfect. It's all practice.

I have to write more than a page a day this week if I'm going to get a story out to Writers' Of The Future by Friday at midnight. It's too bad I can't get it critqued before I send it, but I'll hand it in to workshop next week anyway. I'll just make the changes if it should come back. Once I hand that story into the workshop, I'm going for my own Clarion dare. Six weeks, nine weeks, twelve weeks, who knows how many weeks in a row? I'm going to find my personal best and learn in the process.