Last week I was working on two projects – and one hell of a procrastination issue. The first project was another short story I want to submit to an anthology, and the second was Ride the Rainbow revision (finally!).
The procrastination is still plaguing me – hence writing a blog instead of revising… But I am working on ways to get focused next week. ‘Butt in chair’ is not quite my problem. I’m in the chair, but distractions come from my phone or the internet, and not actually looking at my pages. It’s not even that I would rather be playing a game or doing a hobby. I want to brainlessly search the internet, Facebook, or message people. Not even productive procrastination like cleaning or organising. Very frustrating. Some of its tiredness so I let myself watch the entire season 12 doctor who episodes I’d recorded by not started (Loved it by the way – Jodie is one of the best doctors). Still no joy. Sigh. News is probably not helping, all bad, all dark and gloomy.
So – Next week I am going to do something radical. Maybe not radical to everyone but right now I feel a little like it is. I am going to take one or two hours of no phone, no computer and work on Ride the Rainbow Revision. At this point it’s all work sheets and paper. Maybe even take all the pages into another room, work at the kitchen table, rather than the computer desk. Will try and see.
I also ran into some issues on the short story revision. It was in the same world and had the same character as the last short story – I loved the feel of the first one. Turns out this time round my first draft was a big pile of steaming crap. Major issues. This meant it was not as fun to edit, and I still do not feel all that happy with where it is. I have found some Beta’s who are helping me find what went wrong – hopefully – so the edits can pull it together into a much more coherent piece of work. Once I have all the feedback in, I will revise and get it submitted.
Ride the Rainbow at least has started great. I combined the worksheets from weeks 1-5 into one run through of the manuscript – this is from the Holly Lisle Course for HTRYN. Some of the work I have already done due to the way I did the redraft. It means a lot of paper on my desk, but surprising less errors than I was expecting so far within chapter 1 and 2. I can see where I have left out scenes, or more accurately, where I can see a new scene would fit now I know the whole story. So very excited, and really looking forward to getting these changes down.
This week will see me continuing through the revisions above, as well as getting back to the short story I never got to finished while I was on holiday. Once those are done, I am hoping to start on How to Write a Novel Course, this will hopefully keep the revision feeling like I am not getting any chance to write. Though at this point I suspect I will alternate between that and short stories as I am loving it. It’s such a great feeling that I can see it done so much faster than a novel.