Monday, November 28, 2011

Bo-Bo Knows It's On...

I threw down a gauntlet and it was...picked up? Matched? Accepted? Whatever it is that the person being thrown down in front of does when accepting a challenge (and let's just say it's pointing a finger in the air and wagging it with all the nuance of a silent movie, cause that makes me happy), my friend Stephen Dorneman over at Barking at My Shadow has done it, and the race is on:

First person to 30 pages by the end of the year gets a beer on the slower writer's dime. 
 Except Stephen says beer isn't special enough.

So if I win he'll buy me a Boston Cream Pie Martini (if you think those letters should be lower case, obviously, you've never sipped such heaven) over at the Omni Parker House, and if he wins, he picks. And if you could hear the sports announcer doing the play by play in my head, Stephen is the front runner.

This weekend he let me know he was already five pages in while I was still navigating the family loop that is the long Thanksgiving holiday in my house.

And today's no more auspicious. Because I didn't just tell him 30 pages. I said 30 pages of the new opening of my book. And so far the new opening has arrived still born. But not much because there's a martini at stake. And a little something called the future of my novel. Right. I'll just get right on that and, um, mmmmm chocolate-cocoa-lined rims....

Why is it so much easier to picture the martini than it is to dream up an opening for my book?





Monday, November 21, 2011

Bo-Bo Knows Dirty Limericks


Metered Angst
A Limerick by Catherine Elcik 

When tracking my writing it's hard to ignore
when my hours shrink back to less than half four.
I say that I'm fighting 
To prioritize writing
But then dole out my time like I can simply make more.

Monday, November 14, 2011

Bo-Bo Knows Beginnings

Thirteen hours and 8 minutes this week. Could I have pushed out two extra hours? Sure. But it would be make work for the sake of hours. Because Monday through Friday I spent rereading the opening, making notes about how to revise, and just generally getting myself to feeling like I knew where to start. By Saturday I needed to let it simmer for a couple of days before starting in on the actually redrafting. Simmering is work, too, but it's hard to quantify. So I don't. I just know that I had at least two hours of simmering and I leave it like that.

Also, a blog note: watching hours tally does not exactly make for the world's most riveting blog, so I'll just keep count in a little column at the right. I'll add the hours weekly, though I suspect I'm the only one who will care much.

Happy writing! 







Monday, November 7, 2011

Bo-Bo Knows Limbo

My inner librarian slave master is well pleased this week. Not because I punched in my time plus some--15 hours and 48 minutes this week!--but because those hours brought me to the end of the draft I've been struggling with since I finished the rough draft longer ago than I can admit without embarrassment (I only missed the three-year mark by 48 hours).

Does this mean if I hit my 15 hours work week again this week I'll finish the third draft? No? Well, what fun is that?

Tomorrow, I dive into the third draft. As a person who feels anxiety in the limbo between completing one chapter and breaking ground on the next, I'm expecting to experience some fear at the start a new draft; to counter the anxiety, I've earmarked Friday as a writing retreat with a fellow sufferer writer.

In "On Writing,' Stephen King offers a permission slip for wary writers:

"You can, you should, and if you're brave enough to start, you will."

Change that 'if'' to a 'when,' and I think I've got myself a new mantra...