Writing, writing everywhere

So, my daughter won the reading contest at school. Today, in addition to Read Across America and the reading-related events for Dr. Seuss's birthday, her school is hosting a children's nonfiction author. The top reader in each grade level got to attend a pizza party with the author. My daughter, who read about 1500 minutes in February, earned a spot at that party.

I am beyond proud. She told me she was going to win that contest. She set a goal and she did it.

Speaking of goals, I am slowing meeting mine. I'm writing today (since someone had to go to school early for the lunch). I've probably spent an hour writing, and I'm editing/smoothing over a difficult chapter. Since my writing time lately has meant a sentence here or there, even an hour seems like a wild success.

A writer I know mentioned that she keeps a monthly spreadsheet of her daily word counts. At first I dismissed this as crazy, but then my curiosity piqued. How productive am I? If I made such a spreadsheet it would need several categories: fiction (by story?), press releases for work, writing blog, food blog, homework, journal.

How productive am I? How much do I really write?

Project obsession

So, I'm in the middle of Chapter 23 with my new outline. As mentioned Monday, I'm outlining the original draft of my second draft to see what happened. I'm selecting the passages that I think are absolute gems and compiling a spreadsheet of those. Then, I also outlined the changes on the current draft on a chart that includes various characters, subplots and magical/symbolic objects. I had to add another chart: a timeline of who was sleeping with whom when, and I may need another one of these for the third book.

This book has been my 'problem child.' I have worked very hard to improve the pacing, tighten the plot and make sure the level of realism remains consistent. I have struggled with the balance of these items and the story's basic plot of a haunting, coupled with the underlying theme of emotional and physical impotence.

In completing this outlining exercise, which is not exciting but allows an intimacy with my manuscript, I have realized that the book is more solid than my brain has perceived. The problems are not insurmountable.

This is great news. I start school again in less than two weeks, and while I have completed all of the technical chores that keep my family going, I must admit I have been obsessed and mentally absent since I began this project Saturday. But, less than seven chapters to go! Wish me luck!