My main priority for July was editing my dieselpunk short in time for the submission deadline on August 1. Mission achieved, though it was a little more down to the wire than I’d hoped. I started off the month working on novel edits while awaiting critiques on the dieselpunk from the Narwhals. And then sadly my back went out and I lost a good week of work. No clue what I did actually, but my chiropractor diagnosed me with acute sacroliac syndrome and ordered lots of rest. 4 days without work and without sitting. No sitting upright, except maybe to eat, and icing my backside hourly. It’s amazing how tv can go from so distracting and enticing when you have stuff to do, to brutally dull when that’s all you get to do, laying on the couch for four days straight. ugh. Fortunately I recovered in time to whip the story into shape. I was also competing in CampNaNo just as a little extra motivation/excuse to track my editing time. I met my very modest goal of 25 hours (on a normal month with my morning pre-work writing routine I should be getting 20+ hours anyways); 10 hours on the dieselpunk and 15 on the novel. The dieselpunk is my 7th new short submission for the year. Whoo!
So what’s on the slate for August? Novel novel novel. I’m making good progress and I really want to be able to hand it off to first readers by the end of the year (hopefully before NaNo in fact). No specific time goal for August, just lots of progress. But I am planning an exciting writecation for the end of the month. I’m taking the last week of August and first week of September off from work. Rather than traveling or making vague intentions of writing at home but then being distracted all the time, I have formulated a cunning plan: I’m going to go write at the coffee shop with Derek in the morning as usual (at 7, during holidays, because I’m crazy) but when he heads off to work I’m just going to keep working for most/all of the morning. Productivity shall be mine! MWUAHAHAHAHAA I’ll get to pretend I’m a full-time writer for two weeks. That should really boost the novel progress.
Nicole Lavigne 