Weekly Wrap-Up: April 9

What Is This?

Following the lead of my mentor, friend, and exemplar, Tami Moore, this is a weekly article to document progress in meeting my writing goals as described here. I use an Excel spreadsheet to track all my work by category (blog post, copyediting work, creative writing) and item. So all I need to do is add up the “words” column and I’m good to go. This article will be counted, minus the first 150 words. However, it will be counted in the following week’s total. All other blog posts and creative writing count full credit. Copyediting for other writers is counted at ten percent of the starting word count for the document; style sheets for that copyediting will count twenty-five percent. Editing my own work, if and when I get to that point, will count fifty percent of the starting word count.

How Did I Do?

My weekly goal is 2,000 words. This week, despite more than a bit of spring fever – start of baseball season, The Masters, and 60-degree temps in Rapid City – and a marked disinterest in writing anything, I clocked in at 3,250 words, aided by almost 1,400 words written last night between 11 p.m. and midnight.

• “Weekly Wrap-Up: April 2″ — 957
• “Clearing Up the Confusion” — 682
• Feather Path, “The Teacher” — 231 (copyediting)
• Novel — 1,380 words

Spring Fever

On Monday, Major League Baseball’s opening day, I watched my Dodgers fall to the Pittsburgh Pirates in the first of a three-game series. During that game, I called my local cable provider and signed up for MLB Extra Innings, their pay-per-view baseball package. I am hopeful that I’ll see at least a few games called by the inestimable Hall of Fame broadcaster, Vin Scully. I was a bit frustrated, though, that the Angels’ games against the Minnesota Twins (a 6- or 7-hour drive from Sioux Falls, home base of my cable company) were blacked out, despite being played in Angel Stadium. Similarly, the Colorado Rockies’ games – not being played in Denver, mind you – were also blacked out.

I also enjoyed watching The Masters’ Par-3 tournament on Wednesday, headlined by golf’s Big 3 of Arnold Palmer, Gary Player, and Jack Nicklaus. The highlight was watching Arnie drain a 70-foot downhill putt on the last hole for birdie. It doesn’t get any better than that for an old-school golf fan such as myself. Yesterday, I started watching ESPN’s coverage of the tournament’s first day, and I was excited to see Tom Watson do so well in his opening round, as well as Phil Mickelson. And I was excited for Fred Couples, leading the tournament after the first round with an opening 66: not too bad for a 50-year-old!

But my eyes, as well as most of those in the golf world, were glued to Tiger Woods. I was very happy to see him in such good form after a 144-day layoff, and he hit some beautiful shots. I was fairly certain that he’d be able to put his personal issues aside for a few hours to focus solely on golf; after all, most of us, when doing something we truly love, are able to wall off even the most miserable issues we’re facing, if only for a short period. It was also gratifying to see Woods making an effort to be more open, both with his fellow competitors, and with the fans. I think I saw more smiles and acknowledgements from him in that round than I’ve seen from him in an entire previous golf season.

The thermometer managed to hit 60 again yesterday, albeit briefly, but it appears that spring has finally arrived in the Black Hills (despite the blizzard conditions we endured for a bit on Saturday). Looks like my outdoor projects will get started in another week or two (although the possibility of a spring blizzard is with us through May).

The Novel

The universal cure for writer’s block: Spit on your muse, and just write!

To put it bluntly, it has had me stymied. After easily cranking out over 3,000 words of the rewrite, as documented here last week, I ran into a wall. I’d read what I had, then questioned the plausibility of just about everything I’d written. Finally, on Thursday, I bounced my concerns off a writer friend. Essentially, I was questioning the why and how of my plot; she helped me to answer those questions. Ironically, her answers were the same ones I’d developed and cast away; but coming from an outsider, they sounded much more logical. As a result, I was at least able to write something last night, even if I know it’s fluff. But that’s 1,400 words more than I had at this time yesterday, or the day before, or the day before that.

The point of this bit of babbling, for all you aspiring writers (you who are actually producing already know this), is to have a some kind of support group, whether it’s one person or many, for you to bounce off ideas. Maybe you need to figure out how to introduce a new character. Or maybe you need to be told that you need to introduce a new character. Maybe you, as I did, have questions about how your plot is or should be developing. Get people you trust to be candid, and really listen to what they have to say. And by all means, visit the websites of other writers to gain insight from them.

Stop me if you’ve heard this before, but all writers suffer, to one degree or another, from writer’s block. The cure is universal: Spit on your muse, and just write!

I’ll have more next week; right now, I have some writing to do.