These past few days have been interesting. It was the first week of the school holidays, so I’ve had to adapt to the change in schedule. Fortunately, I still had some time to myself when my boys were at vacation care and kindy, or visiting their grandmother. My writing schedule for this week was as follows:
Monday
13 pages of editing / proofreading my third novel at around 8pm. Was very tired, but powered on anyway.
Tuesday
16 pages of editing / proofreading by 10am. Researched feminism afterwards. Decided I need to be mindful of creating strong female characters in my books.
Wednesday
Nothing – but I did spend a bit of time chatting with my critique partners about social media as part of our writing. We also discussed how a lot of 80s kids movies are kind of freaky (but I still think Labyrinth is one of the coolest films of all time!).
Thursday
Talked about writing with one of my critique partners, but ended up getting distracted by thinking how some of the people at my gym would make great fiction characters. Like the guy who is a real life version of Brennan in Stepbrothers. Or the female trainer who was doing a frenzied workout when I arrived because she had just finished drinking a random protein shake (obviously containing significant amounts of caffeine) that someone had left behind the previous evening.
Friday
10 pages of editing / proofreading at around 8pm.
Saturday
Blog writing
Sunday
Yet to happen!
Other highlights / lowlights from the week…
- Took my boys to see Santa at the Ginger Factory. He was a bit late arriving, but he might very well have been the real thing because his hair and beard were the genuine article.
- Went for a slightly traumatic walk around the neighbourhood to look at Christmas lights. Traumatic because my six year old has a fear of lightning and seems to think it comes out at night, even if there aren’t any clouds.
- Bought an awesome recycled plastic rug for our new bell tent (which, for those not in the know is kind of like a tepee). The rug is a present from my parents for Christmas.
- On Friday, stopped by a friend’s house to feed her pets because she was away. Discovered that one of her chickens had been killed in the 24 hours since she’d left. Was slightly traumatised and went home leaving the poor thing still in the backyard.
- Returned to my friend’s house on Saturday for Day 2 of pet feeding (she has two dogs, a cat, two chickens one chicken and a budgie). Somehow, the dogs had escaped and were out on the driveway to greet my husband and I. Hubby took care of the dead chicken while I topped up all the food for the remaining pets. Scored two eggs from the remaining chicken!
- Went to see Hotel Transylvania 2 with my three year old while my husband and six year old went to see the new Star Wars movie (I feel like I kind of got the raw end of the deal there). Despite the fact that my three year old has been to the movies several times already and loved it, he picked today to suddenly be scared. This meant dealing with a twenty-minute pre-movie tantrum until he realised there was nothing to be afraid of (I was reluctant to leave earlier after having spent upwards of $30 on tickets and popcorn). But on the upside, we did meet a sweet little boy called Oli who came and kept us company on the floor during the previews. At the end of the movie he asked if my son would be his new best friend and invited him to his superhero birthday party (which I’m afraid we won’t be able to attend seeing as he then ran away, and forced his mum to chase after him).
Overall Thoughts
I didn’t get as much writing done as usual due to the start of the school holidays, but also because I agreed to do a couple of web design jobs to help pay for this expensive time of year (which explains why I sound really lazy on Wednesday and Thursday in terms of writing). It’s been at least five months since I made the switch from almost full-time web designer to almost full-time writer, so it was a bit of an adjustment to go back and have to prioritise something else over writing. I hope to have my third novel ready for release early in the new year, so the plan is that writing will also pay for stuff at some point in the near future!