A Year in the Life, Week 51: Penultimate

On the second-to-the-last prompt in A Year in the Life, I was asked to write about something I was anticipating as my year of journaling came to a close. My anticipation was all around what my next writing projects would be!

I’m really looking forward to devoting my Fridays to writing again. Lately, squeezing in these journal entries was the best I could do, and since I started [my new job], I gave up Fridays for writing. But now that Ivan works part-time, I’m especially motivated to work on my stuff at the end of the week while he works on his. And I can do it if I focus upfront. I achieved it this week with no great hardship. All I have to do is manage to make [a little extra money] over the first four days of the week, and my writing time will be restored!

And how I love having a day to devote to writing. Fridays will be my day for working through writing development exercises–once I’m done with this, I’ll start on The Right to Write–as well as my time to do promotion: pitching my work to agents or promoting Rumpled. Balancing this with time for more process-oriented writing will allow me to run the whole gamut of writing experience in just one day. I would like to tackle three things each “writing development day”:

  1. Writing process exercise/journaling
  2. Promotion
  3. Reading about the craft

I have a long list of other things I might do, too, but these are the three MITs [most important tasks] I want to set before myself every Friday. First, I’m going to finish reading Publishing eBooks for Dummies, then I’ll have to decide whether I can manage both The Artist’s Way and The Right to Write — I might have to skip The Artist’s Way till later, maybe after I have a child and need less-structured writing.

And of course! This new routine will begin next Friday (this Friday traveling to Rapid and my parents in town muddles it up), and the timing is perfect. Not only will I be finishing my exercises from this book, but I’ll be taking a creative retreat/romantic getaway with Ivan, which will mark my re-entry into working on my Rapunzel retelling. I am just aching to write something substantial again. I hope to have the second draft finished by November so I can do NaNoWriMo again. I don’t want to take such a prolonged break from a project again!

The thought of this shift fills me with such joy that I know this really is my passion, regardless of all the times I don’t feel like doing it, regardless of the insurmountable pile of projects and ideas and things to learn. This is the journey my soul yearns to take, and once more, Fridays will become my Holy Day. I can’t wait!