An Hour of Writing A Day: March

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The Hour of Writing a Day challenge wasn’t a part of my monthly goals for March, but I still wanted to try and keep building on the momentum of new words that I’d created in February. That…did not go as planned.

  1. 1162 words, on a second world short story.
  2. 626 words, on a second world short story.
  3. 550 words, noodling longhand on a new POV voice.
  4. 520 words, noodling longhand on a new POV voice.
  5. 650 words, noodling longhand (on the bus! Thanks for the delay, Blizzard #5013 of the winter) on a new POV voice.
  6. 770 words, noodling longhand on a new POV voice.
  7. 650 words, noodling longhand on a new POV voice.
  8. 450 words, noodling longhand on a new POV voice (waiting for and then riding the bus) + 150 words, on a Thunder Road ‘verse short story starring Ted.
  9. 500 words, (longhand) on a Thunder Road ‘verse short story starring Ted.
  10. Nada. Zip. Zilch. 
  11. 450 words, noodling longhand on a different new POV voice (waiting for and then riding the bus)
  12. Nada. Zip. Zilch.
  13. 450 words, longhand, on Thunder Road book 3.
  14. 850 words, longhand, on Thunder Road book 3.
  15. 1100 words, longhand (on my two bus trips to, and from work), on Thunder Road book 3.
  16. Sick Day, no words.
  17. Sick Day, no words.
  18. Sick Day, no words.
  19. Sick Day, no words.
  20. Sick Day, no words
  21. Nada
  22. Zilch
  23. Zip
  24. Nada
  25. Zilch
  26. Zip
  27. Nada
  28. Zip
  29. Zilch
  30. Nada
  31. 250 words, on Thunder Road book 3, whilst on the bus. Not much, but at this point, I was ready to take anything.

Only 8678 words, scattered between a few projects.

Damned time change definitely sucked my will to get up early and try and write before work, which had been the plan (until I was reminded of March’s unwelcome DST buddy). This meme was making the rounds, and sums up my feeling quite nicely:

Daylight Savings Time

No sooner than I stopped working on a new POV voice last month because I was pretty sure it wanted to be a novel, another one reared its head. This time, it was a reimagining of something I wanted to pitch as a comic to Marvel all the way back in university (Kevin Madison, you know the one). Unfortunately, note taking was spotty back then, so I’m mostly working from scratch. I still like the idea. But it’s too early to say if it will be anything.

Building workshops took priority this month over new writing. I was doing okay until I spent an entire week sick. It’s rare for me to catch colds, but when I do, they are brutes. The week of illness also put me behind on editing the anthology of my students’ work, and on workshop planning for my ACI class and for my trip to Thompson. I don’t think that I’ll be fully back on track with putting down new words until April is over.

I am definitely a creature of momentum and inertia. Once my streak was broken, I didn’t really get back into the game. On the plus side, those words wouldn’t have existed at all without this attempt to write every day, so there’s that.

Write on!