Doing these monthly Recaps is really interesting to me. I haven’t tracked my progress much with things before and I’m definitely learning a bit more about how I work.
I’m finding that I don’t lose motivation so much as I have a general idea of what I need to get done, and I work on whatever of that I’m feeling at the moment – regardless of when things need to get done. It’s kind of like the ‘shiny new object’ concept, but not with new stuff, with old stuff that has always been there and I just feel like working on it.
So, while I am productive from day to day, I don’t tend to keep my To Do list priorities, but jump around to random things on the list … at least I generally stick to the list.
That all said, August was productive. I got lots of chores, planning and brainstorming done, and I finally started posting to the Instagram account (check it out here).
I did get a good amount of writing done, but didn’t make it to my goal. Part of that is from my failure to stick with my To Do priorities, and part of that is from the simple fact of new scenes continuously popping up in my loose outline. For example: I may think that moving from one outline point to another will take five scenes, and it ends up taking 10.
I’m happy with my progress, and I definitely got more done by using the planner that I talked briefly about in the August 2020 recap (read the post, or check out the planner). The planner – and intentional focus required to fill it out daily – definitely helped me stay closer to the priorities on my To Do list. I’m hoping that with more use and practice, I’ll get better at sticking directly to my daily priorities.
I think I need to adjust my writing goals a little, because I do feel a little defeated with my progress. There were three days where I worked towards writing to the end of a certain scene but never actually got to finish that scene – it had organically split into more. I did finish the bunch of new scenes that had popped up in the story line. While I had finished some good scenes, and definitely had progress, I hadn’t finished the one scene that I had on my To Do list, so nothing actually got checked off.
Semantics.
But words and visuals can have a powerful impact. I’m going to make a few tweaks to my planner layout for it to suit me better. I also think that I’m going to set a writing goal to the next major story spine outline event, with an alternate goal of 4 scenes. This will allow for the inevitable unexpected scenes that pop up in there, while still enabling me to check off an item on the To Do list.
My late nights, and ‘Work Days’, are going well, though they inevitably slip more towards household chores than writing. Again, something that I need to be focused and intentional about. I started doing some writing sprints which were pretty helpful in at least dedicating 30 minutes of my time to writing, even if I ended up using the rest of my time on other things.
So, overall, plans for October:
- re-work planner page, and focus on keeping To Do list priorities
- keep ~three writing work nights (12 PM), and two work days a week
- write through the next point on the story outline OR complete 4 scenes
Until we check back in on all this, head over to check out the Instagram page (here), or keep an eye out for some more book reviews on the Blog – I’m hoping to get some more Key Hunters books in this month!