Progress Report Card

Time for a progress report. How am I doing with the advice from Madeleine L'Engle that I said I was going to follow this month?

1. I'm still reading at least an hour a day. Most of the time I get that good-for-me reading done as well as the pleasure reading. I'm reading a good-for-me Home Comforts by Cheryl Mendelson right now and a pleasurable All of A Kind Family by Sydney Taylor.

2. I have not been writing consistently every day for the reason that I've been sick and so has my son. This is a legitimate and useful reason (skipping writing allows me to get a much-needed nap when my son does), but now that we're both mostly better, it's hard to get back in the swing of things.

I'll start revising my children's novel on February 11th, and I know that's going to be a huge job. I don't want to start another big project before then. The story I'm working on is fun but not going anywhere yet. I don't feel like I've gotten serious about it. This makes it even harder to make sure to write every day.

3. "Hold true to your vision." This is still the trickiest piece of advice to follow. I think if I did this, I would already be working on my new novel idea, even though I'll be getting into revising my last novel shortly. I'd be writing as fast as the inspiration came, for as long as it took. This is unrealistic with a toddler in the house, but I could be doing it to the best of my ability, writing in all my spare minutes rather than in just one toddler-nap chunk.

In my original post about Madeleine L'Engle's advice, I wrote: "How will I do this as I sit down to write? I think I will actually turn to a piece of Anne Lamott's advice. She sits down, rereads what she wrote the day before, and muses about it. Actions, thoughts, and descriptions flit through her head. When they begin to form themselves into sentences and paragraphs, she types them down like she's taking dictation."

I tend to not want to sit down to my keyboard until I already know what I'm going to start writing. What I want to do instead is, as they say, "Suit up and show up." Then we'll see what happens.

On this report card, I give myself a B. Plenty of room for improvement.