My weekend goal was 2,000 words for either Daughter of Madness and the Eighth Sea. I tried to sit down at Starbucks but I forgot my headphones and it was way too loud. Also, the ceiling was leaky. So I packed up, hopped on the Metro and went to the Borders in Friendship Heights. It’s a nice Borders but I forgot what Borders across the US are like on Saturdays in holiday shopping season. It was a madhouse. I finally acquired a seat by a plug, and sat down with the laptop, no internet and a pile of books.
I found a neat book that had some good stuff in it…thought about buying it but will wait for my Xmas gift of a Borders gift certificate.
Greg Martin’s piece in it on the Treadmill Journal though was totally worthwhile.
The Treadmill Journal
This is a daily journal of your writing schedule and goals. Each day you make seven entries:
The date and the time
How long you plan to work.
What you plan to work on for this day.
Time when you stop writing and total amount of time writing.
Answer the questions: What did you actually end up doing? How well did it go?
What you plan to work on tomorrow
When you plan to work tomorrow and for how long.
Sample Entry
Sept 15, 2005 8:30 am
Work until noon
Focus on rising action in Macular Degeneration
12:15 Almost four hours
Sluggish until coffee kicked in, then pretty good characterization of Oscar. Didn’t get to turning point.
More rising action tomorrow. Must write turning point–as scene, not just a lame sketch.
Tomorrow: 5:30 to 9.
Rules:
You can’t take three days off in a row.
If you take two days off in a row, you ought to feel bad, not just about your habits and your lack of discipline, but about yourself as a person.
You must log 18 hours of writing time a week. This is an average of 3 hours a day six days a week. (You can write more.) Take a day off each week, if you must, but I don’t recommend it. Why would you? You’re supposed to love it. You’ll love it more, the more you do it. Wynton Marsalis didn’t take a day off practicing the trumpet for two years. That’s why he’s Wynton Marsalis.
Unplug the phone. (Turn off cell, if you feel you must have one of those)
No email.
No diary-type notes. Nothing about your cat’s urinary tract infection.
I can’t remember the book title, but I googled it and found his English class webpage where he teaches this. So here it is for citation reasons: http://www.unm.edu/~gmartin/523Sp2006/523SyllabiSp2006.htm
I have a writing journal, other than this one, so I’m going to try this exercise.
I wrote from 3:30 to 6:30 and completed 2,500 words for the Eighth Sea. I’m very happy with that…it’s rough but I am nearly done the chapter. I like the relationship between father and son, father’s best friend and the son much better this time around.
