Monday, April 6, 2009

Only my journal

This weekend I did almost nothing on writing, except as far as reading the works of others is to writing. I suppose the critique time I spent on the YA novel I'm a beta-reader for would count. I did about 40 pages, leaving me about 20 to go. I should finish it tonight.

I continued to read in Mark Twain's Letters From Hawaii, which I may finish tonight and be able to review tomorrow. On Friday evening I read some in Tokein's letters, and both Friday and Sunday evenings I read some in C.S. Lewis' letters on spiritual development. I found them difficult to apply my mind to. I guess I should expect that with CSL.

Besides that, I read in my Bible to prepare to teach Life Group yesterday morning, and I prepared the lesson. In as much as any lesson I teach could find its way into a proposal for publishing a Bible study, I guess that could be considered writing related. And, since it looks as if we will have a couple of weeks to fill in between major lesson series, I read some other places in the Bible to begin preparing a lesson for late May. So maybe that is writing related.

But certainly my income taxes are not writing related, nor cooking a meal or two, nor clean up in the kitchen and elsewhere. Shopping at Wal-Mart wasn't. I didn't even go by the books and magazines. Didn't monitor the writing blogs I follow (though most of them don't post on the weekends). Didn't write any new works.

Except a couple of pages in my journal, wherein I began a list of my current or completed writing projects. After making my April goals, I felt kind of scatter-brained in terms of writing. Too many things started; not enough things far enough along; nothing really new. So I began a list of my projects (I say began because after I wrote the list Friday night I realized I forgot a couple and have to work on the list some more), with annotations as to the status of each project. Maybe this will help me focus more, after I finish the taxes (which will probably be tonight or tomorrow). Maybe then I can get to a couple of submittals I should make.

I need to figure out how to generate a little income from writing, because today, having survived yet another corporate layoff last Friday but getting another pay cut (15 percent this time), I'm working for 31 percent less than I did a year ago.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Dave,

Consider this: http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/04/06/print.on.demand.publishing/index.html

Gary

David A. Todd said...

Gary:

Couldn't get your link to work.

But I'm not ready to go the POD route or other self-publishing routes yet. Maybe in the future, as royalty publishing prospects dim, but not now.

Dave