Update: Week 2 Goals: Week 3

Once again things didn't go as planned. I wanted to write, but I had a paper to work on. I had to put my best effort into this paper by restraining myself. For the first time in the history of my life, I was marked down for writing too much. I was thoroughly pissed because I put my best effort into that paper, but whatever, I just had to get it next time. At any rate, this is probably the first time in a series of weeks where I have nothing to do. Just as a reminder, my goals are:

Finding a Focus
Working with a self imposed deadline
Turning off the inner editor.

I've been having problems with these goals since life gets in the way. I got my priorities in order, but unfortunately, I'm having trouble coming up with a way to link the stories. Of course, in my over eagerness to actually write, I misread the actual goals that Merrilee wants us to accomplish. We are supposed to write 4 linked stories per block, not 12 connected stories. DOH! This definitely changes things. Here I was lamenting over how to write 12 interconnected stories when I really only had to write four.

So for finding a focus, I only have to find a way to connect the four stories together. I'm going to pick four themes and connect the stories through character. It'll be somewhat of a character sketch. I think I might revisit Josh's character from the story "Counting." I got a lot of positive feedback regarding his story(thanks xenn!), but many of the comments I received during workshop mentioned that it lacked a focus. This is the time I can put a theme and focus on that.

I'm going to change the way I do things. I miss the days where I wrote my stories by hand in notebooks. I picked up four notebooks, one for IAR, and three for the different blocks of workshop and I'm going old school to the days where I hand wrote everything. Doing this insures that I won't edit until I go to type it into my computer which won't be until after the workshop series (all of them) is finished in August.

As far as my other challenges go. IAR is being deconstructed into scenes as if it were the medium that it's intended to be. I will deconstruct the scene on the computer, since that's where my notes are and then write the scenes in my notebook, then go back and work on the beginning and put everything in order. My CRWT 172 workshop revision is going along nicely. I need to edit somethings, extend some scenes and cut out some scenes before I just let it sit and give it to my teacher.

So all in all, I'm excited for this week. I have no major things that I need to work on and this upcoming weekend is a four day weekend filled with parties and things. I'm excited. Then after that I've got a paper due June 3, then finals June 5 and June 7, then I'm done from June 8-June 21, when summer school starts. Summer school is going to be intense, but I just can't wait to be done with this quarter.