February books: 0/4 (Doing great. Have read four volumes of manga, though.)
(Sarcasm!)
The drama thing continues to take up all my mental and emotional energy, which is so, so dumb. The worst of it is that it took something that I was excited and confident about and has made it so I’m second-guessing everything. Sigh.
My friends and I in the Spork Room (my earliest online writing group) are doing a Baby Step challenge this month (and next). We’ve done one from time to time, but basically the idea is that you do just a little bit, every day, instead of setting a grand and perhaps unattainable goal. We set 100 words or 10 minutes of writing-related activities.
Thus far it’s actually been going fairly well, in that I’ve done something every day of the month. Main project wise, I tried to record the theory portion of my SkillShare class, which is just a PowerPoint with me talking over it. I tried this over two days, first using PowerPoint’s built-in recorder (which is actually not great, you can’t go backwards to re-record something if you mess up) and then with ScreenPal, which is what Screencast-o-matic is called now. I tried both with both of my current microphones, but all the recordings sounded distant, like I was shouting down a tunnel. My spouse says it’s an EQ problem but I can’t figure out a way to modify that, so I bought a new microphone to see if a better microphone might help the issue. That just arrived today. Maybe tomorrow I’ll get a chance to get it a test to see if it fixes the problem.
It is interesting, though, because I didn’t notice anything weird with the sound when I did the video tests last week.
On the days I haven’t been fighting with my microphones or doing video tests, I’ve mostly been working through Steering the Craft by Ursula K. Le Guin. It’s prose practice as opposed to structure or anything like that, but it’s been good and I’ve appreciated the exercises. Sometimes it is good to look at the details rather than the big picture. Thus far the hardest exercise has been one where I had to write without using any adverbs or adjectives, and also one where no sentences could be longer than five words. Her goal is to make you focus on rhythm and flow, and how each word is working toward the tone and feel of your piece. It’s a good reminder.
Currently I’m working through some POV exercises. She has a narrator-observer POV which is not one I’ve seen before but which is actually super fun to write.
Today I sent out some queries because why not. I haven’t sent any out, really, since November, so it’s something that needs to be added back into the monthly routine. At the end of the month we’ll be at a year a querying. Not sure what the next steps are there, exactly, but hope springs eternal. At least for now.
So it is nice to do just a little bit each day, and built up some consistency, but I do wish I wasn’t having to spend some much time on drama, and I do wish the filming was going a bit faster (fingers crossed for the new microphone). The kids are off school til Tuesday, so not sure I can film while they’re around, though I can at least test the new mic.
Have anything you’re working on, bit by bit, squiders?
