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Being a Full-Time Author: First Week Retrospective

Posted on September 30, 2016October 16, 2016 by Abigail Welborn

Looking back over the past week is a habit widely recommended for evaluating progress and productivity. In my past life as a software developer, we called them “retrospectives,” and along with listing successes and problems (or “opportunities,” as my husband says), we would come up with one experiment we wanted to try for the upcoming week. Fridays are my best day for looking back, even though Mondays would be my best day for designing an experiment, so Friday wins.

My first 5+ days of being a full-time author were, on the whole, amazing.

Positive:

  • Seattle is experiencing some Indian summer (sunny, if not terribly warm, days).
  • Working in the morning has been more productive than I expected, and I look forward to the days where I can start first thing after breakfast.
  • I hit a good point in my outlining on Day 1, so I was able to make huge progress on Monday and Tuesday, expanding my outline up to the 50% mark. I start drafting from an “expanded outline,” which doesn’t go down to the scene level but is a little more detailed than just bulleted plot points — so that meant I was halfway toward starting the draft in just two days!source: http://ournutritionkitchen.com/happy-people-healthier-hearts/
  • Knowing that when I stopped writing for the day, I could pick it up again the next morning was incredibly uplifting. I hadn’t realized before how much of a psychic burden I was feeling when I had to stop writing and know I wouldn’t get to it again for several days.

Negative:

  • Boooo flu shot today. (I’m a good mom and I get my flu shot every year, but I hate shots and the soreness afterward.)
  • Progress was much slower through the third quarter of the outline. I’d gotten feedback that helped me improve it, but that meant I spent a lot of time brainstorming and solving plot problems instead of just writing the outline.
  • Which wouldn’t be a problem, except that I am much more prone to distraction and procrastination when things aren’t “smooth sailing” — so I definitely noticed a greater temptation to surf the web, eat chocolate, talk with friends, etc., during the second half of the week.
  • I am getting neck and shoulder aches in the afternoon, which is making it hard to concentrate. My tread-desk is still great, but my sitting workstation, a.k.a. my laptop, is not as ergonomic as my programming workstation was.
  • I seem to hit the post-lunch doldrums (i.e., food coma) most every day. Supposedly, giving up sugar would help prevent this, but I am addicted to sugar.

Experiment: need a way to make brainstorming more fun.

I promise not to bore you guys with my whole retrospective every week, but I felt like I should mark the occasion of the first one somehow.

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