As
everyone knows, Round 2 of ROW80 has come to an end. How have my goals panned
out?
At
the beginning of the Round, I chose to work on one goal per month:
April:
Write the story of my sister’s life and death. I feel that was an epic fail. I
put together 13,500 words for it. A lot of the writing was pulled from already written
works, such as blog entries and travel logs, even some poetry. I suppose I
shouldn’t say it was an epic fail. I just am disappointed with where it ended
up. I simply need to find the time to get back at it.
May:
Do another edit of my novel set in Africa. I went through it all, can’t
honestly say it was a thorough edit as it still needs some work. I’m just so
bad at editing. I should study some books on it, I suppose, learn a thing or
two instead of thinking I know it all.
June:
I decided I really needed some diversity, and went back to a whole list of
goals. Well, that did not work so well either. The first and foremost goal was
to finish writing the memoir of my second two trips to Kenya. I think that
turned out to be more of an epic fail than the memoir about my sister. I don’t
even remember working on it all month, but I must have, huh?
Oh,
shoot and now I just looked out the window.
After
watching her for a while from my office,
I went outside and told her that I
didn’t want her eating my hostas. I didn’t have the heart to raise my voice or
startle her enough to get her to move on. I just kept taking pictures.
I
must have gotten more done when my office was in the basement.
Oh,
well, enough of that, the doe needs to move on and so do I. Let’s just call this Round a wrap.
She's lovely, but she can't have my hostas, either. I think my elderly dog would back me up on that, if need be...
ReplyDeleteYou did some things. I write about our middle child's (very brief) life and death in bits and pieces, fits and starts. Many are fictional and tangential. He'd be 13 this summer, but I can't imagine being able to look that pain straight-on, in the face, for long enough to write a memoir.
I think gathering and taking a (perhaps long) break might be what you need to do before you can move on to the next step. I know I'm dealing with another fictional infant death, and sensing the emotional turbulence of another summer...I may have timed this more poorly than I might have, or maybe I'm ready...
Sometimes, we don't know until we know, you know?
If you're going to be distracted, what a wonderful distraction! Any amount of work is a good thing, not a fail :-)
ReplyDeleteLooks like the work event in Nairobi is on! Leaving in two weeks... I'll be at the conference centre every day, I think.