2009 Projects: One-month Update
Feb. 2nd, 2009 08:57 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rsadelleI thought about doing an update, but then I thought it would be boring. ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
dedalvs' update wasn't, though, so I've reconsidered. As you may remember, I have four 2009 projects going. Let's check in.
Dewey Decimal Project
Not only did I read my book for January, but I already checked out my February book from the library.
Food
I honestly see no reason to go back to eating dairy. I don't know that it's made any difference in my health, but it's easy not to eat it, so why go back? What surprised me most was that I don't crave or miss dairy at all. The things that shouldn't have surprised me but did were how much I crave salt now (Duh! Cheese is very salty.) and how much more food I have to eat than I think (a salad has way fewer calories by volume than a quesadilla). I've been eating a lot of salted cashews.
As for wheat, I don't know. I had some things that were wheat free but contained barley and rye (both of which contain gluten) and I think my joints were more crackly afterwards. I was going to try eating wheat this week and see how that went, but, uh, I don't really know what to eat. I do still have flour tortillas and pita in the freezer, so I guess I'll eat those with something this week.
Exercise
I did really well with this - my chore chart for the four weeks that ended Saturday has all its boxes checked off. I didn't cheat the weight lifting, either, which I have to admit to a tendency to do. (Cheating in this case means doing a few lunges or crunches instead of actually lifting weights on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays.) I think the fact that there are shows I catch up on while lifting (varying things on Hulu on Mondays, Leverage on Wednesdays, Supernatural on Fridays) helps keep me on track. Dance is still a problem (last night, as I was falling asleep, I realized I hadn't done any dance and did a few wrist circles to make it for the day), but I did do pliés in the kitchen (using the counter in place of a barre) a couple of times.
Writing
My chore chart also has writing on it. When I added it to the chart, I decided that to be able to check it off, I had to write one sentence. This year, I decided I have to write 100 words to check it off. There were a couple of days in January that I remembered just as I was about to go to bed that I hadn't written 100 words, and sat down on the edge of my bed to write 100 words of the Chris/Steve story I'm working on (as seen in the screenshot posted here) in the notebook I keep there for times when I can't sleep until I write something down. (That story got a lot of work out of days I didn't write anything else.)
I solicited feedback from a couple of friends on the short story I want to submit to the anthology, and it looks like it doesn't need too much work before it's ready to go, and that a lot of the things that didn't work for my writing group do work for people who regularly read erotica.
On the erotica novel, I did fill in most of the brackets (places where I'd written things like [DESCRIPTION OF THE CAR] as placeholders) and worry a lot. I may try including the other character's perspective in the next draft, andschuyler has me thoroughly convinced it really does need a masturbation scene.
And then there's my paranormal mystery novel, which is where I really did some good work. My writing group critiqued the first 14 pages, which was helpful and encouraging. Every once in a while, I start thinking it's boring (it came out more of a procedural than suspense), but they all really liked it. I also got them to talk about the POV, and based on what they said, I think what I'm going for is working. However, the best thing I did with this novel in January was write about 11,600 words. I wrote just over 6000 of those last week. What I learned from my experience last week was that if I set myself a goal, I will meet it, even with a lot of goofing off involved. I set my goals by writing down my word count goal for the day (determined by checking the current word count and adding 1200) each morning. This week I'm upping the word count (7500 words for the week) and including the time I want to finish (3 on Monday, Wednesday, and Thursday; 5 on Tuesday because I'm going to help my mom with cleaning out her house; and 1:30 on Friday so I can go see Push at 1:50). What was most interesting to me about doing this was that I felt kind of at a loss as to what to do with myself over the weekend when I didn't have a goal. Saturday I kept myself busy with my ballet class, starting to read a book, and going to the movies and dinner with friends. Yesterday I wrote somewhere between 600 and 700 words of the Chris/Steve story.
dedalvs' update wasn't, though, so I've reconsidered. As you may remember, I have four 2009 projects going. Let's check in.Dewey Decimal Project
Not only did I read my book for January, but I already checked out my February book from the library.
Food
I honestly see no reason to go back to eating dairy. I don't know that it's made any difference in my health, but it's easy not to eat it, so why go back? What surprised me most was that I don't crave or miss dairy at all. The things that shouldn't have surprised me but did were how much I crave salt now (Duh! Cheese is very salty.) and how much more food I have to eat than I think (a salad has way fewer calories by volume than a quesadilla). I've been eating a lot of salted cashews.
As for wheat, I don't know. I had some things that were wheat free but contained barley and rye (both of which contain gluten) and I think my joints were more crackly afterwards. I was going to try eating wheat this week and see how that went, but, uh, I don't really know what to eat. I do still have flour tortillas and pita in the freezer, so I guess I'll eat those with something this week.
Exercise
I did really well with this - my chore chart for the four weeks that ended Saturday has all its boxes checked off. I didn't cheat the weight lifting, either, which I have to admit to a tendency to do. (Cheating in this case means doing a few lunges or crunches instead of actually lifting weights on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays.) I think the fact that there are shows I catch up on while lifting (varying things on Hulu on Mondays, Leverage on Wednesdays, Supernatural on Fridays) helps keep me on track. Dance is still a problem (last night, as I was falling asleep, I realized I hadn't done any dance and did a few wrist circles to make it for the day), but I did do pliés in the kitchen (using the counter in place of a barre) a couple of times.
Writing
My chore chart also has writing on it. When I added it to the chart, I decided that to be able to check it off, I had to write one sentence. This year, I decided I have to write 100 words to check it off. There were a couple of days in January that I remembered just as I was about to go to bed that I hadn't written 100 words, and sat down on the edge of my bed to write 100 words of the Chris/Steve story I'm working on (as seen in the screenshot posted here) in the notebook I keep there for times when I can't sleep until I write something down. (That story got a lot of work out of days I didn't write anything else.)
I solicited feedback from a couple of friends on the short story I want to submit to the anthology, and it looks like it doesn't need too much work before it's ready to go, and that a lot of the things that didn't work for my writing group do work for people who regularly read erotica.
On the erotica novel, I did fill in most of the brackets (places where I'd written things like [DESCRIPTION OF THE CAR] as placeholders) and worry a lot. I may try including the other character's perspective in the next draft, and
schuyler has me thoroughly convinced it really does need a masturbation scene.And then there's my paranormal mystery novel, which is where I really did some good work. My writing group critiqued the first 14 pages, which was helpful and encouraging. Every once in a while, I start thinking it's boring (it came out more of a procedural than suspense), but they all really liked it. I also got them to talk about the POV, and based on what they said, I think what I'm going for is working. However, the best thing I did with this novel in January was write about 11,600 words. I wrote just over 6000 of those last week. What I learned from my experience last week was that if I set myself a goal, I will meet it, even with a lot of goofing off involved. I set my goals by writing down my word count goal for the day (determined by checking the current word count and adding 1200) each morning. This week I'm upping the word count (7500 words for the week) and including the time I want to finish (3 on Monday, Wednesday, and Thursday; 5 on Tuesday because I'm going to help my mom with cleaning out her house; and 1:30 on Friday so I can go see Push at 1:50). What was most interesting to me about doing this was that I felt kind of at a loss as to what to do with myself over the weekend when I didn't have a goal. Saturday I kept myself busy with my ballet class, starting to read a book, and going to the movies and dinner with friends. Yesterday I wrote somewhere between 600 and 700 words of the Chris/Steve story.