Wednesday, November 2, 2016

Trying to Ramp up

I've been very low energy the last week or so. It's hard to get to the writing desk and work on the various projects that I have going. I'm keeping up with work, school, exercise and the 30 day diet challenge that I'm halfway through.

I'm not keeping up with the writing of my solo trip as much as I want to, but after having so many weeks sick in September and October I'm a little more confident that once I'm past this slump I'll be able to get the work done that I want to get done. And there won't be any classes over the week of Thanksgiving, so as long as there's not too much homework, I should be able to get some serious writing done while I'm off work for the holiday.

I'm not as far into the writing of the solo trip as I wanted to be at the beginning of November, but I believe I can catch up and still get the book out at my customary time of December/January. I'm trying to write captions as I go, when they occur to me, saved on the photos themselves in the metadata (my husband's idea). That should help speed up the process once I'm ready to start putting words and photos together into the master file. I also did a lot of work on the look of the cover last year that I'm not going to try and change this year.

The writing itself isn't difficult. In fact, when I get my butt in the seat and settle into writing, it goes surprisingly quickly. I'm trying to be more conscious of the trip as a personal journey and not just a series of places and things. I came up with various theme statements for each day and I'm keeping them in mind as I write, considering how they relate and which ones relate best. I'm also trying to be less stringent in how I tell the story; chronological order is great, but I'm not going to be wed to it if I see a way that a different order would better serve the tale.

Reviewing the pictures as I go along brings me back to the steps of that journey, the smells of the woods, the tastes of the energy bars, the sounds of water flowing and birds tweeting. I remember the bruise on my back from the metal bench at Willow Creek Campground and the bruises on my shins from an ill-advised, missed box jump a few days before the trip began. The pictures themselves become windows to the wider view in my memory.

I just have to focus on how nice it is to think about that trip and then maybe I'll get my butt in the chair a little more frequently.

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