Adara VS March 2022
Video Transcript
Welcome to the Canopy; a place to write my story one day at a time.
Hello and welcome to the Canopy!
In today's video: Adara vs March aka the race to finish draft 3.
This month, I set aside my notebook making and guitalele playing to focus entirely on writing and medical appointments.
I pushed myself well beyond my usual 15 minutes writing per day, which is something I usually only do twice a year for Camp NaNoWriMo, but I'm aiming to be finished in time to enter the Write Mentor Summer Programme; deadline being the 8th of April.
Finishing by April 1st gives me one week to get a synopsis and query letter pulled together.
I also left the house on three occasions this month. Due to a post-pandemic shortage of wheelchair accessible taxis, I had to take my fold-up manual chair instead of my power chair, which certainly took its toll! As some of you know I have a condition called POTS, which limits my body's ability to pump blood up to my head against gravity. Prolonged sitting can cause lightheadedness, dizziness and fainting, if I have my feet down and blood pools there instead of getting back up to my head. Thankfully I had very understanding people at the other end of my journeys who let me recover with a lie down, and I managed to sit with my feet up where I could.
So both the writing and the journeys out took a toll, and I took time out for frequent breaks, with both daily and what became a bit of a cycle.
Normally I would film writing how much time I worked for the month, but I was too tired on the day of filming, so this time you'll be seeing the results of what I've already written out. I'd originally set myself a goal of writing for 20 minutes per day, but I knew to meet my deadline I'd have to do much much more, often coming back from multiple writing sessions in a day, so I began a rough cycle based on my energy; where I'd work for around five days on writing then take off roughly five days to recover; during which I would also attend appointments and have to recover through that as well, enough to write again.
I had three scenes to finish during this month.
In terms of targets this month, I set a goal that for every 20 minutes I worked across a day I would reward myself with one gold star. Then at the end of every month I count them up, and for every 10 gold stars I reward myself with the right to buy a new book. Any remaining stars from the last month's total get carried over to this month.
So this month I engaged in autistic hyper-focus, and achieved some of my largest writing sessions to date. I finished my rewrite! This is the product of all my work and what I'll be aiming to edit during summer, hopefully with a mentor if I get one.
It's an 80 000 word YA paranormal romance novel, with elements of sci-fi, mystery, action and disability rep, and the product of about three years worth of work. I even have a working title for my submission now.
Tell me. Am I the only one who pulls books from shelves, makes lists and searches through a thesaurusin the process? Titles are hard!
In the end I worked 17 hours this month, with some time added after that for formatting my manuscript added on the end. I have a grand total of 50 stars, meaning I can buy myself five new books as a reward this month.
Since recording I've also managed to pull together a synopsis which I'm sure daily Tweeting has trained me for. I spent half an hour trying to fit my synopsis onto one page when I was over by four lines. I'm glad that's over with!
I had a small crisis of faith at one point, thinking my manuscript wasn't perfect so it wasn't ready for the competition. Then I had a long hard talk with myself.
Number one: perfection doesn't exist.
Number two: if it was anywhere near perfect then what would I need a mentor for in the first place, and what would I be doing during the summer with them?
Still to come I have to write a query and answer about why I'm applying to the programme. Then I won't hear anything back until April the 28th and for the rest of the month I'll be putting this thing in a draw.
My guitalele has been sitting staring at me all month,
and hopefully I make better progress with reading, enjoying my five new books during this time.
This month I only managed to read two books, started another four put them down. I did not have space in my head for anything other than my own project and one of the books I did manage to read was a reread.
But you'll find out how I got on and if I made it into the mentor programme in next month's roundup video.
The one thing I can say I'm still doing this month is wordle, and I managed to get every day's word.
Well, that's it from me for this month. I have to go now as I have a query to write, as I continue to write my story...
...one day at a time.
