AW: Week 10 Check-In

1. Morning pages?

All seven days. Finally back on this! Julia needs to modify that 3 page requirement somehow. Because it's not the same requirement for everyone. I discovered that when I switched to the unlined pages, I think I wrote maybe 1/3 as much in the same space. My handwriting grew large and sloppy, and suddenly the pages were fast. I can't do that on lined - it feels icky, out of pace, ugly, wrong to cross the lines. And I like the neat tidy lines, but they do lead to a lot more writing and that takes longer. I hesitate to think how long these three pages would take someone I know (vaguely) whose handwriting is neat, tidy, totally readable...and so small you could fit two lines in one line of college-ruled paper. She'd be doing those morning pages all morning, I think!

Reading them hasn't really affected my writing. Then again, I got bored and haven't read much even yet. Oh, well. I'll get there, over time. Tooooo many pages / too much stuff built up before we were told to read, I'm still irked about that.

2. Artist Date?

I went to Michael's on Monday and got myself Nifty Stuff. Officially I was there to get cheap glass thingies to do more fake water projects with. Obligingly, they had the $1 candle-holders I was thinking of on sale for 50 cents! (I have a few more than I thought I'd bother with...hee.) Also hit the $1 bins and got some pads of paper and stickies that pleased me. Right on my desk here I have a sticky pad that says "Dream" and a note pad that has a quote I've heard before and liked then: "Why not go out on a limb? That's where the fruit is."

Then on Tuesday night I went to Powell's downtown. Driving in was easier than expected (rush hour on I-5 north wasn't too bad) until I got downtown, when it was about the nightmare I'd expected. Turns out my expectations were overblown - if there had not been construction in my way it probably would've been a nice drive! Got there, got a bunch of literary/poetry journals (and poked through more things that I didn't get) and a couple of blank books that were on sale (they didn't have anything I really loved on sight, alas, only ones I liked - I think I'd better find a way to decorate spiral-bound notebooks to my satisfaction so I can just buy those...).

3. Synchronicity?

See the candle-holders being on sale under the AD. Otherwise, probably, but not that I remember.

4. Other issues?

Well, the computer room cleaning has finally really begun. I moved out three boxes of stuff (that will almost all come back when the new bookshelf is in - it does belong in here, there just isn't room) and a bag of trash, clearing the whole floor in front of the desk. Scott then vacuumed it. It looks so much better. Now to clear off the desk so that we can actually remove it, and all the stuff between it and the door...but then again, that's no bigger a task than the job that I did this morning, and that part did not take me very long. I think in 1-2 more sessions, it'll be ready for the desk removal. Then removing the desk is a session, then putting the bookcase together and up. Then I can bring the boxes back in and start loading the bookshelves properly in here. Fortunately, that might happen this week - we took it off as a vacation week, just to do whatever. We haven't thought of any whatever, so we're just hanging out and doing household stuff and so on. I count this a fairly decent-sized "oops" on our part and on the next one I hope we'll plan to do something, but it's actually useful this time and I'm very glad of the time to play catchup.

I've read through several journals, dismissed two because I wouldn't want my work to appear in their pages alongside what they do publish (nor do I think one, seemingly focussed on the gloomy and surreal, would accept my work; the other might, but, well, they seem to accept rather a lot of things I wouldn't consider publishable...). I've worked on some of my poetry. I hope to send some out, sometime this week. (Then it's back to writing, so I can send more out; response times being what they are, it'll be a while before I next hear on those first submissions.)

I didn't do the tasks. I'll try to do them some other time, but for now, when I am running short on time, I figure the creating is more important than the process that's supposed to get me creating.... :)