Writing Motivation #MemoirMoment

Posted on by Laura

Since I have been blogging pretty sporadically lately and writing even more sporadically (in my memoir and otherwise) I have decided that I need a writing project to help kick me into gear. I would like to spend this blog laying out my plans.

What’s that quote about best laid plans?

The best-laid plans of mice and men often go awry

Robert Burns

No matter how carefully a project is planned, something may still go wrong with it. The saying is adapted from a line in “To a Mouse,” by Robert Burns: “The best laid schemes o’ mice an’ men / Gang aft a-gley.” (From Dictionary.com) Well, this little mouse is going to try to make plans anyway. No matter how fool hardy.

Hey! Who moved my cheese?

Best laid plans

I have decided that October is my month of finishing the writing projects that aren’t directly related to my memoir. Because I do plan to participate in NaNoWriMo in November (writing 50,000 words in one month) in order to really make some substantial headway on my memoir. So here are the writing projects I would like to complete in October:

  • Polish the short stories that I wrote for this blog when I first started it as 12 Months of Stories. I would like to start to submit writing to publications and I feel some of these stories are good enough but they need some finesse.
  • Finish several creative nonfiction pieces I have started so I can start to submit those as well. The idea behind submitting my writing is to get my name out there so I can mention published pieces when I eventually query my memoir to publishers and agents.
  • Prepare for NaNoWriMo by making sure all my structural work is done (outline, etc.) so that I can just focus on writing and word generation come November.

Is this realistic/doable?

I honesty think these goals are pretty manageable to complete in a month. The only hitch in that giddy up is that I haven’t been writing much of anything… That’s why I am setting these goals to complete BEFORE NaNoWriMo so that they will act like a warm up to the furious word generation that is NaNoWriMo. So here’s hoping I stick with it. I will update this blog as I go along. The last thing I want from October is to feel burned out BEFORE NaNoWriMo because then I really won’t succeed and my plans will really be best laid plans of mice and ME (and my inner writer mouse will be asking: “Who moved my cheese?”

Daily Doodle

Like all things on the creative front I am behind on my Daily Doodles but here are a few.

My nephew attended Homecoming last weekend so I drew my interpretation of what Selby and her cousin Bella would look like going to a dance.
My Mom and I came up with this phrase. It really works because I had a vision of my Grandpa when I was probably fighting to live after the accident. He said to me “not yet” (as in not my time to go to heaven) and I feel like he sent Selby to me to make sure I had someone with me all the time and helping me thrive. He was a dog person and in the vision he had my recently deceased dog Tansy on his lap.

A Selby Sweetie Conclusion

The tail of concentration.

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