Another Round of A Round of Words in 80 Days is upon us, and I am delighted to participate. For those who have never heard of this wonderful writing community, ROW80 is the writing challenge “that knows you have a life,” and allows we over-worked, over-scheduled creative folk to build our own goals.
After a rough and tumble year (or two… or three?), I’m all about treating myself with flexibility and care. I gave myself permission to take the weekend off from NaPoWriMo, because I’ve learned that placing pressure on myself is counter-intuitive. When I tell myself that I’m a failure, or that I’m lazy, or that I’m useless because I couldn’t wrest a few minutes out of my life to write, I ruin any chances I have to be creative for days, and sometimes weeks, to come. So Round 2 of ROW80 is all about being kind to myself (like fearless leader Kait Nolan writes in this awesome post), about allowing myself to make mistakes and to stumble without self-flagellation, and about actually remembering how to enjoy the act of writing, both academic and creative.
Before I get to my Round 2 goals, have a bit of a poem. I’m trying out a “lune,” a modified haiku form written with 3 words in the first line, 5 words in the second, and 3 in the third. And based on the subject matter, I’ll bet you can all guess what I was dealing with today…
“Migraine”
brain throbs incessantly
senses stunted, tongue silenced, thought completely eliminated
migraine strikes again
—-
And with that, here are my goals for Round 2:
Dissertation:
- Finish 2 chapters by the end of Round 2.
- Start coding data sources.
- Hammer out an inventory of data sources.
Creative Writing:
- Read 1 piece of fiction each week.
- Figure out how to move forward with TELL ME NO LIES.
- Write at least 20 poems for #NaPoWriMo.
- Start blogging in May–maybe with weekly book reviews? The jury is still out on this one.
-oOo-
I’m still trying to keep things simple, as you can probably tell, but with the way things are going at the moment, simple is most definitely best.
I’m looking forward to rocking the ROW with the rest of y’all! Anyone else participating in NaPoWriMo this year? Any big goals slated for this Round? Can’t wait to see how everyone is doing!
