Before I get into the joke that is my first ROW80 check-in, I want to mention that Big Al interviewed me for the IndieView a couple weeks ago. That interview is now live for you to read. No one is as surprised as me that someone thought I was interesting enough to interview. I hope I wasn’t a disappointment.

As for the check-in, I haven’t felt very productive at all. Hanging out with my daughter, reading and doing research into freelancing have taken the driver’s seat and stuffed everything else in the trunk after wrapping it in duct tape and telling it to keep it’s mouth shut.

Freelancing

This freelancing thing is completely new to me and I have no idea what I’m doing. The good news is that I’m starting to figure things out like where the work is and how to get it. I’m also clearing the dust out of my brain’s non-fiction department. The bad news is that writing an article a day right now makes about as much sense as doing your touchdown dance before the coin toss.

Or something. I’m bad a sports metaphors.

I’m still happy with my choice of goal, but I have to do more work than I thought to get to the point where the goal makes sense.

My Site

Still on-track with my posting. In the interest of full-disclosure, though, these ROW80 posts are going to make this goal stupid easy to reach. I don’t think I’m the only writer who struggles to find enough topics to write about on his or her blog. With two posts a week devoted to check-ins, that’s become such a non-issue I’m wondering if I should choose a different goal.

One thing I’m unhappy with is I seriously doubt I’ll have a review ready for Friday. I’ve been doing a lot of reading this week, but it’s been mostly non-fiction and non-indie.

The New Novel

Yeah…no. I need to settle on an idea and find the way in. Beginnings are hard, always have been and this time is no exception. I have several ideas, none of them excite me and I can’t start a novel in cold blood. Also, the kinds of stories I want to tell, and how I want to tell them, has changed. Like with freelancing, I feel as though I’m in completely new territory. I’ll write more about that later as any explanation is likely to take this post off into the woods.

Again, I still think writing 2,000 words a day is a good goal, and it’s one I’ve already been using, but getting in a place to start has turned into more work than I thought.

So what now?

I think any serious work on all this stuff is going to have to wait until my daughter goes back to her mother’s place this weekend. She’s great at letting me do a couple hours of work in the morning and little things here and there. Now that I’m in a place where I need to send large blocks of many hours reading, researching, writing and revising? Not happening.