A productive Writing Friday

Today was a Writing Friday. Five women joined me on this lovely spring day. Two sat outside in the almost-warm-enough weather. Four wrote poetry (one of these also made some excellent progress on how to format her graphic travelogue project) and I wrote 2 chapters on my novel.

I have a lot of paid work to do and sometimes I succumb to the pressure to use this quiet full day for that kind of work. But true to the spirit of writing in the middle of things, I knew that I needed to keep up the momentum that I established last Friday on the novel and that I kept going this week by taking notes and thinking about my characters, particularly during my gym workouts.

When we set our intentions this morning, I said I would work on the novel till lunch and then spend some time tweaking my PowerPoint and speech for next week's conference in Minneapolis but then I got cranking on the novel and finished the chapter I had started last Friday when Hansen, the detective, steals Ellie's photo from her kitchen and then knew immediately where the next chapter was going and so I dove right in after lunch and kept going until it was done and even got a third chapter started.

I love it when the writing flows like that although I wasn't in the zone that creatives talk about. I still checked email way too often for my own good, wrote a birthday card to a friend, read the mail when it came and paid two bills. I got up to feed the cats a few times; sugar ants are back! and the food has to get picked up right away. But I stayed with my butt in the seat for close to five hours and had a very productive day. Hurray!