Week 5 of 2020 – 29 January to 4 February 2020

Goals

Reading

• Goal – 100 / day, or 700 / week
• Achieved – 1,013/700 – Success!

Writing – I Remember

• Goal – 14 / week
• Achieved – 14/14 – Success!

Writing – Small Projects (Fragments, short stories, etc)

• Goal – 7 minutes / week
• Achieved – 31 minutes/7 minutes – Success!

Writing – Large Projects

• Goal – 14 minutes / week
• Achieved – 0 minutes/14 minutes – Failure!

Getting myself out there

• Short story reviews – Zero (Zero total for the year)
• Submissions – Zero (Zero total for the year)
• Rejections – Zero (Zero total for the year)
• Acceptances – Zero (Zero total for the year)

Commentary

Week 5!  Weeks 1 to 4 were a total failure.  I always knew they would be as my job was intense and involved travel and long hours.  No matter, that’s done now (for now).

Reading went very well this week.  I did something that I have done before and should always keep up – I deleted Steam.  It’s gone.  There are no games for me to play.  And so, instead of wasting time doing that, I’ll read.  Over a thousand pages isn’t exactly normal, but I think, and have often thoughts, that 700/week is achievable.  80 pages/day is the minimum I’d like to have (total for the year – 48.06, so there’s work to be done).

I am well, well behind with my I Remember memories.  Full confession mode here – I am up to 23 April 2018, so nearly two years behind.  I’m trying to write 14 / week to slowly catch up.  Of interest, perhaps, is that the sheer quantity of photos I take ensures that I can be reminded of what has happened in my life way back then.  I can scroll through the photos and remind myself of what I did and what I was thinking.

Weirdly, writing them from back then without ‘knowing’ about my daughter is strange.  But that is my fault for not keeping up with it.

I spent a good chunk of time working on a short story.  It’s likely to end up around 3,000 words, and is currently about 1,400.  There’s a gun and winter and smuggling across national borders, so, ah, not at all like what I normally write about.  We’ll see.

I wrote nothing of a larger piece.  Last year I worked on something bigger, but I don’t think it has legs at all.  So I’m currently floundering in that space, unsure what to do or what to write about.  I suppose the answer is to simply write and see what happens, but as always, when I do that I end up writing the same dreary pieces.  Yikes.

I haven’t submitted anything yet this year, but that will change.  I’ve been collating competition deadlines and dates, and will attempt to meet them all with a unique story.  So, lots of work to be done there.

And that was my week of failure.

Each week I aim to provide an update on the Journal of Failure.  These reports are intended to provide an impetus for me to achieve as much as I should/more than I do, and also to provide a further ongoing record of my life, as it is.