I meant to finish this post yesterday and schedule it for this morning, but I must have gotten too caught up in knitting Christmas dishcloths last night. Whoops! Better late than never, I suppose.  How did your homework from Writing Roundup #7 go? Did you learn anything mind-bogglingly awesome?

Productivity

The Invention Process: Ten Strategies for Producing Writing by Brenta Blevins on the SFWA blog.

These strategies are great for getting unstuck. My favorite approach is a type of brainstorming where I ask “what if” questions about my story and follow those leads again and again.

Writing Craft

5 Ways to Use the Enneagram to Write Better Characters by K.M. Weiland from Helping Writers Become Authors.

I love personality typing systems. I’m most familiar with the MBTI, so that’s what I’ve been using for my characters, but when trying to settle on a type for a character, sometimes it seems too difficult to use. Maybe it’s time I give the Enneagram a try.

Prompt

You can read my basically unedited attempt at this prompt on Wattpad. Placeholder words are in [square brackets] and notes to myself for later are in {curly brackets}.

Technical Stuff

In The Elements of Style, read the chapter titled “Words and Expressions Commonly Misused.” This chapter is probably best as a reference, so you only need to read it once, then come back to it when you have a question.

If you found them helpful, I would also encourage you to continue the Grammarly and Grammar Girl assignments from Writing Roundup #5.

Vocabulary

I’m continuing with another 28 words. If you want to use my words, I have a Memrise course for this class.


My words for this lesson are:

1. Casement
2. Flange
3. Vaunted
4. Tableau
5. Benediction
6. Mewl
7. Convivial
8. Subterfuge
9. Dullard
10. Viridescent
11. Pogrom
12. Munificence
13. Atoll
14. Knurl
15. Turgid
16. Prevaricate
17. Sallet
18. Rachitic
19. Tropism
20. Prestidigitation
21. Sortilege
22. Jape
23. Espalier
24. Privet
25. Bilious
26. Collation
27. Lambent
28. Velleity

Progress

I've hardly written in the last four weeks. I started NaNoWriMo intending to work on my novel, then switched to a project I'm affectionately calling Lunch Notes. It's a series of short-ish notes to put into my husband's lunches to explain why I'm changing some of our food shopping and eating habits. I got about 5K words on that in the second week of NaNo, then stopped. Part of my problem is the need for more research. The Lunch Notes are on nutritional things, so I've been rereading my favorite health and diet-related books (which I have no plans to review here).

While listening to those books, I've been channeling the rest of my creativity into knitting, crochet, deciding what to buy people for Christmas, and making homemade bath products for gift baskets. I'm almost done--except for the needlework. I still plan to make a bunch of baby, toddler, and preschooler things; a couple of things for my husband; and a few more dishcloths. We'll see how far I get. This is what happens when you buy knitting needles, people. Beware.

I'm not sure if it's all of the needlework, eating better, or something else entirely, but I've been feeling much better in the last week or so. My mood is better, my energy is better, and I'm accomplishing pretty much everything I set out to do (except writing, apparently--but hey, at least I'm happy).

But Lunch Notes is supposed to be part of my husband's Christmas present, so I'd better get a move on anyway. It doesn't have to be done by Christmas, but I'd like to have at least a 4-5 weeks' worth written before Christmas so that I can start sending them in his lunches the next Monday after Christmas. I've got about 3 weeks done so far, and I'm not sure how long I plan to continue it. That may have to depend on whether or not I can get him to read other peoples' books...


That’s it! Writing Roundup #9 will come out in four weeks, so you have plenty of time to do the homework. To find other posts in this series and a more detailed explanation of the categories, visit An Eclectic Writing Class.