Check In: Day 15, Friday

[the_rck]

How's the writing going? I've been working on helping my daughter with some homework. I'm about to buckle down and write. It remains to be seen how much I'll get done today. It's still early.

Did you:

Write?
Edit?
Send to beta?
Post?
Think about your story?
Do something else?
Take a rest?

Today's discussion question: They say, "Write what you know." Do you tend to draw on your own experiences or areas of expertise when writing? Do you do a lot of research so that you can write about things with which you have no personal experience?

I try to write things that only require reviewing canon. I'm not very good at research. I seldom know where to start. I mean, Google is my friend, and I try not to simply make things up. I don't think I've written anything that draws on my particular areas of expertise. I'm not even sure what my areas of expertise are, now that I think about it.

What do you think?

[theresa_ramseyer]

I have a writing dilemma, and I'm not sure which way to go.

My two top writing goals are to get more consistent with my writing, and to finish things. So far this year, I'm doing poorly with both.

Once a month, for about 2 days, I am often wiped out - meaning about all my body wants to do is sleep. I stop to read or write or watch a show, for example, and wake up several hours later. Usually I wake just enough to change to night clothes, or grab a bath and then go back to sleep.

Every now and then, I get a whole week or more of feeling like this. That's how this week has been. Unfortunately, this week is also one of the BIAWs in which I participate. Once again, my page counts for the week are horrible - I'm hoping to get enough done this weekend for a respectable finish.

I know writer's bank pages done after their daily quotas.

My question is: is it right to bank pages during the month/weeks between BIAWs (because I am involved in 2 a month), and then spend them during BIAW when I'm like this? Because BIAW is book-in-a-week, not book-in-a-month.

I am only planning on doing this when I have a wipe out week, like this one. I am not going to use everything banked and then write less or not at all for BIAW; that won't help my goals.

If I don't use the banked pages for BIAW, then I can still count them for WriYe or whatever-current-month-version-of-NanoWriMo or other writing groups that I'm doing, so there's no need for me to use them in BIAW.

My BIAW goals are usually the minimum, and I really don't like to have such a poor showing. Start with good intentions every time, but so far (sigh).

If you were me, would you bank the pages, or just admit that this has been a lousy week, and my page counts are horrid?

Thanks
Theresa