2024-W14 EOW Report

Highlights This Week

• Mostly broke down my favorite short stories and converted them into Thumbnail Sketches I could borrow to write my own short stories. Emotional and psychic bandwidth wise, just couldn’t do much. We had our last “unlocking session” with MRK for the first short story cohort. I don’t think I fully understood how much of a marathon it was until that last Zoom call. Need to pick it back up sooner than later, but took this Sunday off from MMW. On that note, I also worked on the Garage Fiction rebrand as Olivia and I are creeping ever so closer to actually relaunching the podcast. I won’t share now, as it’s sitting on a carrd.co domain. I just need Bryan’s edits before I switch it over to live. L.L. was happy with hers. Also, helped Olivia source a website domain http://livhofer.com as insanely as it is in this particular universe, there is already an author named Olivia Hofer, who bought the domain name https://oliviahofer.com. I mean. Is Hofer really that common of a last name? Granted, the doppelgänger hasn’t posted since 2018.
• I/R/T the work situation… two hour interview on Monday, a text on Thursday, an acceptance call on Friday. I’m relieved. It was two-and-a-half weeks of heavy hustling. Good to know I can still do that. M^x gave me a lot of life advice he taught me a decade ago that I had lost. I had went dark and needed to be pulled out of it.
• Really just let everything get floppy and relaxed after that Friday call. Finished Wish (2023), terrible. Saw Taken (2008) for the first time. Liam Neeson was 56 when he did that? And burnt through Money Heist P4 (2021). I can’t believe they killed that character. That’s… courageous storytelling. And also burnt through Kelly Link’s Get in Trouble (2016). Was sitting on my shelf for way too long.

Project Status Dashboard

The following are ongoing fiction writing projects broken down to what stage they’re in. Legend in footnote¹.

As per highlights, didn’t do much this week in actual creation of work.

EOW Time Tracking

The following is based on logged productive hours using Timeular. Parameters and definitions in footnote².

I’m simplifying this moving forward. I might even remove it. I think it has served it’s purpose. Or I might change it. I don’t know yet. Maybe only focus on F & X and drop C & P. I don’t need to track those publicly. I reviewed my notes on Deep Work (2016) recently, and really, I just need to track my leading indicators… and that’s time put into actual fiction writing.

I think also, deleting this section altogether if I track only F-work, and collapse it into projects above as long as I hit something every day? MRK “gave me permission” to drop my daily rhythm to 30m/day and that really really helped a lot. I think 45m/day just like my 60p/day of reading was unrealistic. It’s constant adjusting.

Four Thousand Weeks

I’m beat. That’s it. I spent most of this week resting as I was mostly sure that I would land the job. I mean, I was still a humble nervous wreck as nothing is 100% guaranteed… but yeah. I think with this new job I can stabilize again and balance stuff. I even started thinking about a five year plan with everything I have going. It really gives breathing space.

Book Reading

• Picked up Get in Trouble (2016) on Tuesday night, wrapped up by Saturday afternoon. Really great short stories. Commentary here.
• Restarted Mary Beard’s SPQR (2015) after the last time I borrowed it on Libby expired. Also started Best of Gamut (2024) last night.
• Inching through Pride and Prejudice. At the 50% mark where Mr. Darcy drops a heavy reveal. Well, two. Read it late at night and totally missed all the revelations and had to re-read all of it. Note to self: don’t read Austen when you’re dead tired.

Archive of all EOW reports here