Taking Advantage of “Free” Time
Oprah “giving away” Snow Days, Image Source: Pinterest
So, I was very tempted to to call this blog post Snow Day #2 or *2 or something similar as my school is closed for the second straight day), but decided against it at the last moment. I wanted to give an idea of how much one can get done with a little “free” time. Here’s a little of what I worked on yesterday:
2018: Year of Ship of Shadows
So I am devoting the whole of 2018 to “preproduction” and drafting of various projects related to my story “Ship of Shadows” (which is available on Amazon.com in the anthology Visions IV: Space Between Stars). I am going to “remix” it in as many ways possible this year and I wrote several outlines of how the character of Tana and her story might inhabit/play-out in different media or forms. It is super early in the year, but as the projects progress, I will definitely keep readers of the blog informed.
Writing Reorganization
I also began a reorganization for my writing files that will hopefully make me more productive. I’ve organized my writing into three distinct areas: planning (“preproduction” – to steal a movie term), drafting (“production”), and revising/editing (“postproduction”). I have various projects in various stages of completion–drafts that are completely written that just need editing, drafts that need various elements revised, projects that need characterization or characters that need plots, etc. I’m “stealing” the movie industry’s terms of “preproduction,” “production,” and “postproduction” in order to finish projects in a more organized and orderly fashion. I’ve wanted to make this change for a while now–since early Spring of 2017 and the Snow Day allowed me to get it done.
Dreaming up New Projects/Characters
Much of the fun of writing comes from the act of creating something new. Thanks to the Snow Day, I was able to come up with “tentative” ideas for two or three new projects and story ideas and characters. These are in the embryonic stages, but hopefully if my school work will allow, I can more fully plan these projects out in the summer and write them later this year.
I have no idea if I’ll be nearly this prolific on this second Snow Day, but I will most certainly give it a try! 
