Day TwentyEight: Taking My Lumps

Daily Word Count: 269 net
Cumulative Words Written: 45,555
Total Words Discarded: 13,850
Total Chapters Drafted: 19
Time Spent Writing Today: 5 hours

Today, I’m taking my lumps writing-wise. Residency time is vanishing. Less than two weeks remain.

I still have so much to do!

I deleted over 3,000 words from the manuscript and drafted a new first chapter. Net gain: 269 words. In addition to five hours at the computer, I spent six more hours (and at least 4,000 words) on handwritten character sketches in my journal.

I’m still not sure this is where the story starts, but I’ll keep making words until the characters tell me where to begin.

Last night, Sarah cooked a meal to celebrate the full moon in Sagittarius, where we set intentions for our work. We gathered greenery for the altar on the way to the Fab Lab. Pasta with a thick tomato mushroom sauce. Leftover seafood and rice, a Portuguese delicacy. Green salad with balsamic vinaigrette made my moi.

Tuesdays are Clean Sheet Day at Buinho.

Not impressed? Well, I’ve never done a residency where they WASH AND IRON MY SHEETS every week. Everyplace else, I washed them myself. I feel like I’m in some whacked version of the Deep South, where women iron everything including their husband’s tightey-whities. Anyway, don’t my starched sheets look pretty?

I practiced yoga for 30 minutes this morning, my first full session since spraining my ankle. All in all, my ankle is taking my lumps, too, without too much swelling or soreness these days. I managed every pose. Some more wobbly than others, but yoga isn’t a competition.

Do I look zen?

And because I cannot let anything new go more than 24 hours without wearing it, I broke in two new pairs of Zara zapatas. My ankle isn’t so bad.

Tomorrow, I’m making shrimp and grits for the group. If you hear I poisoned everybody with my cooking, it’s probably true.

Buinho residents are brave, brave people. 🙂

To follow my residency at Buinho Creative Hub from the beginning, CLICK HERE and read forward.