Goals check for the week of June 17

Last Monday, I acknowledged that the week might not be very productive, since I had a lot of other responsibilities taking up my time off.  I was right... in a way.  I didn't get much done while we were home, but once we went on our vacation, that all changed.

We went to Durango and stayed at the Strater, a trip that we took in 2010 and liked so much that we always wanted to do it again.  The first time we also spent two days in Mesa Verde, but this time we decided not to.  Both of us have been feeling so busy and stressed at home that we decided we needed to take advantage of having no distractions or demands on our time, and just relax.  For me, that meant working on my novel!

1. Novels: Monday through Thursday saw no work done on my novel, but our first full day in Durango, I completely finished marking changes on the manuscript -- 43 pages, all in one day!  Granted, about a third of those pages need to be completely rewritten -- I am changing at least one scene in the ending -- so I didn't really do much marking there.  But even so, it was a marathon day!  My wonderful husband didn't mind a bit -- we went out for lunch and dinner (the restaurants in Durango are amazing), and while I worked he read and napped.

On Saturday I flipped back to the beginning of the manuscript and started making the changes to the electronic file.  I also discovered that that phase of the process is going to take much longer than I'd assumed.  I have a lot of changes to make, plus some that require massive rewriting -- sometimes I did the rewriting by hand on the manuscript itself, in which case I just have to type it up, but for the longer sections I just made notes about what I wanted to change.

Working on the way home yesterday was out of the question, since there was no way I could manage my laptop and the manuscript in the car, but I still managed to get about half a page done after we got home from our long drive.  All in all, a much more successful week than I was anticipating!

2. Blogs and websites: No progress.

3. Other writing projects: No progress.

4. Books: Les Miz is still on the shelf for me to go back to, but last week I read Z, as I was feeling in the mood for something 20s.  I finished that in Durango and promptly picked up Bobbed Hair and Bathtub Gin, a book about women writers in the 20s.  I feel like I should stick to reading material that has to do with my novel for now, so I may wait a little longer to get back to Les Miz and the rest of my reading list for 2013.  It's not going anywhere, right?

5. Horses: Obviously, since we weren't in town for much of the week, there was only so much I could do with the horses.  On Tuesday I had a double lesson -- first my trainer and I worked with Rondo, and then I took a lesson on Panama.  Rondo had moved into Panama's corral the previous Saturday, and that was the first I'd worked either horse since then -- I wanted to give them a few days to settle in.  Wednesday morning I took Panama on a trail ride -- since my summer schedule usually interferes with me going during the week (and I didn't want to go all spring because of his weight troubles), I wanted to make sure I got to go during my week off.

Not a bad week when all was said and done -- though it could have turned out quite differently if I hadn't brought my manuscript to Durango!