teadog1425

ETA: it won't let me put Buymeaclue's LJ tag within the body of the text - it keeps dropping it to the bottom of the entry - but the relevant post is by her! Grr! Argh!

Post from 13^th Jan 2009

Right - I've been reading back through my copy of Mary Wanless's 'For the Good of the Rider', in order to respond to a post by here - I'm going to come back to that, I think, because there was some other stuff that I wanted to round up here first. Frustratingly, the internet access at the flat is painfully patchy - for no apparent reason, the connection will drop from the router and this means that accessing livejournal at home is a bit hit and miss... At this rate, I'll be hitting up the local Starbucks for my internets...!

So, I got some riding time on Sunday! Very happy. And even happier because I went out solo. Still only the second time that I have done that - but M was brilliant. Just walking because the footing wasn't that great - one of the other horses down the yard had slipped and fallen while out hacking earlier in the day (mainly because he was being a prat, and throwing himself about), but thankfully was ok, just a little cut on his leg. But it was just really nice to be out, and I was experimenting with my seat - just trying to be really conscious of my seatbones and what I was doing with my core and legs. M seemed happy - he prefers going really fast, with all his hair flying, but was good-natured about the whole thing. I've got another riding lesson on Sat (postponed from last week), so that will be interesting too.

The other thing I wanted to do was round up how the first week of my new writing target had gone - so that I have it to refer back to later. The target was to write 2,500 words in the week - which was broken down as 3 days of 500 words and 4 days of 250 words. I just failed to meet the target due to a wipe-out trying to write on Saturday. I got 100 odd words, but the whole thing had gone sticky and I just couldn't bear the discomfort. The error was in waiting to start until late afternoon, after a lot of busy-ness earlier in the day - by the time I got to the writing, I was just too tired, and the brain would not co-operate. However, I met or exceeded my target all the other days, which I am really pleased with. So I'm going to call that 2,400 - although, thinking about it, I'm certain that I exceeded the 2,500 target overall.

The other thing to note was that the last 1,000 words of the week (which were the first 1,000 words of a new chapter) were 1,000 words up a completely wrong alley, and I only realised this by the second writing session on Sun evening. I wrote my quota for that session anyway, and then spent a bit of time trying to work out where I had gone wrong - which I managed to pin down before going to bed. Monday morning's session then involved starting the chapter again with the new content/direction and it seems to be motoring along happily enough for the moment.

This has of course derailed my timetable, but I'm not allowing myself to feel too stressed about that. This is going to happen - either with days where I can't get the words done, sections where I write myself into a dead-end and have to back-track, and other sundry issues. If I can maintain the schedule by and large, then I will be very pleased with myself! I've also made myself a word-o-meter (paper version - so not v 20th C) but I've found that helpful in the past to help maintain momentum. Right, the internet has vanished into the ether, so I'm going to save this to post later, and do the riding post at a later date...