Getting the ball rolling !

 Hi friends!

If you don't know me, my name is Catie Macauley and I'm a senior best known for speaking too enthusiastically at assemblies and picking fights in my C&C (#problemchild). For my senior project, though, I'm focusing on something I usually keep to my journal or to submissions to literary magazines - I'm writing! More specifically, I'm working on my novel that I wrote with my dad (hence the extremely witty title of this blog). To give a bit more background, my dad and I have been working on this book for 6 years. We came up with the concept after I spent part of my 4th grade year in Cambridge, England, and thought it would be a perfect place to set a story. So when I was 12, we spent a memorable afternoon filled with much tea and many cookies outlining what would become our novel - Test of Time. Though many things have changed since that initial brainstorming session, the essentials stayed - this is a fantasy novel centered around Catie Matthews, a 13 year old girl who moves to England following the death of her mother. She lives with her maternal grandparents and goes to her mom's middle school, and finds a way to transport in time! (hence the other extremely witty title of the novel) Not to spoil anything, but she meets some amazing people as she travels through time, and learns more about herself and processing her grief. This book is very special to me, especially because it has helped me grow as a writer so much and fostered so much growth in my dad and my relationship. At the end of this project, I hope to have completed our final comprehensive revision, and be able to send this off to agents to try to publish it. We finished our first draft of this when I was 13, and we usually revise every summer, so this will be my 5th or 6th way through it. BUT it will undoubtedly be the deepest diving read, and I'm ready and excited to make big and small changes and make this draft the best it can possibly be! So, my first goal is just to finish this draft and be happy with it. My second is to research agents and send it off to the ones who might be interested in a book like mine, because agents specialize in different books, and like everyone else, have their own tastes! My third and final goal is to establish a routine that's healthy for me, that mostly entails just spending time with my family and really take time to reset and relax. Next year, I'm embarking on a gap year and living without my family for the first time, and would like to really value my time with my family before I go, and take the time to mentally and practically prepare for leaving.

 Here's a sneak peek of our organization of the Google Doc, and my initial to-do list for this week:

Unfortunately, this was a very busy week in other ways for me, so I wasn't able to do the writing schedule I hope to have outlined for the rest of the project. I had tennis districts and am also preparing for my Tedx talk, so I split time between training, practicing for my speech, and working on the book. Next week, those things come off my plate, so I'll be able to focus more deeply on the book. However, I had my goal for this week reflect my decreased availability, and I just read through and annotated the draft, marking "problem" sections to rework. I'm almost finished with this goal and hope to be on track to dive into those sections next week!

When I get a more consistent schedule, my days will look more like working mostly at this desk in the morning, hiking or walking in my neighborhood (shown below) at midday, doing more writing, and hanging out with friends and family in the evening. An added element of my 3rd goal for my senior project is trying different writer's routines, though! I think this will keep the writing engaging and keep me focused as I vary my routine. To see where I got my inspiration to follow specific routines, like Dickens' daily 10k and Toni Morrison's "office" in a hotel, see the link below!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yrBaWRR70jY&t=971s

That's all for today, friends. Hope everyone else had an awesome first week of senior projects!

Lots of love,

Catie