Drunken Owls and Other Delights

It's been quite the busy week here in Spare Oom.  Between trying to keep on top of my new writing regimen and the responsibilities of the Day Job, I'm surprised I have time to breathe.  BUT!  I'm still in control, so that's a good thing.  It's definitely a bit of a juggle and I definitely feel like I've been swimming upstream the last few days, but I'm still breathing and I'm not stressed out.

And that's basically because I'm making it a point NOT to be stressed out. The Day Job can get the best of me sometimes, and I'll get irritated when I get broadsided with multiple requests to OMG DROP EVERYTHING AND PUT THIS FIRE OUT FIRST. But I've learned over time to just deal with the situations as they come and not take it personally.  I know the irritation isn't the volume but in the interruption.  I get a bit OCD with my Day Job work -- I kind of have to, as there are a LOT of moving parts to it -- but it's not my fault if I'm late because of something else taking precedence.  It is what it is.

SO.  On a more personal note, I'm definitely feeling the irritation of a craptastic rough first draft on my new projects.  It's a necessary evil, though.  It happens.  I just need to power through it.

The juggling of the many regimens, though -- the items on the whiteboard, the blog schedule, and so on -- I'm committed to getting used to it.  It's the only way for me to conquer it all.  As they say, there is no other option.  (I'd rather not use the 'go big or go home' because, well, I work from home and that kind of defeats the purpose of that pithy quote. Heh.)   So whenever I'm feeling doubts about it all, I remind myself of the late 90s-early 00s, when I forced myself to get used to the writing regimen down in the Belfry.  I made myself go down to the basement and work on the transcription and work at least two solid hours a night.  The process was fun at the time, but it was fueled by determination that I had to take that step in order to make it happen.

This isn't any different: now, I'm forcing myself to get used to writing longhand on the Apartment Complex story, get through at least ten or so pages of the final revision for Lidwells, keep the strict blog schedule. Hell, I'm even being strict about the daily words as well as the music and art, mundane as those exercises are.  They're things I've long wanted  and loved to do but always postponed for one reason or another.  I want to DO those things rather than say I wished I'd had time for them.

So yeah.  A bit like swimming upstream, but I'm getting there.
 

Really, there's not much to report here in terms of creativity...I've done little except revision work for The Process of Belief, which has been taking most of my focus. Chapter 4 was good plotwise, but extremely clunky when it came to the prose, so it need a lot of tough love. The 'Townies' experiment I was working on with 750Words (I'm calling it that for lack of a better reference for now) hasn't been touched but it's still in my mind, popping up now and again.

Admittedly, part of the sparse creative output has been due to spending most of my problem-solving time pulling double duty last week. One of my coworkers that works in tandem with me on specific things was originally supposed to be out only on Thursday and Friday, but ended up calling out sick on Tuesday and Wednesday as well. And of course we had the few fires to put out. As much as I did want to dedicate some time for things other than revision, I just didn't have the mental energy to do so. I'm hoping I can turn that around in the next few days.

I've also been thinking a lot about the output on my two WordPress sites. As you can obviously tell, I haven't been updating properly. If at all. I could just chalk it up to "oh well, I've been busy with other things", but to me that always feels like a cop-out. I know I can bang out a writing article or a music article in a day...I've done it countless times before. Even if I'm truly exhausted, mentally or physically, I can't help but think I'm just letting it slide, and that's not professional. And I'm not going to get any new readers if the blogs are stagnant.

SO:

Here's the plan.

It's time to make a schedule. Not the whiteboard guide, though I will continue to use that. An honest-to-goddess schedule, with deadlines. I will make a list of articles that I want to write. I will make a list of deadlines of when these need to be written, and when they should be posted. I will put this list on a clipboard that I will hang in front of me in Spare OOm so I don't f**king IGNORE IT. In fact, I have just nailed the damn thing to the wall, eye level, right next to this monitor. And I will adhere to this schedule to the best of my abilities.

And as for non-revision creative endeavors: It's time to create a backlog of prompts. I will buy some sort of container, some sort of Tupperware type jar. Any time I actually have a random scrap of an idea--even if it's just a phrase or an image--I will throw it in that jar. I will place this jar in a place where I will not forget about it. And I will make it a point to use at least one prompt a day, either for the 750 Words, or a poem, or something else.

And as for non-writing creative endeavors: I will make it a point to do some sort of drawing, even if it's a doodle. Do something at least once a day, even if it's a five-minute sketch to get rid of my work frustration. And I will use the Wacom tablet every weekend. And by year's end, I would like to at least start with some sort of small-scale painting. [I already noodle around on my guitars on a daily basis, even for a few minutes a day, so I'm good there. Later this year I will expand on that and maybe do a bit of recording--that's not a priority.]


Yes, I know. I know I said something in my previous LJ post about not forcing it if it doesn't want to come. I know. I have a disgusting habit of giving myself easy outs. Well--let's not be too hard on myself; that was more in reference to not forcing the story when it's not there, and not about forcing creativity. For some, creativity needs to be forced. Like me. I need to nudge myself out of complacency to get things done, or else I'm futzing around with my mp3 collection and watching YouTube videos. I'm always itching to write or draw or play music, but I make excuses not to, and that's not a good thing.

More on this as it unfolds.