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It took awhile, but my writing habits are becoming solid again. It's obvious that my best course of action when this needs to be done is to use a schedule, and to stick to it. Nearly every weekday morning at my 9:30 break, I step away from my work PC and my home PC, grab the moleskine notebook under the monitor stand, and write a journal entry. I write about pretty much everything there...whatever's on my mind, unedited. This space in particular, I try not to let the internal editor interrupt, so my sentences might be wonky, there's a lot of scribbled-out words, and questionable word choice. But that's one of the reasons I started doing it--to write something and not edit myself in the process. No one's going to be reading it except myself, so why hold back?
There's also the weeknight sessions writing Walk in Silence. The funny thing is that I'd completely forgotten what it felt like to jumpstart the creative juices when the session starts--I've been revising and rewriting the trilogy for so long that it feels like a new process again. Given that I'm currently writing about my teen years, every night has started with the same exact feeling that homework is due tomorrow, and I haven't started it yet. But about fifteen minutes in, once I push myself to keep going, I feel the pistons catch and I'm off to the races. I've been doing just shy of a thousand words a night, and I'm already about halfway through chapter two.
This is by far the fastest book I've ever written, even more so than The Persistence of Memories, for a few reasons. First, it's not going to be nearly as long as the trilogy books. I'm thinking the first run-through will be close to about 50-60k, give or take? And I'm at 7k now. Much editing and revising later, but at this rate, I could possibly be done before summer's out, which surprises the hell out of me. I guess that's what happens when you're not writing epics!
I've also scheduled myself to start blogging at the WordPress sites again. As said last week, my schedule has cleared somewhat, so I'm able to resume work on them again. I've already posted a few, so it's a matter of keeping it up at this point.
There's still a few other things I need to start picking up again--the drawing and the poetry, in particular. I know, I've been slacking and/or putting it off. But these are like the journaling and the blogging--for me, it's just a matter of shutting the hell up and doing it already. And given that our weekends will be relatively quiet for the next month, I should have more time to devote to it as well.
There's another action I need to take as well, to get these things in motion: making it obvious that I need to work on them. I have a terrible time with distraction, the "out of sight, out of mind" issue where if I don't have a to-do list or a schedule or have it written on a calendar, I don't always remember to follow through. I have the moleskine sitting on top of a new composition book just waiting to have entries put into it. And both of them are sitting on top of the Wacom tablet. And next to the monitor is another moleskine--this one unlined and just waiting to be drawn in.
Again--the only thing that's missing for those is the schedule. I like schedules. They keep me from slacking off and guilt me if I don't follow them. So what does this mean? Perhaps adding these things to the whiteboard again?
Maybe so.
There's also the weeknight sessions writing Walk in Silence. The funny thing is that I'd completely forgotten what it felt like to jumpstart the creative juices when the session starts--I've been revising and rewriting the trilogy for so long that it feels like a new process again. Given that I'm currently writing about my teen years, every night has started with the same exact feeling that homework is due tomorrow, and I haven't started it yet. But about fifteen minutes in, once I push myself to keep going, I feel the pistons catch and I'm off to the races. I've been doing just shy of a thousand words a night, and I'm already about halfway through chapter two.
This is by far the fastest book I've ever written, even more so than The Persistence of Memories, for a few reasons. First, it's not going to be nearly as long as the trilogy books. I'm thinking the first run-through will be close to about 50-60k, give or take? And I'm at 7k now. Much editing and revising later, but at this rate, I could possibly be done before summer's out, which surprises the hell out of me. I guess that's what happens when you're not writing epics!
I've also scheduled myself to start blogging at the WordPress sites again. As said last week, my schedule has cleared somewhat, so I'm able to resume work on them again. I've already posted a few, so it's a matter of keeping it up at this point.
There's still a few other things I need to start picking up again--the drawing and the poetry, in particular. I know, I've been slacking and/or putting it off. But these are like the journaling and the blogging--for me, it's just a matter of shutting the hell up and doing it already. And given that our weekends will be relatively quiet for the next month, I should have more time to devote to it as well.
There's another action I need to take as well, to get these things in motion: making it obvious that I need to work on them. I have a terrible time with distraction, the "out of sight, out of mind" issue where if I don't have a to-do list or a schedule or have it written on a calendar, I don't always remember to follow through. I have the moleskine sitting on top of a new composition book just waiting to have entries put into it. And both of them are sitting on top of the Wacom tablet. And next to the monitor is another moleskine--this one unlined and just waiting to be drawn in.
Again--the only thing that's missing for those is the schedule. I like schedules. They keep me from slacking off and guilt me if I don't follow them. So what does this mean? Perhaps adding these things to the whiteboard again?
Maybe so.
