A number of things going on in my writing life these days. First, earlier this week I finished listening to Drew Hayes's Underqualified Advice. It was a bit of a lengthy read (three minutes shy of twelve hours), I am given to understand that he's known for longer books. Alternating between advice for writers and amusing diversions, it was both very informative as well as entertaining. I'm not sure I heard anything I hadn't read or seen elsewhere, but he had some good ideas about how to think about writing, being an author, the writer's life and so on. The narrative bits between the non-fiction-ly writing advice ranged from interesting, to amusing, to down right bizarre; I'm not sure if I liked the HR memos from ThunderPear publishing or the "Drew Tries Stuff" articles best. Anyway, not setting out for a true review or anything here, but it was definitely worth reading and something I recommend. Second, as I approach the end of April, my first real "writing" month, I started to think about both my writing and production schedules. I realized that I had a few vague plans, but nothing written down and that was primarily because I didn't know what exactly came next or how long I should expect it to take. In an effort to at least get a handle on my time, even if I didn't yet know how to fill it, I opted to create an author timeline notebook. Using up the last of my mock "composition notebooks" ($1 each at Dollar Tree, how could I pass that up?) I printed out month calendars for the next two years to paste in, one month for each two page spread. And before you roll your eyes at me, recognize that I'm planning on publishing my first book by my fiftieth birthday, that's October 30th of 2021 so it's not so ridiculous to plan that far out. To start, I wrote down all the big milestones that I was thinking I would need to hit for each month. Now many of these are wild guesses, since I'm not 100% sure how long all these steps will take, what I will be doing and needing to do that point, but it's something. I also went through and highlighted every Friday as this is my goal date to update this blog - clearly that hasn't worked so well given that I missed my very first Friday after I made this plan. And that was honestly poor planning on my part. My husband and I have an online game we play every Friday night so I don't have as much free time as I would like on those days so while I've highlighted two plus years of Fridays, I think that Saturdays are much more likely. I then noted where exactly I was in my first draft word count and noted it on Wednesday the 22nd, then did some quick math to figure how many words I was away from 45k (my minimum goal for April) and 50k my stretch goal, then did a wee bit more math to figure out how many words per day that means between then and the end of the month. My goal is to note this every day going forward and to jot down why some days might have low (or zero) word counts. For example, Friday night I technically got my minimum words on 4theWords done (440 each day - don't ask why that number) but that was all on blocking out the next few scenes and thus didn't contribute anything to my total word count. Happily, I was able to get quite a few words in today and thus was able to catch up to where I needed to be. I'm hoping to do the same tomorrow since it's a Sunday and be in a good place for the last few days of the month. I still haven't decided what I'm doing in May - either continuing on with the remaining 45-50k words, or pausing to rough edit the first half. I guess we'll all know by next week and my next blog post, won't we?
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So things under Corona "social distancing" have been going well. Closing in on a full month at home and no one is dead yet. The work has been going well, lots of blocking done and quite a bit of work translating that blocking into draft up to 19k words, then apparently the muse decided to take a holiday. I literally have to make myself sit down and write these days - not necessarily because I don't want to write, but because I have no idea what I'm writing next. The next few scenes are set, I have a basic outline for each, but the words are like pulling teeth! I'm still getting something done every night - gotta keep my streak up, but it's frequently NOT on the WIP. This post, for example, I wanted to get another post written about this topic and it was a lot easier to convince myself to sit down and write this than even consider the next scene. It's a little disheartening, especially considering how elated I was just a week or so ago, the words were flowing and I'd get so frustrated when I'd type so late that I couldn't keep my eyes open and knew I had to get to bed so I could get some work done the next day, but the words just kept coming. Stupid muse, clearly doesn't know anything about pacing herself! I've heard two different, opposite camps on this issue - the first is the hardcore, bootcamp-style voice, telling me to push through, to get the words down, that words you will delete later in revision are better than no words at all. After all, you can't revise a blank page. And I certainly get that. The second camp, this one always feels very hippie artsy commune, wants me to listen to my muse, be kind to myself and to recognize you can't force art. I get that too - gods know that it feels like I'm trying to get blood from a turnip this week! I have a tendency to ignore the second voice a little more as I worry that the hippie mask is covering my own uncertainty and that it's trying to undermine me before I even get started. Yes, I probably have spent as much time thinking about my own psychology as it relates to writing as I have actually writing. Been a rough week. Anyway, I'm going to go ahead and count these as my words for the day, even though they aren't getting me anywhere close to my goal of 50, by the end of the month and with 20 days and just over 30K in words to get down, I REALLY have to get back to it! |
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May 2020
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