August 21st

Today’s progress:

Project: White Raven draft two

New words: 2,594

Total words: 53,255

Goal: 100k

Writing:

Not a bad writing day.  Somewhat frustrating in that my laptop is acting up again after the cat+coke incident.  Sticky keyboard is driving me a bit bonkers.  I want a new laptop.  *looks hopefully at sky*  Nope, no one’s throwing new laptops at me today.  This one is actually perfectly fine, apart from the sticky keyboard.  I should probably look into getting the keyboard replaced or just buy a cheap USB keyboard to use instead.

I’m having fun patching together some stuff from the first draft, which kind of feels like I’m putting together a jigsaw.  So far, I think it’s working okay.  Hopefully my betas agree.

Real life:

Laundry. Baked some banana bread, since I had some bananas that were going mushy (we’ll not discuss the several dozen mushy bananas that are also currently in the freezer, as well).

Worked on and posted a new review over at Horrorscope.

I’m going to see if I can squeeze in a quick walk now.  They predicted rain today, but I haven’t seen any here yet.  Hopefully it doesn’t decide to start while I’m out wandering.  I’m kind of tired today, but not exercising is just going to make things worse.  And my back hurts right now from sitting in front of computers all day.

I’m glad that it’s almost the weekend, though.  As much as I like the idea of working seven days as week, I really look forward to the break.  Pretty much all of my weekday normal work hours are devoted to writing (or reading about writing, or reading analytically) and my brain needs that break.

Beauty:

The willie wagtails that suddenly seem to be everywhere.  We have one who hangs around in the backyard every day, chirping and waggling his/her butt around.  I adore them, even if they’re an absolute pain to try to get photos of.

Mirrored from Stephanie Gunn.

Writing process

Why I write

“It’s amazing and heartening how many people want to be writers. Like all writers, I’m frequently asked about process. Process is different for everybody. When I’m really in a book I work seven days a week, three to six hours a day, starting when I first get up. I write every day because I’m not capable of writing eight hours straight. If I were I would skip the weekends. A girlfriend once told me she had good news. She didn’t have to work on Wednesday; we could spend the whole day together. She didn’t think of me as someone with a job. It made me happy. I kissed her a bunch of times and told her I couldn’t see her on Wednesday.”

I am fascinated by writing process and routine.  I’ve been thinking about it a lot lately – about why the routine I have works for me.  About why routine, full stop, works for me.

I’ve also been thinking a lot about treating writing as a job.  Which is what I try to do.  I commit to making my wordcount every weekday – most of the time I accomplish this by sitting down at the same time each day, but life often means that I need to be flexible with this.  And clearly, I’m going to have to learn to be even more flexible.

My point is this: right now, writing is my job.  Writing for me means getting my wordcount as well as reading and reviewing.  Reading includes reading books (including review books), forums and writing and writer’s blogs.

I find it really difficult to say no to people who want me to do social things during the week.  If I can arrange my schedule so that I can still get my work done and then have time to catch up with friends, then it’s awesome.  Frequently, that just isn’t going to happen.  I cope with this by pretty much hermitting and fobbing off people who want to catch up.  Which isn’t the best way to deal with it.  I need to set my own rules and boundaries and damn well stick to them.

So, a declaration: writing is my job.  Just as someone on a salary doesn’t get to take time off just because they feel like it, neither can I.  There are going to be exceptions, of course, and this is by no means an accusation that anyone has been pressuring me to take time off to see them.  It’s just me stating where I need to be right now.  And that’s committing to writing as a career.

Mirrored from Stephanie Gunn.