Another Day, Another Chapter

Posted on August 8, 2008
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I went back to “regular” work yesterday. Odd, I know. Take a week off Thursday-to-Thursday. It makes sense for me and my professional role at present, though, and sometimes you just have to say “what the hell.”

Today will be day two.

This is important because today also represents Morning Two, meaning my second straight morning of getting up at 4:30 and making it downstairs to complete a chapter’s rewrite. Today was more difficult merely because I was up late finishing work that I’m now way behind on due to my vacation. Life is like that. You can take time off, but everyone else continues to move forward.

Still, I’m happy. I got up–only a little late, I fed the cat, and I made it downstairs. I avoided the pratfalls of the normal dalliances that I can sometimes use to avoid progress, which would have been easy since I had left off at a bit of a sticky point yesterday. Difficult thoughts and decisions are the ones most fun to put off, and all that. But I didn’t put anything off. I dug my heels in and I got my way through the rough spot, and even went back and made it even better than I thought it could be.

At least I think it’s better, and really, I’m the only one who matters at this point.

Again It Begins

Posted on August 7, 2008
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Square one has gotten to be a familiar spot.

I finally came around to taking some time off work this past week, and faced with the truth of something I’ll call “free time” I decided to put up or shut-up.

I thought about challenging myself with something daunting like in the old days–write a short story a day, or write two short stories a day, or something audacious like that. I envisioned blogging my great success, as if anyone was actually around to really care. In the end I decided that kind of thing didn’t make sense. I didn’t need that.

Instead, I needed something that said commitment. In the end, I think that’s what’s been lacking–commitment to something truly hard. Creating drafts of stories is not very hard. At least I don’t think so.

Writing is easy.

Storytelling, however, is hard. So that’s what I decided to do with my time off. Look at storytelling.

I’m not a total sadist, however. Rather than start afresh, I decided I would take my fantasy novel and begin working with it. I would read. I would work with it. I would try my best to find its flaws. In the process I have to admit that I hoped beyond hope to begin to fall in love with it just a little bit again.

That too, I think has been missing. Sometime I’ll think about that a little more, too. Sometime I’ll write about it. But for now I’ll just say that I’ve worked on this thing for nearly a week solid. For now I’ll say that I’ve spent this week doing heavy lifting, practicing skills I’ve left fallow for longer than I care to think about. I worked on the computer. I worked with paper and ink. I worked while I cooked on the grill. I worked on the couch. I left things untouched, thinking about them in spare moments in order to return to them later with fresh perspectives.

I like that my story took surprising turns. I liked that I thought my characters were interesting. I didn’t like that my micro-writing was sloppy, but I guess I could always say that.

Yesterday, though, it happened. Yesterday I finished a scene and I stepped back, grinning. “That’s really good,” I said to myself. “That’s really, really good.”

Then I went back to work.

Structuring My Day

Posted on March 25, 2008
Filed Under Daily Writing | 1 Comment

I’m developing a new story, and it’s coming along. I should note that I’m working in a structured fashion again with mornings dedicated (for the most part) to creating new words. I had gone away from that for quite awhile, with results that are predictable for me.

This is important to me because I’ve allowed work to become a monster that has eaten all my time for many months. While I’m sure it makes sense to the general public, it doesn’t much help me any. Despite the fact that I’m pretty good at it, I don’t consider myself a corporate worker. That’s not what I get my internal self-worth from–or, at least it’s not where I get the most important elements of my self worth from.

Work is a big collaboration, you see? It’s fun in the sense that you’re building something with other people that you could never build yourself. But like a writing collaboration, its like twice the work for half the reward. Writing is all internal. It’s mine. No one can make me change anything, and only the reader and I an decide if it’s good or not (editors are, of course, a class of reader).

In addition, I’ve found I need to work in my basement. At least that’s what’s going on now. A few months back, Lisa and I bought laptops and wireless router for us to use wherever we wanted. It’s cool, of course. And useful. My thought was that I could probably write while vegging in front of the TV, or whatever. This was pure and total fancy, and the fact that I thought it would work goes to explain exactly how far out of reality I had gotten. Write while watching American Idol? Yeah, right.

As soon as I got my butt planted downstairs, though, the WordWerks started to flow again.

Now, I’ll fully admit that the NCAA tournament has stepped into the mix this past weekend, and will probably continue to do so until my beloved Cards are no longer playing. But I can deal with that.

Louisville basketball has its power. That cannot be denied. :)

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