Sometimes It Don't Come Easy

I was at a work event until 7pm last night, and then got home, spent some time with my kids, did some Nanowrimo stuff, then passed out. I did not write a single word. I had taken my laptop with me to the work event, even bringing the power adapter that runs off my car battery in case I had some time in the car, but I didn't. I've got one novel to finish in the next two weeks, and another one due by the end of November. And I'm not worried one little bit.

I make the effort to write every day. Not Monday through Friday, not every weekend. Every. Day. And I do that so that on days like this when I have to give it a miss, it's okay. I'm not going to beat myself up, because a year from now nobody's going to say "And things are in the state they're in because YOU WROTE NOTHING THAT DAY." It's just not going to happen. And not beating myself up about it means that tonight when I sit down to write some words, it'll still flow. I'll still be good.

See? Wasn't that easy?

The Guilt of Productivity

Yesterday I managed to do a fairly substantial re-write of about 90 pages of the thing I'm working on now. I have a large amount that I have to do from scratch for the end, and I'm not 100% sure how I'm going to pull that off, but it was a good day for writing.

On the other hand, I ended up in a place that's very familiar to me. If I'm writing, I'm not doing anything else. I'm not washing dishes or folding laundry or going grocery shopping or any one of a thousand things that need doing around a busy house. And for that, I was beating myself up. The irony is that when I'm at my 9-5 job (which is really my 8:30-4:45 job), I'm not washing dishes, doing laundry or grocery shopping and I feel no guilt about that whatsoever. What's wrong with this picture?

So, I have determined that my goal for this November (and hopefully one that I can hang on to for a while) is to let go of that guilt. My writing is just as important to me as that thing that I do to earn a living, just as important as clean dishes or food in the pantry, and about eight times MORE important than folded laundry. There you have my guilty secret. I don't care about folded laundry.

This November, I'm not going to make my family suffer with my angst. I'm not going to beat myself up about what I'm NOT doing. I'm not going to agonize over every decision I make about how to spend unaccounted-for time. And with all that time that I save on unnecessary histrionics, I'll get even MORE writing done!

But When Do You Find Time?

That's the most frequently asked question I get. Yup, I do have a full-time+ job, AND kids, AND a heinous commute, and I've still managed to write at least 50k words each November.

A big part of it is just forcing myself to write a little every day. You'll hear lots of stories about that legendary guy (and I know at least two) who were unable to write for weeks and then sat down and in 1 or 2 days wrote eighty baskillion words. That's fine if you live alone and can do that sort of thing. For the rest of us, that's not always possible.

What I've learned to do instead is to snatch what time I can find from anywhere. Write during lunch. Take a notebook and write in the restroom (and do use a notebook, as it can be disconcerting for others to hear typing in the restroom). I use my phone's voice notes feature and dictate during my heinous commute, and then transcribe it when I have the time later. This morning I found myself wide awake at 6am on a Saturday. Normally unheard-of, but I couldn't go back to sleep because I'm working on another piece of writing and I have solved a key problem. So, on with the bathrobe and fuzzy slippers and here I am, writing away while everyone but the Very Helpful Kitten is asleep.

You have time in your day. I promise. You have those little bits of time that you're currently spending doing sudoku or watching television (all those crappy shows you're watching now? either they'll still be there in December, or they sucked to begin with and you're better off without them) or in one of those meetings where you don't actually have to either participate or pay attention until someone mentions your name (you know you have them. everyone has them).

Okay, I'm winding up this post because the kitten is eating my head, which is even less helpful than merely lying on my keyboard. Ouch!

Heading Into November

When we last left our heroine, she was frantically trying to write the last couple of chapters of that same old book she's been working on for a while now. It's getting serious. If I don't get it done by next Friday, I'll be trying to finish two of the damn things in November, and just the thought gives me indigestion.

The interesting news is that I have given over the first part of my novel to my crit group and they have been instrumental in pointing out where it needs help. Unfortunately, it needs help in a very large and fundamental way. Their advice was something along the lines of "your writing is marvelous but your story sucks." Okay, they were actually tremendously more gracious than that, but emotionally it amounted to the same thing.

On the plus side, I'm heading into Nano this year as the ML for Santa Cruz. That's exciting to me because in the years that I've actively participated in Nano, I've enjoyed great success. Those years where I did Nano but tried to go it alone, I had a much harder time of it. I'm wondering whether being responsible for my little tribe will make things harder or easier.

I have done a lot more outlining and planning this year than I had in years past, so that's one place where I'm ahead of the game. But it's like any sporting event. You can read the team stats and think about their past performance all day long, but in the end, it's still a contest.

Winter is Coming

The days are getting shorter, the nights are getting colder, and I've started making bad, bad decisions. This is a yearly cycle.

This year, I've decided not only that I will actually, officially participate in Nanowrimo, but I will take up the mantle of ML for the Santa Cruz region. The gap was there, and I (like nature) abhor a vacuum. This explains why I have a cleaning lady.

I am blessed in a way that many writers are not. Both Truman Capote and Fran Liebowitz are famous for having written a very few brilliant things and then sort of just becoming essayists and personalities. They were never visited again with the spark that got them through that initial spurt of brilliance. I, on the other hand, am positively AWASH in fabulous ideas.

1. Trinity of Days
   A play that follows Mary, mother of Yeshua (Jesus, to you White Folks) through the three days between the crucifixion and the ressurection.


2. I Want You to Slowly Fall In Love With Me
   Twelve months in the life of a mediocre aspiring novelist and her transsexual neighbor.


3. Two Women and a Boat, to Say Nothing of Cthulhu
   A novel that follows an intrepid young bird and her headstrong aunt through some of the less glamorous (and therefore less expensive) vacation spots of the world, where they keep meeting mysterious, shambling strangers carrying distastefully ugly tchotchkes and muttering to themselves in the most unmannerly fashion imaginable.


4. R&D: Rule & Dominion
   The galaxy is ruled by humans, and the humans are ruled by greed. There is only one kind of currency in the future: intellectual property.

Those are just the ones that I can recall off the top of my head - the ones that haven't been written yet. My problem has never been a lack of subject matter. It's been a lack of time to sit down and delve into my subject matter in a way that does justice to what's in my head.

For this year, I've chosen #3. I've been spending all my free time sort of idly spinning up individual plots (most P.G. Wodehouse is short stories, and my intention is to copy that short-story style in a way that adds up to a coherent narrative - sort of like a Dorothy L. Sayers piece) and thinking about characters.

In my fantasies, I will have finished all of these pieces (these do not include anything that I'm currently editing) by next November and will have to come up with something entirely new. Wouldn't that be lovely?