Fiction writer. Expert procrastinator. This is my life.
I blocked the news sites I visit from my phone’s web browser (the built in apps for news have always been disabled so no worries there) and blocked the writer forum I visit because most of the active threads there are about the news at the moment. I’ve also blocked all those same sites from my computer. All so I can devote myself to my creative pursuits this weekend. :)
In other words, it’s time to get back to writing!
Yesterday I planned to sit at the computer for three hours and write but I didn’t make it there. I’m still fighting the distractions that are all around me right now.
Today, my new washing machine is set to finally be delivered. I ordered it on February 4. The delays on that have been crazy.
But boy do I have laundry to catch up when I finally get it installed. It’s going to be fun doing it because the space is tight and I’ve never installed a washing machine on my own before. The tight fit is my biggest concern because getting it into position is going to be a real chore.
Tomorrow, my daughter moves into her first apartment. Great timing because her university just asked all the students to move out for the rest of the month and move to online classes and I have a feeling that’s going to drag on longer than that even.
She was supposed to move today but spent yesterday rearranging plans to the point that I wasn’t sure what was going on until nearly my bedtime. :-)
I need to finish filing taxes for my 85 year old grandmother today, and help my daughter finish hers. She’s trying them alone for the first time this year but I’ve promised to answer questions and review them before she submits them.
I’m hoping to get started on this new plan I have and will detail later but I’m not sure I’m being realistic about it. I’m writing this post on my phone in bed because I woke up after four hours of sleep and couldn’t go back to sleep even though I tossed and turned for three hours trying. I can already tell it’s going to be one of those days.
I still had time yesterday for writing but what I didn’t have was the desire.
I’m in a different frame of mind today, but time is going to be short.
With so much going on in the world right now, I’m finding it hard to concentrate on writing fictional stories. I tend to fixate on issues and only action makes it better. There isn’t any action I can take right now for the vast majority of issues going on in the world around me, other than the actions I’ve already taken, so I’m stewing in the uncertainties of what’s to come.
I have a lot of family in the at-risk category for this COVID-19 virus and that worries me. I am self-employed as a writer who doesn’t find it easy to write when my mind is occupied and that worries me.
I’m going to have to put off the next book in one series longer than I planned because I just don’t think I can write it right now. It’s a book that touches on the deaths of millions of people because of a virus, so that worries me. Do people really want to read about a virus killing everybody when there’s a real virus out there killing loved ones?
As for the books in my several other series, I’m having no luck getting to the computer and writing, or even reading the rest of the book I’m copyediting, because I’m too busy stewing in all these worries. A lot of my books are light and humorous (not all) and I’m just not in that headspace.
Maybe I’ll find a way. I hope so, because it would be nice to get lost in another world right now.
Wow. That blew up quick. Yesterday, one of the first days in a long while that I didn’t check my email until late in the day because my daughter is home from college on spring break, I got a response to a comment I left on another blog. Admittedly, it was a pointed comment that I probably should have kept to myself, but didn’t, but I did not expect to be followed back to my blog and find a nasty little comment waiting for me. If anything, I expected to be blocked on the blog where I commented or responded to in as equally a nasty fashion as everyone else on the post had been responded to, but nope.
The thing is, I also got an email, which was apparently sent hours earlier than the comment and was considerably more reasonable. But I guess since I didn’t respond quickly enough, I got the more ridiculous, over the top comment on my blog as my reward.
The thing is, I originally approved the comment because I thought that was going to be it. I still hadn’t checked my email so I figured a simple response was my best bet because I was busy and I thought the overreaction (the hissy fit if you will) spoke for itself.
Then I checked my email.
Let me just say that seeing the difference in tone in the earlier email from the comment really pissed me off.
Still, I responded as reasonably as I could. And got another two emails for my trouble.
By last night, my anger had built to the point where I just finally wrote a much more pointed email and then let it go.
And then got another fucking email.
I’m letting that one go. The guy is clueless. He sees what he wants to see, and he thinks the fact that he doesn’t intend to be perceived in a certain way absolves him of his behavior. Good for him. I don’t have room in my life for dealing with that shit.
In light of that, I did decide to unpublish the original comment he made on the blog. I have no interest in making my blog home to someone else’s hissy fit.
I have enough of my own to post here. ;D
The forced change of the clock this morning is just one reminder that laws linger long past their need in our bloated government bureaucracies.
I just want the government to pick a time and stick to it. Standard time or saving time either one will work for me. Just stop making us deal with this horrible sleep disruption twice a year. Some of us already have sleep and circadian rhythm problems and don’t adapt well to changes.
Is anyone going to listen to me? Probably not, but I’ll send another letter, as usual! I am forever optimistic that this will be the year. :-)
I’ll leave you with this link: Daylight Saving Time Is Here Again. So Is The Debate About Changing The Clocks.
There are times in your life when you have to make choices. Today I made a choice to scratch a few sites off my reading list. When authors start having hissy fits in public and trying to knock down other authors because of differing viewpoints on how to write, that’s my cue to move on.
Some authors claim to understand that other people have different processes, but when you read between the lines of their posts, you can see the bias in every word they write. They’re not just offering an alternative way to approach storytelling, they’re calling people who don’t want to do things that way “silly” and “scared” and it’s just… ugly, for lack of a better word, and I don’t like it. So I won’t be reading any more of it.
(The surprising thing is that this alternative way to approach storytelling is supposedly against the establishment, but since I’ve been writing this way for thirty-odd years, I find that hard to believe. I mean, no one ever told me I wasn’t supposed to be a discovery writer. I thought that was how most fiction writers worked—but maybe it was just the particular craft books I chose to learn from. I read all of Lawrence Block’s craft books (Spider, Spin Me a Web is still my favorite of all time), and Stephen King’s On Writing, and Bird by Bird and so so many others, and the bald-faced truth is that of the large number of craft books on my shelves only a few actually make a big deal about outlining. Being a discovery writer is a tried and true method of storytelling and I don’t know where this myth started that everyone pushes outlining so hard. Maybe inexperienced writers, and those that outlining works for? I don’t know. That’s just not been my experience. No one ever told me I needed an outline to write a story, not even the high school English teacher that made me write stories when I would have rather been reading!)
I won’t pick on the sites in question and post links, because I don’t think that’ll help anyone. If you’re the kind of person who doesn’t like to see these kinds of conflicts, you’ll probably choose to avoid these sites on your own.
The good news is that this might mean I have fewer distractions in the mornings that lead me to flit around the internet. :D That’s always good!
February was not much of a writing month, to be sure. I spent a lot of time avoiding my book, because I knew something was wrong and didn’t want to deal with it. The last week of the month, I finally gave in and started reading it, about five to six chapters a day, and yep, once I got to chapter sixteen, I saw that everything I had been worried about was true.
The book is good. Until it isn’t.
Starting in chapter twenty-three or so, I’ve written a whole bunch of stuff that is completely incompatible with what came before. Up to that point, this is an awesome book. It works great. It’s exciting and fun and I love it. After that point, it doesn’t work. I don’t like it. And frankly, in places, it doesn’t even make sense.
That’s my fault, because I wrote a bunch of stuff for that damn streak I should have let die much sooner than I did (I quit the daily writing streak on Feb. 8th and could not be more happier that I did), and then I tried to fit those pieces together like a puzzle, and that’s just not the way I work best. So I made a mess. Of course I did. ;D
But—finally!—I’m ready to fix it and move on.
By tomorrow, I’ll be back to writing full steam ahead. I made a pact with myself on that and I will be honoring it. :D
However, that doesn’t help February’s word count.
It’s bad. My best February day was 697 words. My worst was -1,697 words. That’s pretty much how the month went. February had eight zero word days. The rest were mediocre at best when it came to word counts. The last week of the month was my most productive, if only because I finally got over my reluctance to read back through the book and tackle it head on.
February words: 228
There’s a lot of bad advice out there about writing. The antidote to bad advice is the truth.
No one can teach you how to write a story. They can tell you the elements that separate a strong story from a weak one, but they cannot tell you how to get that story out of yourself and onto a page. They can only tell you how they do it or how other people have told them they do it. But what works for them might not work for you. If they believe their way is the one true path, you’d better run, and run fast, because there is no one true path to writing a story. You’ll waste a lot of time beating your head against that wall if it isn’t the right process for you.
You have to figure out your process for yourself.
Do you sit down to a blank page and start writing with no idea where the story is about to take you, and end up with a finished story you’re happy with? Good. Do more of that.
Do you create the bones of a story and then go back and fill it in and then fill it in some more and some more until you have a finished story you’re happy with? Good. Do more of that.
Do you read back over your story as you go and tweak and fix and expand and contract the words on the page until you have a story you are happy with? Good. Do more of that.
Do you write like you’re afraid to look back because you’ll slow down and second guess yourself and lose all momentum and finally get to the end with a sigh of relief, happy that you’ve done it, and quietly sure that this is the best story you could have written and certain that nothing you could do now would change that? Good. Do more of that.
Do not let other people’s opinions about how you should write a story have power over you and your process.
Do what works for you. Seriously, this is the most important writing rule you will ever learn. :D
It’s the only rule you should follow.