I never understood why we have this during such a freakin’ busy month, by the way.

	1266
36
lab.drwicked.com

One hint, though: Copy your text from the window where you typed it before you click done. The program does follow up with a reminder to save the text to your clipboard, but it strips out all your paragraph breaks.

“If you want to make an easy job seem mighty hard, just keep putting off doing it.” ~ Olin Miller

I know the reasons for writing regularly, for being patient through multiple drafts, for just showing up day after day. I haven’t developed a long-term butt glue to keep my fanny fastened to the fiction writer’s chair yet, but I’m trying. I can do discipline; haven’t I held down full-time jobs for the past 26 years, despite longing to stay up late and sleep later every day? So why do I keep permitting roadblocks in my writing path?

Recently, I thought a writing partner would keep me on track. Like diet buddies, we’d check each other’s progress. Then I went through a few weeks of serious illness, he and his family bought a house, my family struggled with making our high school senior study enough to graduate, I fell behind at work, and our fledgling writers’ relationship faded away. And while he was a good writing partner and I feel embarrassed that I failed to be one, I think that maybe a writing buddy wasn’t the right solution for me; self doubt paralyzed me when I showed my early drafts to someone. I need a different way to stay on the path.

After all, I’ve been “writing a murder mystery” for two years now. But real writing time? Maybe a month.

Then I read a RockYourDay blog post last week with a key concept that resonated for me: “Don’t confuse lack of progress in overcoming a habit with the actual difficulty of doing it. If you’re not making progress, it’s likely that it’s because you aren’t deciding up front to anticipate obstacles and so you’re not planning your way around it.” [Emphasis mine.]

Wow. Just … wow. So I’ve been thinking about where my time goes:

• Sleeping, especially long, long naps. I’m taking prescription iron medicine for anemia, and that helps. And for a lingering kidney infection I’m taking a strong new antibiotic that has a powerful drowsiness side effect for me, which doesn’t help. Solution: Get well, and (the hard part) keep more regular hours to help me distinguish between real fatigue and medicine-induced sleepiness I can sometimes push on through. I HATE regular hours, though; I love staying up late or getting up early on my own whim. Still thinking hard about this one.

• Blog surfing. Err, with a blogroll of nearly 300 strong, I definitely need to trim. By AT LEAST one third, and preferably two thirds. I spent the better part of an entire day this weekend just trying (and failing) to catch up on reading a backlog of blog posts. Solution: Trim the blogroll. Again, a solution I dread; I love them all and love to find new ones. I keep thinking that faster skimming will help but it doesn’t. And I’m spending way too much time on reading — or clipping to read in the “later” that never comes. I’ve gotta trim again.

• Obsessing over useless things. When I should be pulling out my story board and tackling one of my mapped-out scenes, I’m instead sorting my sock drawer or alphabetizing my science fiction book shelves by author. Or I’m making lists that are related to my writing, without actually being my writing. Solution: Set aside time to do lower-priority tasks so they don’t crowd my writing time. Every time has a task, and every task has a time.

I’m sure there are more, but those are the ones that loom for me. I’ll tackle them first and then study my action plan again: Where is blocking my free time from flowing to my writing, and how can I avoid the blockage?

What are YOUR fiction-writing obstacles, and how are you planning to overcome every way they manifest for you?

Photo credit: Mozambique – Moments

[tags]writing, writer’s habits, discipline[/tags]

I feel like I’m letting mine down. Since we decided that 2008 was going to be THE year of the book for us, I’ve either been continuously sick (really sick) or swamped at work. Instead of churning out a steady minimum of 10 pages a week like I promised, I’m doing it in fits and starts. Skip one week, and do 25 pages the next. This isn’t doing much to instill confidence in me as a writing partner, but he’s been incredibly patient. I still feel  guilty, though!

What’s YOUR guilty confession about working with your favorite critter?

[tags]writing partners, writing critters, critique partner[/tags]

I’ve felt it before, and it’s almost narcotic. I *love* that sensation. (I get it frequently in my vivid dream life — I’m one of those people who can go back to sleep to see what happens next in my crazy dreams, like I’m tuning back in to a taped show.) So I know what the creative groove feels like — and, boy, do I miss it.

Lately, my imagination has just limped along. Sometimes not moved at all. I had a huge burst of pages last week after being sick and lying mentally fallow for about a dozen days. (Maybe the rest did me some good.) But this week has been insanely busy with other priorities, and my writing has been non-existent.

I’ve been hoofing it at work to meet a deadline, closing my eyes to my grossly derelict housekeeping at home, groaning at the thought that I have to put together a Jr. Girl Scout program for this weekend’s meeting, worrying about not visiting my Aunt Melba in the nursing home in weeks, and struggling with computer problems.  (Currently using a loaner.)  We’ve had two extended family members die in the past three weeks. I had to go back to my doctor Monday for more antibiotics after my first batch ran out; I was getting sick again. And I’m fretting because my original illness put me on short-term disability for a week, meaning my paycheck will be delayed forever. Oh, and my mom’s birthday was March 5, and I’m just now getting around to buying her present. Bad daughter, bad daughter!

So, basically, I’ve been either busy, sad, sick, or paralyzed. It will all get better eventually, I know. But when I think of it, it’s no wonder my imagination and marginal sense of writerly discipline just said “Screw you” this week. /

It’s at times like these that I think of the adage that “a writer writes” (with the unspoken “no matter what” looming over me and shaking a tsk-tsk finger at my unproductiveness). But my legs aren’t limber enough anymore for me to keep kicking myself in the butt over failing to write my daily pages, so I’ll just go to bed now. And I’ll get up in the morning and write before I do anything else.

This is like those diets where you put down the donuts and plan to hit the rice cakes again in the morning, right?

[tags]Getting back in the saddle, returning to discipline, writer’s excuses[/tags]

1. Get mental stimulation. This just means being around something other than the inside of your own head. It can be family, community, or people-watching at the mall or coffee shop. Or it can even be online with podcasts, website forums, and blogs. Whatever works for you.

2. Do NOT, however, keep filling in every moment of your silence. Your brain needs time to let images and ideas percolate. How can it do that if you’ve got a constant yammering in your ear from the iPod, the cell phone, or the TV? Don’t feel like every drive to work has to be actively productive or every moment as you fall asleep has to be filled with a book on tape. Even a good field sometimes needs to lie fallow.

3. Think about your story often.

4. Keep pen and paper with you AND by the bed AND within reach of the tub and shower. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve dreamed up a complete story and felt it vanishing from my mind while I scrambled for paper and pen.

[tags]writing tips, writer’s inspiration, writer’s discipline[/tags]

“It’s nearly impossible to meet a goal if you do not know what you’d look like meeting it.”

Something to chew on as you’re thinking about what your page count WILL BE for 2008. (Aren’t I a fine one to talk. I’m going to be Ms. Stick-to-It this year, though.)

[tags]New Year’s resolutions, page count[/tags]

I didn’t write any last night, but I’ve already done twice my usual output today — 4,606 words so far. I’m going to take a break and try to do some more later on. Woohoo! This “butt in seat” approach is really working for me. It’s astonishing to me how real these characters are becoming to me and how their stories just seem to be spinning themselves out of thin air. (I know I’ve been thinking about this story for a while, but so many delicious little plot and character nuances are cropping up now that I’m actually pounding out the story on the keyboard.)

Now I’ll take my smugly grinning self downstairs to see what my family’s up to on this fine Saturday evening.

[tags]Seventy Days of Sweat, book progress, murder mystery writing, writing challenge, my novel[/tags]

And speaking of moving me: This was a night of writing probably the most wrenching scene in the whole book. I may rip out whole chunks of this once I edit — or at least remove the overt descriptions and lay hints instead so the reader isn’t traumatized — but it helped to at least write down what I “know” happened so I understand two of the characters’ most powerful and darkest motivations. Still — a truly dreadful, icky scene. Will anyone actually want to read that? Do I want to have written it?

Stop it — I’m not going to second-guess at this point. This is what always gets me stuck. I’m moving on.

Glad to have the first draft of this part behind me!

[tags]Seventy Days of Sweat, book progress, murder mystery writing, writing challenge, my novel[/tags]

Then I won a monumental stack of books, magazines and more in a giveaway at Lynn Viehl’s Paperback Writer blog.

And then, before I’d finished dancing about that book glory, I got a note from The Writing Show podcaster, Paula Berinstein, saying I’d won a signed copy of C.J. Box’s new novel, Free Fire, for several show ideas I submitted. Woo-hoo! Woot! This rocks! (Have I embarrassed my children enough yet with my lame execution of cool sayings?)

I’m awed at having so many great new things to read and very grateful for the generous gifts. When I’m not writing, I’ve been reading book after book lately like a desperately thirsty sot locked in a liquor store for the night. Or — a more familiar scenario — like a Weight Watchers member on the ice cream aisle the day *after* weigh-in. Romances and paranormals and gardening and literature, oh my. I wanna taste them all, and they’re all good.

Of course, my husband’s now starting to look skeptical when I squeal and yell out, “I won more books!” Pity he’s not more gullible … there are several items from Target I’d love to sneak into the house.

And now for something completely different …

I made it to my weekend goal already; I’ve cut down to 150 blogs in my RSS reader. *whew* That still sounds like a lot to my hubby, but it’s a sight better than the 262 I had gotten up to. Just 50 more snips to go before July 31, and I’ll be right on goal.

What are your best ideas lately for carving out more time in your life?

[tags]winning books, savage blog cuts, time management[/tags]