Plans Set in Motion

"At the end of the day, you either wrote something or you didn’t," begins a post at noveldoctor.com entitled At the End of the Day. The point is: you are still a writer whether that particular day worked out or not. Each day dawns with new possibilities and new chances for words.

Sometimes you just need that encouragement. I know I do. There are a lot of days when other things get in the way. Dishes. Laundry. Work. Friends (I promise I still love youse guys). Family (You know I love you guys). My own emotional issues. That movie I've seen a thousand times and really don't need to watch again. Some of it's trivial. Some titanic. It still just gets in the way.

So as I told Tiana Warner in a comment on an earlier post: I am going to schedule my writing time this year. I've been trying to sort of tabulate when I get the most writing actually done. I'm doing it empirically, Excel spreadsheet, looking at when, how long, and how much I wrote in an attempt to find out when my brain appears to be at its most productive. No use in scheduling time to work when I'm generally frazzled and unable to get words down on the paper. So for ONE MONTH, I'm going to keep track of things and then tabulate where my productivity lies. Once I know, then I can pin down something of a schedule at a time likely to help me actually make some significant progress instead of piddling around.

Wish me luck.

My Obsession with Spectators

I was reading over at Wordplay and found a guest post by Tiana Warner about writing and madness called "Writing with a Touch of Madness". In this post she discusses Obession, Passion, and Persistence, three things absolutely necessary to writing well. However, my favorite words are in the last paragraph:

Obsession isn’t a bad thing. It compels us to finish our books, and to finish them well. It drives us to “live” our characters until they become real. Don’t feel like you’re insane if you find yourself obsessing over your book: embrace it. Every great artist seems to have this trait; it’s what drives them to success.

Part of me immediately thinks of my experience in writing with Nanowrimo, the yearly writing experience of getting 50k words down within 30 days. As well as why I rarely finish things outside of that framework. My level of obsession becomes stronger when I have someone looking over my shoulder. When it is just me up to my own devices, I will lolly-gag and let things slide. The dishes will become more important than getting 1,000 words down on any given day. The laundry will mock me from the floor until I have no choice but to get it done in order to be able to sit down with a clear head.

It isn't an absence of my characters, but simply a more 'responsible' portion of my brain exerting control. My characters are generally sitting on the sidelines counting the seconds until I get my butt back in a chair and start writing again. Leading me to another thought: I don't think of my writing as what I do. It is what I do in my free time, a filler, not important. The other things in life are important. Except when I do Nanowrimo which forces me to really stare down a deadline.

They say step one is to admit you have a problem. I suppose step two is when you confront the problem with a solution. What is my solution to the awareness I do not value my work as highly as I should? I make time for work. I make time for classes. I make time for friends. I obviously need to make time to write. Not just shoehorn it in places where I don't have something else.

A daily goal is something I have during Nanowrimo. A deadline is something I have during Nanowrimo. Each of those are things I can generate on my own. These are things I have previously generated on my own to no avail. Therefore, it must not be those which drive me forward. The thing most motivating to me in the case of Nanowrimo is the spectators. Someone is waiting to see if I make it, maybe even to sneak a peek at the manuscript once I type "THE END" on it. So how do I create the idea of spectators when I'm on my own? Suggestions?