I'm nearing the 24 hour mark for wakefulness. I'm not even entirely sure that sentence made a lick of sense, I'm so tired.
While a 24 hour crunch session would've been a breeze a decade ago -- or heck, even five years ago -- it's not so easy anymore. It's actually just a function of having both a toddler and a night job. Admittedly, I'm lucky enough to have a partner who's as invested in the monster as I am, so that seriously helps. Still, flipping my schedule between waking up at 7am and going to bed at noon is hard on the mind, the body, and very probably the soul.
However, it did mean that I got quite a bit done last night, writing-wise. A couple of thousand words, and some really good headway into chapter four. I'm pretty damn proud of it, actually. This is the first time in a long time that I really remembered how much I enjoy writing. Not just making up stories, but the actual work of putting words to (digital) paper. I didn't reach quite the high word count as I'd hoped, if you don't count blogging or social-networking. I'm trying to focus less on the number and more on plugging away and having a good time rather than feeling that it's an incredibly dreary chore. If it took me ten hours of flailing around, languishing in bed like a blob, finding anything else to occupy me from laundry to pocket frogs just so I could get in four solid hours of real writing? I'm going to call that a win.
Tomorrow, the ratio will be even more favorable.
One thing about the work schedule vs. monster toddler is that I've learned to survive on little to no sleep acquired at extremely odd hours. Of course, I do mean just survive and not really function. I also haven't mastered the art of driving while under the influence of exhaustion. This is something that often becomes disturbingly clear to me as I try to drive home from work after a particularly long stretch between naps.
On that note, I'm off to bed. Hopefully I'll have something more coherent after I've gotten a solid eight hours in dreamland.
Thursday, November 3, 2011
Hullo World!
This is my zillionth attempt at a blog. We'll see how it goes.
The point of this one is to try to keep me on track with my writing. It's NaNoWriMo, which is generally a great time to get into the creative spirit. There's a lot of available support for writers out there, this month, even if you're not participating.
As an added bonus, with the success of so many participants actually completing their novels - even if they never publish - it sounds a lot less crazy to say you're working on a novel when November rolls around. Letting people know you can't participate in a specific social function the other eleven months of the year because you have to go home and write is met with about the same reaction as telling them that you politely decline due to a prior engagement extinguishing cigarettes on your forearms. November, however, is just "that nanowrimo thing" and slips under people's radar as some kind of endeavor to make an actual career stringing words together.
But that's the career I'm after. I don't think I'll get rich and famous doing it, but I have become convinced that I can at least make as much as I do now at my Nine-to-Five (or, more accurately, midnight-to-nine) and that's good enough for me.
The really tricky part is actually finishing things. The publishing world is set up to sound very intimidating, and from everything I've read it lives up to that hype. You can't even get to that, though, before you have actual content. So here I am, trying to make sure I keep the momentum up. The more words I get out, the more that will come. It's a bit like when you're running. You can't just stop suddenly after a marathon or a sprint. You have to keep moving, keep walking around, otherwise your muscles go all wobbly and useless. I figure it's the same with writing. In between bursts of productive, creative output, I hope to come over here and dump some of the more distracting aspects of what's in my head so I can get back to the real thing.
And it's certainly less of a time sink than Facebook.
A distraction from the distractions, to trick my brain into thinking I'm procrastinating when I'm actually on task. It'll either work splendidly, or this will be quickly abandoned just like the other seventhousandandsixtyfour blogs I've started and stopped since before the mighty livejournal roamed the earth with its prehistoric kin.
In any case, I'm sick of not trying. Perhaps this will work and perhaps it won't. Either way, giving up before I've started just so I can tell myself I didn't actually give up is ludicrous.
Worse than that, it's boring.
The point of this one is to try to keep me on track with my writing. It's NaNoWriMo, which is generally a great time to get into the creative spirit. There's a lot of available support for writers out there, this month, even if you're not participating.
As an added bonus, with the success of so many participants actually completing their novels - even if they never publish - it sounds a lot less crazy to say you're working on a novel when November rolls around. Letting people know you can't participate in a specific social function the other eleven months of the year because you have to go home and write is met with about the same reaction as telling them that you politely decline due to a prior engagement extinguishing cigarettes on your forearms. November, however, is just "that nanowrimo thing" and slips under people's radar as some kind of endeavor to make an actual career stringing words together.
But that's the career I'm after. I don't think I'll get rich and famous doing it, but I have become convinced that I can at least make as much as I do now at my Nine-to-Five (or, more accurately, midnight-to-nine) and that's good enough for me.
The really tricky part is actually finishing things. The publishing world is set up to sound very intimidating, and from everything I've read it lives up to that hype. You can't even get to that, though, before you have actual content. So here I am, trying to make sure I keep the momentum up. The more words I get out, the more that will come. It's a bit like when you're running. You can't just stop suddenly after a marathon or a sprint. You have to keep moving, keep walking around, otherwise your muscles go all wobbly and useless. I figure it's the same with writing. In between bursts of productive, creative output, I hope to come over here and dump some of the more distracting aspects of what's in my head so I can get back to the real thing.
And it's certainly less of a time sink than Facebook.
A distraction from the distractions, to trick my brain into thinking I'm procrastinating when I'm actually on task. It'll either work splendidly, or this will be quickly abandoned just like the other seventhousandandsixtyfour blogs I've started and stopped since before the mighty livejournal roamed the earth with its prehistoric kin.
In any case, I'm sick of not trying. Perhaps this will work and perhaps it won't. Either way, giving up before I've started just so I can tell myself I didn't actually give up is ludicrous.
Worse than that, it's boring.
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