I’m frittering away my last day of winter break fricking around with this stupid website. I need to move on so this is going to be it.
#1 — You might have noticed I didn’t end up doing much Photoshop or even start Illustrator. I prioritized writing instead. More on that in a different item below. So no fancy new tricks for awhile. Probably.
#2 — Insomnia is my friend again. And by my friend, I mean, not my friend. I wake up every night between midnight and 4am and what happens next is anyone’s guess. About every third night I get back to sleep so things aren’t dire at the moment but when I get back to my regular work schedule we’ll see what happens.
#3 — I’m going to skip what I had for #3 and move writing from #4 to #3.
Every January since 2009 I have decided to that I would get serious and do a first draft of my manuscript. Every year real life has intervened. I’ve decided that this year is going to be different only because I can’t seem to quit this stupid idea.
This guy said many of the things I end up thinking. Here’s a quick sample:
Very slowly, I’m figuring out I probably should not waste any more time on writing. It seems increasingly passive and banal, the whole exercise. There’s real stuff that needs doing!
But I’m going to waste more time on writing.
This is the first year I didn’t have “just one other thing” that I wanted to finish before I get started. I’m in it. Last fall I got in the habit of going to work a little bit earlier so I can have an hour to write before work. We’re going to try to keep this momentum going. I also had a piece of the story that I couldn’t figure out and I think I finally figured it out.
I just spent a ridiculous amount of time and patience trying to figure out how to put a progress counter in the right hand column but I give up. And probably for the better because while my intention is to keep me motivated, I suspect it would lead to despair.
Here’s where I’m at now. For my finished product I’m aiming around 90K, the first draft will most likely end up much shorter. If there’s anything more insufferable than people talking about doing yoga it’s talking about their novel. I’m going to try not to be insufferable but I’ll update the word count every once in awhile.
