A Week Off
Journal 60 25-31 July 2022
The title says it all. I took a week off of writing.
Yes, I know its bad. Everyone always tells new writers to write every single day, write all the time.
But I explained in the past, writing isn’t always sitting at the keyboard. Writing is working on other things like this blog, it is also plotting things out in your mind. Imagining scenes. Drawing or sketching characters, scenes, maps, etc. It’s thinking of some witty dialogue and then scrambling to record it or write it in some manner before it all fades out of memory.
But I didn’t even do any of that this week either.
I spent the week working on side projects, reading comics, and generally working on things around the house.
Off the Chain
I mean, a lot of people think that writing is locking yourself in the office and staying chained to the desk. And by all rights it probably should be. Writing a little every day, or a lot in three days like I do, will get you to the finish line
My problem is that I prioritize writing over everything else. On my days off I wake up, make a cup of tea and start writing first thing. I get the lap top open, I lament the fact that my desktop computer has been out of commission for most of a year, and then I start writing. While I’m writing I think of the house work I could be doing, the books I haven’t read, the comics piling up, the painting work, the hobbies I’ve been ignoring, etc.
I have to fight all of those things and just write. In the past three weeks I produced just over 30,000 words. I’m proud of that. Could I have produced another 10k this week? Maybe. But I needed to get other things done.
Writing is my passion, but it doesn’t generate me money as yet. Ergo, paying work can’t be ignored or put off.
So, what the hell can I talk about in this blog when my word count and what’s happening in the novel are normally a third or half of it? I feel that if I spent a thousand words talking about Dungeons and Dragons and other TTRPGs that I might lose the few of you that are still steadfast. But metrics indicate that several of the posts dealing with gaming seem to do better. As a matter of fact, the ones that are solely gaming get repeat views and get searched the most.
The Month Ahead
This post goes live on August 1st, and the already the month is looking like it will have a lot of obstacles to a decent word count. Sunday and Monday are my two best days for writing. And today, the 7th and the 14th all have events planned that will take me away from the keyboard.
But now it just sounds like I’m making a lot of excuses for myself.
Suffice there are a lot of obstacles in my way and my time is being divided over many events, outings, side-work, and trying to have a little social/entertainment in and otherwise work and writing driven life. A lot of this is affecting my health as well and I need to carve out time to walk and be more active as well. It’s a never-ending cycle of putting off one thing to do another.
Hell, as I’m typing this, I’m watching the clock to see when I have to do other things. How much more time can I devote to writing this blog before I have to jump in the shower, then get ready to leave the house. What time will I get back and what can I accomplish in the time left? Do I bring a notebook and jot down ideas and work on other things? If I do bring a notebook do I work on my world information or plot scenes, or work on something completely different?
Writing that isn’t at the Keys
I try to not go down the rabbit-hole of research. But last week I mentioned that in my notes I use a regular calendar to place events in my novel, but I don’t use the names of the months in the novel itself. So, I keep having trouble trying to use measurements of how many weeks before or after the solstice I am. And in the current chapters I have been describing plant growth and what farms are working on.
So, for example the main storyline is happening at the end of March beginning of April and I keep talking about the winter frost disappearing and hardy greens just beginning to form in this early first planting season. Meanwhile, the second storyline is about three weeks ahead on the timeline and over a thousand miles south east of the other. So, I’m talking about fields of flax and how they’re going to bloom in another couple weeks.
All of this crazy research and work on plants, growing cycles, also changing the geography to match plants to the same equivalent area in Europe. All just to avoid having to name the months and create a calendar. And worse, only a fricking farmer is going to get most of that. The rest of my readers will be wondering why I’m waxing poetic about how fields of flax will bloom into blue and purple flowers for miles.
Fantasy versus “Not-Fantasy”
So, yeah, this is the sort of thing I do instead of creating a calendar, or simply using our real-world calendar. And let me tell you that last statement generates some anger. There are people who hate anything real-world dipping into fantasy. Whereas I tend to enjoy some modern turns of phrase, swearing, and other such in my fantasy. Mathew Stover was the first writer I read who wrote historical fantasy and dropped the F-bomb consistently. His take on it was that we’re reading it in modern English but they were talking in their native Greek or Egyptian.
I believe David Gemmel used the modern calendar in his thinly disguised Roman Legions (Panther Empire) talking on Britain in his Stones of Power books. I could be mistaken it’s been nearly 20 years since I read them. Suffice, I know that there are several fantasy novels that use the regular calendar. With the idea that it is ease of understanding.
There are so many thoughts and struggles that perhaps I shouldn’t waste so much time thinking about. Perhaps this is how my mind likes to procrastinate. Instead of doing a simple job creating a calendar and then having to work in teaching the reader about it, I just waste a lot more time researching planting in various climes or counting the days before and after the solstices and equinoxes. FUN.
Perhaps this sis habit that would be broken with a decent agent giving my advice or a good editor once a novel sells. I don’t know.
Wrapping Up
The novel is just getting into the “higher gears” so I will not be able to ignore it too much. I will get time at the keys one way or another. Just have to fit it around a stupid schedule.
Thank you all again for reading. Keep writing.
