Before I get into anything else, This post is going live on the first day of ConFusion. It’ll be going all weekend. My panel schedule is on the Events page. If you’re in the area, stop by. It’ll be a great time.
I confess that this week hasn’t been the most productive. It isn’t that I haven’t been writing – OK, I didn’t get up to write on Thursday morning, but I’d put in a nearly 14 hour day-job day.
I’m starting to get to the point where I’m not sure if it’s worth it. Yes, there is overtime for days like that (which is nice) but I honestly don’t know if it’s worth the disruption in my life. It throws me off my schedule, as often as not, it cuts into my writing time (which frustrates me to no end), and I usually end the week dragging-ass into the weekend, because, for two days, my sleep schedule is all wonky.
But that’s not the point here. It hasn’t been a productive week because this book is more of a discovery process than an outlined one. I do have an outline. Now that I’m thinking about it, I have two of them. One is a kind of bullet pointed list of things that I know I want to have happen. The other one is a sketchy telling of the story to myself to fill in some of the gaps between those bullet points.
To date, I don’t think I’ve given either outline more than a glance since I’ve started. To quote the man, himself: “I’m making it up as I go.”
So the daily word count has taken a hit. And that’s kinda a downer, especially when everyone is posting their “A Game” on social media.
The thing is, I ~know~ I shouldn’t compare my latest 250 word day to somebody else’s “Slow” 1000 word day.
A part of me does, though. This is a Fess-Up post, and I’ll own up to it. I do.
A serendipitous, saving grace is that I get up really early to write. Before the day-job, before anything has a chance to suck the energy out of me. Before those “A-Game” posts, where I can at least fall back on the fact that I did write today.
And, assuming that I’m not at work more often than I’m not, in the past 24 hours, I’ll get up and write tomorrow.
And that’s what I focus on. Eventually, my head circles back around to that. I wrote today. I’ll probably write tomorrow.
Do the work. Get better. That’s what I can control. The rest is just stuff that happens.