Another batch of chocolate chip cookies and Saint Sa\u00ebns’ Symphony No. 3 (“Organ”)\u00a0\u00a0 pulled me out of the slump and past the next milestone:\u00a0 130,000 words.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The problems aren’t all solved, but I squeezed out a nearly shut door and went off somewhere with Kieri to look at progress along the river.<\/p>\n
At this point, I’m 16,000 words ahead of where I was this time last year–I was much farther ahead before my husband’s latest surgery(about 42,000 words ahead right before the surgery), but I knew that would slow me (hence the mad dash to get ahead.)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Last year I didn’t get to 100,000 until August 9, and this year I got there July 8.\u00a0\u00a0 Why this matters is that accumulating the bulk of the first draft earlier gives me more time to do a sensible (not crazy-making) revision and set up for the next volume.<\/p>\n
It’s still necessary to keep going–in fact to push for my “usual” first-draft pace.\u00a0\u00a0 This fall’s not going to be any less busy than last year;\u00a0\u00a0 I don’t want to be flat against the wall in December again.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 If I manage the rest of the year as well as I have this one,\u00a0 I may be insufferably proud of myself when I’m done, in terms of anticipating and adjusting to the various challenges this year has presented.\u00a0\u00a0 But it’s not over yet.<\/p>\n
The take-home lesson, though, for anyone getting into this writing business in a serious way, is that LifeStuff comes hurtling at you sometimes and it helps to know how you, individually, respond to it.\u00a0 It’s not just the discipline of writing anyway–because sometimes you can’t.\u00a0\u00a0 Your whole being is wrapped up in something else and you have nothing to write with<\/em>.\u00a0\u00a0 Waiting to hear how my husband came through surgery…that was not a time I could write.\u00a0 Or that week after surgery, in fact.\u00a0 But I knew I wouldn’t be able to.\u00a0 The earlier slogging away, based on knowing I’d have both a week or two “off” and then a struggle to get back into stride, gave me the leeway to take that time without feeling guilty.<\/p>\n Other times, I haven’t managed as well, because I didn’t know how I’d react to things…and then I had to fight like crazy to make the deadline.\u00a0\u00a0 This is why knowing how much you can write in a crunch–and then never (NEVER) scheduling yourself so there’s no wiggle-room and it’s all crunch–is so important for a long-term, sustainable career.\u00a0 (Though I think it’s Joe Haldeman who said “I don’t have a career…I have the next book.”\u00a0 And that’s true, too.)<\/p>\n Anyway…the public works that Kieri agreed with his merchant advisor were needed are getting underway at last, and I’m playing with that for the moment.\u00a0 This will contrast nicely with something else that someone else is up to.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Technology v. magic kind of thing.\u00a0\u00a0 (Technology’s been delayed, in our terms, because of the ease of doing some things by magic–both in the past and now.\u00a0 But with the decline of the magelords’ magery, leading up to the Girdish wars,\u00a0 technological change began to take hold. )<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Another batch of chocolate chip cookies and Saint Sa\u00ebns’ Symphony No. 3 (“Organ”)\u00a0\u00a0 pulled me out of the slump and past the next milestone:\u00a0 130,000 words.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The problems aren’t all solved, but I squeezed out a nearly shut door and went off somewhere with Kieri to look at progress along the river.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[61,5],"tags":[62,20,107],"class_list":["post-1305","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-craft","category-the-writing-life","tag-craft-of-writing","tag-progress-report","tag-the-writing-life"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1305"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1305"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1305\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1307,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1305\/revisions\/1307"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1305"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1305"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1305"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}