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FlickrThe Fog Behind My Eyes
It's curious how much a time change really does mess with you. I'm never truly aware of the ways my body reacts to light or temperature or the cycle of the sun until it's a truly dramatic effect, like being wide-awake at 11 o'clock at night, or the first week this year of commuting home in the daylight; then, my eyes are filled with fog, and my mind is half-buried in a tar pit, and I just cannot function beyond the basic levels needed for survival.
I console myself by remembering that I have felt this before, and that I have fought it off with more sleep, a better diet, and just plain toughing it out; that everyone has rough patches; that not all writers write all the time. Then I force myself to still feel productive, lest I fall down that hole of Never Writing that can claim so many brains.
All this is to say that this week's schedule has been a bit disrupted. Monday was me editing Chapter 2 of Not Providence, and writing about 650 words for Eyes of Stone, which was its own kind of refreshing (though that new section needs a serious sandblasting). Tuesday, then, was me editing both Chapter 3 of NP and doing the second-round edits on "A Million Stories", both which, I feel, need to be printed out and brought on the plane with me for perusal during my trip to Nashville.
My current plan is to start work on "Recess" tomorrow night (tonight being dinner with my aunt), and work on that over the weekend. I also plan to send out "A Million Stories" in the next handful of days--normally I'd say "by Sunday", but I'm not setting any kind of deadline during a vacation--and to try to get Done with Mirrors out to an agent next week.
On some level, it bothers me that this feels like an unproductive week, given that my schedule still has an hour or more, on every day save two, devoted to forwarding my career. I think every writer starting out tends to compare themselves to people who are doing this professionally, and I'm no exception--it just so happens that the yardstick I use is productivity. (I come up lacking on prose sometimes, too, but I just as often come up feeling superior, and I feel like it's a dangerous game to measure myself against others' prose lest I wind up slipping back into my fanboy phase.) Such is life, I suppose. At least this week, I get to do some of the worrying in a different state.
I console myself by remembering that I have felt this before, and that I have fought it off with more sleep, a better diet, and just plain toughing it out; that everyone has rough patches; that not all writers write all the time. Then I force myself to still feel productive, lest I fall down that hole of Never Writing that can claim so many brains.
All this is to say that this week's schedule has been a bit disrupted. Monday was me editing Chapter 2 of Not Providence, and writing about 650 words for Eyes of Stone, which was its own kind of refreshing (though that new section needs a serious sandblasting). Tuesday, then, was me editing both Chapter 3 of NP and doing the second-round edits on "A Million Stories", both which, I feel, need to be printed out and brought on the plane with me for perusal during my trip to Nashville.
My current plan is to start work on "Recess" tomorrow night (tonight being dinner with my aunt), and work on that over the weekend. I also plan to send out "A Million Stories" in the next handful of days--normally I'd say "by Sunday", but I'm not setting any kind of deadline during a vacation--and to try to get Done with Mirrors out to an agent next week.
On some level, it bothers me that this feels like an unproductive week, given that my schedule still has an hour or more, on every day save two, devoted to forwarding my career. I think every writer starting out tends to compare themselves to people who are doing this professionally, and I'm no exception--it just so happens that the yardstick I use is productivity. (I come up lacking on prose sometimes, too, but I just as often come up feeling superior, and I feel like it's a dangerous game to measure myself against others' prose lest I wind up slipping back into my fanboy phase.) Such is life, I suppose. At least this week, I get to do some of the worrying in a different state.
Labels: writing process
posted by Tyler at
9:39 AM
1 Comments:
You truly are good. I know it is hard to take my word for it. I get that. But, my goddess, Buddy... your talent, your ability to 'nail it' with nothing but words ... yes. You are truly good. D and I are boggled by reading this ... Just wanted you to know. No need to actually post this, unless you want to, Honey, but know it, in your heart.
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