Habits
It's interesting to consider both the power and the fragility of habit. A well-established habit can carry you through difficult times -- there've been many times when the force of habit has made sure I got critical medicines taken on time, even when I was getting up way too early and scrambling to get going during a convention or other early activity.
But even a good habit can easily be lost if it's disrupted. I'm astonished how just a little over a month of conventions in rapid succession have demolished the good writing habits I'd established over the winter. I was actually making quite a bit of headway on multiple projects over the four months between Grand Rapids Comic Con last November and Hall of Heroes Comic Con this past March, and it had become natural to sit down and start writing, without extensive struggles to get myself focused and on task.
Now, with a five-week break between the Kalamazoo show and the spring campout, I need to be productive -- but I'm struggling. Not just struggling to get the words to flow again after having to hold them back for so long because there were other things I needed to do. Just staying on track and not disappearing down rabbit holes has become, to the point that whole hours get whiled away on "just one more page" or "just one more old newsletter," or whatever's gotten hold of my attention right now. Worst of all, I went to look up something in a partly-finished novella that got set aside when it was obviously going to grow far larger than the guidelines for the anthology I was aiming it toward -- and now I want to write the series it's part of, never mind that not a one of them is among those I've promised people, and that series needs to come after two others have been well established, for chronological reasons.
So now I'm having to struggle to drag my creativity back to the stuff that's on deadlines and get them done -- and already most of one week has dribbled away to nothing.
Argh. I have to do better than this.
But even a good habit can easily be lost if it's disrupted. I'm astonished how just a little over a month of conventions in rapid succession have demolished the good writing habits I'd established over the winter. I was actually making quite a bit of headway on multiple projects over the four months between Grand Rapids Comic Con last November and Hall of Heroes Comic Con this past March, and it had become natural to sit down and start writing, without extensive struggles to get myself focused and on task.
Now, with a five-week break between the Kalamazoo show and the spring campout, I need to be productive -- but I'm struggling. Not just struggling to get the words to flow again after having to hold them back for so long because there were other things I needed to do. Just staying on track and not disappearing down rabbit holes has become, to the point that whole hours get whiled away on "just one more page" or "just one more old newsletter," or whatever's gotten hold of my attention right now. Worst of all, I went to look up something in a partly-finished novella that got set aside when it was obviously going to grow far larger than the guidelines for the anthology I was aiming it toward -- and now I want to write the series it's part of, never mind that not a one of them is among those I've promised people, and that series needs to come after two others have been well established, for chronological reasons.
So now I'm having to struggle to drag my creativity back to the stuff that's on deadlines and get them done -- and already most of one week has dribbled away to nothing.
Argh. I have to do better than this.