writing
In response to an earlier post, meesh920 asked (with the usual sisterly sarcasm dripping from her keyboard) a whole week at home? Whatever will you do?
I started to respond, and realized my response was becoming a post in itself and that by answering her I was avoiding publicly shaming myself (except for those odd few of you who actually go back to my earlier posts to see if comments have been left ... which is something even I don't do unless I get an email notification!).
So what will I do that week that I'm home?
Theoretically, at least, I will continue to clean and organize and I will get some serious writing done. I admit it -- I've fallen out of that habit of going to Borders to write when I'm at home, and I need to get back into it. I have fallen behind again on wordcount for the month (and I had quite the lead, too -- almost a solid week of no writing is what it took to actually fall behind).
Ambergrin, Christmas Ghosts, the superhero series for STAPA, at least one good short story idea. I need to find my chops again. I know they are in here somewhere, but I can feel my fingers loosing their sense of typing fiction (a sense they've only recently become familiar with again), if that makes any sense at all.
I know other writers (and artists) go through these cyclical ups-and-downs. Those of us who do not create towards a paid deadline can easily fall prey to the other concerns. Some of those concerns are valid -- my good friend Scott Witt, creator The World of Witt, has not only the concerns of being a father and husband, he also has a physically intense full-time job and health issues, for instance. Some of them are temporary (that winter malaise that hits so many creative types so deeply -- not only Wilson and Luke but even Allan out in ever-sunny California, although Allan at least managed to turn his depression into a storyline for his autobiographical daily comic), some are longer-lasting.
Some of them, of course, are just laziness and poor planning. That's what happened to me this week. I just didn't make the time, even while in Memphis (and I usually manage more writing on the road than I do at home). On the upside, I caught up finally on the entire run of Marvel's "Avengers: The Initiative" that have been sitting unread for months now, and I made a dent in my short story reading as well as the novels. And yes, I managed to do some de-cluttering last night while packing for the trip. (Note to self: the apartment will be even less cluttered if you bring all those magazines and cardboard boxes to recycling. I'm just saying.)
I know that for the most part, getting back on the horse is my own responsibility. People can cheerlead me and/or reprimand me (and I fully expect both from paragraphs , cruentum , meesh920 , infinityltd and arcanelegacy , if not more of you), but I'm the one who must ultimately choose "open file" and then put fingers to keyboard and get those words out.
This post has, in addition to saying Shame, Shame to myself in public, two goals: one is to practice the sort of ruminations on the writing life type of posts that I should be doing on anthonycardno.com / talekyn.com once we get it up and running, to give people a reason to come back to the site. The other is so that later tonight, after LOST, when I post about my evening, you all can jump on me if there's not some mention of a word-count.
I started to respond, and realized my response was becoming a post in itself and that by answering her I was avoiding publicly shaming myself (except for those odd few of you who actually go back to my earlier posts to see if comments have been left ... which is something even I don't do unless I get an email notification!).
So what will I do that week that I'm home?
Theoretically, at least, I will continue to clean and organize and I will get some serious writing done. I admit it -- I've fallen out of that habit of going to Borders to write when I'm at home, and I need to get back into it. I have fallen behind again on wordcount for the month (and I had quite the lead, too -- almost a solid week of no writing is what it took to actually fall behind).
Ambergrin, Christmas Ghosts, the superhero series for STAPA, at least one good short story idea. I need to find my chops again. I know they are in here somewhere, but I can feel my fingers loosing their sense of typing fiction (a sense they've only recently become familiar with again), if that makes any sense at all.
I know other writers (and artists) go through these cyclical ups-and-downs. Those of us who do not create towards a paid deadline can easily fall prey to the other concerns. Some of those concerns are valid -- my good friend Scott Witt, creator The World of Witt, has not only the concerns of being a father and husband, he also has a physically intense full-time job and health issues, for instance. Some of them are temporary (that winter malaise that hits so many creative types so deeply -- not only Wilson and Luke but even Allan out in ever-sunny California, although Allan at least managed to turn his depression into a storyline for his autobiographical daily comic), some are longer-lasting.
Some of them, of course, are just laziness and poor planning. That's what happened to me this week. I just didn't make the time, even while in Memphis (and I usually manage more writing on the road than I do at home). On the upside, I caught up finally on the entire run of Marvel's "Avengers: The Initiative" that have been sitting unread for months now, and I made a dent in my short story reading as well as the novels. And yes, I managed to do some de-cluttering last night while packing for the trip. (Note to self: the apartment will be even less cluttered if you bring all those magazines and cardboard boxes to recycling. I'm just saying.)
I know that for the most part, getting back on the horse is my own responsibility. People can cheerlead me and/or reprimand me (and I fully expect both from paragraphs , cruentum , meesh920 , infinityltd and arcanelegacy , if not more of you), but I'm the one who must ultimately choose "open file" and then put fingers to keyboard and get those words out.
This post has, in addition to saying Shame, Shame to myself in public, two goals: one is to practice the sort of ruminations on the writing life type of posts that I should be doing on anthonycardno.com / talekyn.com once we get it up and running, to give people a reason to come back to the site. The other is so that later tonight, after LOST, when I post about my evening, you all can jump on me if there's not some mention of a word-count.