Walking the Path
Posted by tmycann on Aug 12th, 2013 in indie, writing | 2 comments
I keep talking about writing fiction with these updates. It’s logical: ROW80, after all, does stand for Round of WORDS in 80 days… However, my ability to actually produce fiction these days… not so great. Right now I stand at 1,381. 30 more words than I reported last week. In re-reading what I have, I wonder if I’m falling into my old trap of too slow a build-up. Maybe these 1,381 words aren’t necessary.
Maybe I should just hit pause on the fiction-writing attempts until after this $%#&! MBA program is done.
🙁
That inner tension perfectly reflects Morpheus’ words of wisdom: “There is a difference between knowing the path and walking the path.” I know the path I want: To write more stories. To be able to live comfortably off the royalties my stories pay me. Logic tells me I need a back-up plan, though–and I certainly need to make sure I remain employed and employable while I wait for my stories to be discovered enough to sell in livable quantities.
Unfortunately, in the meantime, I’m stuck with the limit of 16 workable hours in a day while I try to avoid getting sick or overly stressed by lack of sleep. 50 of those hours in any given week are supposed to be work-related. That leaves 62 hours to divide between friends, family, food, dogs, exercise, school… and writing. I am not the kind of person who reacts well to having every minute planned and scheduled–no matter that I am a project manager and deadline aficionado. I’m a firm believer in the need for serendipity to play a role in my life. 62 hours just never ends up feeling like enough time to get everything done I’d like to get done. Because I do follow my nose, every so often I fall into the Internetz holes of cute doggie gifs or the anonymous rants of people who think my kind of writing is either going to result in mass brain die-offs or exposure of his/her own inadequacies. I prefer Forbes’ take on indie publishing. But all that sucked up 4 hours of my afternoon today during which I should’ve been productive.
On the other hand… I’ve been rocking the great walks: 6 this week for 9.66 miles. And I wrote a guest post you’ll get to see in September, and did some work on publicizing the stuff that’s already out in a way I’ve been intending but hadn’t had the time to take care of. So that was a different kind of 1K words in support of my writing. (And I got back on track with turning all my schoolwork in on time.)
I’d just really like to know if there’s anyone out there who’s “bored” and has some time I can bank…?
😉
I’m not the only one with constrained hours; check out the other ROW80 participants‘ progress.
2 Responses to “Walking the Path”
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Hahaha! I’m retired and I’m still not bored!!!! Sorry about that. I remember those days of working 80 hour weeks and trying to write ‘between’ when I just didn’t have enough time. I’m going to go read that Forbes article, but first I wanted to say it’s really not about the number of words you write. Consider this: Are you writing the stories you want to write? Those stories that send you racing to the keyboard to pound away? Guest posts, by the way, count! And maybe a little scheduling will help you achieve enough of your goals so you can enjoy walking the walk. May this week be good to you!
🙂
Glad it’s not just me. I think my main issue will continue to be my “attitude” about school work. This week I’ve been rewarding myself for chipping away at that with at least a half an hour of fiction-writing… and that seems to be working for me for now. So. DEFINITELY a better week! 😀