For the last two and a half months I’ve been working for/with a company that runs conferences. I only do three days a week so I still have four days to work on my writing and other aspects of my practice, in theory. In reality I’ve been finding it difficult to get everything else done in those four days, so blogging has taken a dive. No more weekly writing challenge, no more writer opps Wednesday, no more whatever it is I wrote about on Fridays. And I’m beginning to miss the chat. So I thought, while I eat breakfast, before rushing off to the bathroom to get myself into a presentable state to go to the office, I’d just say hello.
Unfortunately, that’s about all I can manage in ten minutes. How do other people manage to do more? How do other people manage to work, some full time, and still write novels? I have a bunch of stories I planned to revise and polish to a shine in order to put out a pamphlet or small collection at the end of the year, but even that’s proving impossible. I even have the prospect of an agent – a writer I met recently liked my writing so much she said if I sent her more stories she’d give them to her agent!!! – but I’ve done bugger all to further that. I need to get my act together, and I think I need your help. Words of encouragement, advice, verbal kicks up the ass…
All welcome.
Header image: a posy Dave bought me at the farmers’ market yesterday. It was our first anniversary last Monday, where has that time gone?
I can’t believe a year has gone by since you were married! And then you went to London for your honeymoon, and it was hot and didn’t rain for ages. Wow.
I too wonder how people fit everything in, and I have plenty of time! Observing those who do get things done, I’d say that you have to stay up all night to work on your own projects! I get tired easily and just can’t stay awake, plus, until recently I was often disturbed by people needing me, which sent my brain all over the place and I’d lose the thread of whatever I was working on. You have to be focussed to get stuff done.
Sx
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I wish I was capable of staying up all night! I think you’re right, being focussed is the key, I just don’t quite know how to get myself into a focussed state. I need to practise, and find my drive which, I suspect, is hiding in some dark corner quaking. X
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If anyone does discover the key to even a modest self-discipline, please share it with me! I don’t lack for material, so in a way the job is almost already done. It just needs organising, polishing, and then ( I hope) flogging.
I read an interesting introduction to Carlyle’s Sartor Resartus a few years ago, in which the great man said that he works three hours a day only, from rising at 5am (urgh) until his butler brought him his coffee at 8.
Whilst there is no way I could postpone my coffee for three hours, I have once or twice tried this method and it proved quite a productive one when I was way behind with my dissertation. Now I am back into my usual habits of faffing around on other people’s blogs in the mornings 🙂
Eryl — you must bite that woman’s hand off, right now, and get your stories to her agent. There’s a door opening here…
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It’s the organising and polishing that I find the most difficult. I have half a dozen stories laid out on my table, waiting for me to pay them some attention, and I keep veering away from them. You’d think they were made of nettles. I don’t know what the answer is.
You’re right, of course, I must push on that door…
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