write daily

“Writing daily” in and of itself is not a big deal – I may as well create a goal for “breathe daily.” Writing fiction daily has been the goal for this. After a bit of waffling, I’ve come to realize:

1. If I write first thing in the morning, no matter what kind of a day I have afterward, it’s a good day.

2. There’s only so long that my body or mind go along with writing.

3. Nonfiction writing is good too, but if too left-brained, I might as well do it later on in the day, since it’s not that big of a deal

4. 5 a.m. is the magic time. Rise, forget about breakfast or reading email or any of that stuff: grab the pen and start on morning pages as a warm-up.

5. 5:30-8:00 a.m. is prime time for me. Whatever I write then is good.

6. I can’t let myself got too fatigued with it. 8 a.m. comes around (or 8:15 or 8:30 at the latest) and I need to get on with the rest of life—including having enough socializing, exercise, different areas of focus, etc., so I can leave that form of the creative process behind.

So far this has been working well for the screenplay version of a story of mine—it’s been averaging 10 pages a day. Granted, screenplay pages are sparse, but it’s good to see the count building up. Plus the story is funny and I’m enjoying it.

Here’s to the fervent desire that I’ve finally arrived at the age where I’m consistently firing on all pistons…

... or is it 1 out of 14? Living in Seattle guarantees cloudy, gray days, and the long (two week spell) of constant sun has reminded me that I feel like doing not a damn thing in the summer. Indoors, writing, when the day is beautiful and appealing? Mmmm… no, I don’t think so. Unfortunately I haven’t been able to make the transition to writing outdoors either – again, the only thing I seem to be conditioned to do in nice weather (and it’s taken this current spell to realize that this goes back in my life as far as grade school, when the last few weeks of the school year were more agonizing than usual) is be outside, or better yet, be in an outdoor swimming pool or at the beach. At first, the pressure to conform with the intention of “writing everyday” met with the resistance and I just felt depressed. After a while, and counseled by wiser souls, I stopped fighting it and just gave in to my tendency toward lazing off. (Although in practical terms what this has meant is that I’ve organized and finished a bunch of things that before were too insignificant to tackle… and now they’re the only things I have the remote willingness to take on…)

written here by my hidden guru I started thinking, can I keep this up? Can I really write new fiction every day? I can, of course, but in any measurable amount? Last week I wrote more in my new novel than I’ve written in the past month, but it was in two very intensive bursts; the rest of the week I either wrote nothing or dawdled on previous writing, mostly daunted by the prospect of replicating the amount of work I’d done on those two productive days. So I’m thinking, either don’t overdo the writing on the days in which the inspiration’s there (which alas, breaks the continuity of writing a chapter) or spread the writing around in multiple projects (some of which are non-fiction) as a mneans of letting the muse rest in between….

... Yesterday I sat to write (and remained there for 2 hours) but nothing seemed inspired. So I let it go. Today the ideas and the inspiration came back with a vengeance, and I spent most of the day writing (with breaks for cooking and doing chores, when my mind was processing what I’d be writing in the next stage). This particular goal started with a trickle (a few paragraphs), then an avalanche, then veering to edit some chapters in my previous novel. Though I’m happy with how these turned out, I’d like for this goal to be “write (new) fiction daily.”