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A few writing resolutions
As previously threatened, I have this week started getting up earlier (6am), I do half an hour of yoga, make a cup of tea, and then write for half an hour. Heretofore, "writing" has meant "morning pages", but what came out of said pages today--coupled with a sudden screeching left turn last night into a whole new distracting line of potential 14th century research--is that I also want to increase my output of semi-public production, whether that be organized personal nattering here, creative writing ... elsewhere, research essays, or posts to the blog ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
nedlnthred keeps trying to get us to collectively start. At the moment, I am leaning towards preserving that half-hour for morning pages; I think their role as Colon Cleanse For Your Brain is critical. Moreover, if I actually get into a serious writing groove, I don't want to have it arbitrarily cut short by having to proceed to work. (But I can flag things in that brain dump to write about or research later.)
I have decided to give myself permission to take the equivalent of a coffee break at work to write small posts like this one; I will accordingly reduce the rest of my usual fuckin'-around-on-intarwubs periods. Not that I have oodles of it anyways, but what I have is better spent thus than hitting reload on Facebook for the umpteenth time.
For more in-depth writing, well... I haven't historically had a lot of success with reserving a regular evening or time slot for $PERSONAL_THING, though I understand that's how Serious Writers roll; for me, the exigencies of the moment have always steamrollered it. "Oh, but I gotta do laundry." "Oh, but I gotta pay bills." "Oh, I just don't feel it tonight." I could try that again--and actually commit to it this time, make it a priority--or, the technique which worked for the last couple of knitting projects, is to commit not an entire evening to $THING, but set aside 1-2 hours. With knitting or sewing, it was a little easier; I could say "I'm going to watch one episode of Burn Notice/two episodes of Tiger & Bunny/[etc.] and do handwork" and that reserved a clearly defined chunk of time, but also left enough of the evening to eat, clean up, and do a couple chores as needed. I feel that writing and research will be more difficult to parcel out this way, but if I don't, I think it will keep not ever happening.
nedlnthred keeps trying to get us to collectively start. At the moment, I am leaning towards preserving that half-hour for morning pages; I think their role as Colon Cleanse For Your Brain is critical. Moreover, if I actually get into a serious writing groove, I don't want to have it arbitrarily cut short by having to proceed to work. (But I can flag things in that brain dump to write about or research later.)I have decided to give myself permission to take the equivalent of a coffee break at work to write small posts like this one; I will accordingly reduce the rest of my usual fuckin'-around-on-intarwubs periods. Not that I have oodles of it anyways, but what I have is better spent thus than hitting reload on Facebook for the umpteenth time.
For more in-depth writing, well... I haven't historically had a lot of success with reserving a regular evening or time slot for $PERSONAL_THING, though I understand that's how Serious Writers roll; for me, the exigencies of the moment have always steamrollered it. "Oh, but I gotta do laundry." "Oh, but I gotta pay bills." "Oh, I just don't feel it tonight." I could try that again--and actually commit to it this time, make it a priority--or, the technique which worked for the last couple of knitting projects, is to commit not an entire evening to $THING, but set aside 1-2 hours. With knitting or sewing, it was a little easier; I could say "I'm going to watch one episode of Burn Notice/two episodes of Tiger & Bunny/[etc.] and do handwork" and that reserved a clearly defined chunk of time, but also left enough of the evening to eat, clean up, and do a couple chores as needed. I feel that writing and research will be more difficult to parcel out this way, but if I don't, I think it will keep not ever happening.