Hiatus - Putting On a Show

My life has been taken over by my job. I know, cry me a river. I don't have a daily grind (wait, do children count?) because I do consulting work on event planning. Months go by when I work maybe a day a week. And now that it's event week, it's every minute of every day that I'm not asleep or in the bathroom.

There has been NO writing for the last 10 days and I'm getting itchy. Though I know I'd be useless trying to concentrate on writing now when my head is full of 300 people moving through six sessions on Friday, (Don't forget the handheld mics. Who will be our runners during Q&A? Did I order enough vegan box lunches?) I did do something to hopefully keep the whole writing brain from withering.

I loaded up my existing WIP on my Nook and read it through. At the end, I smiled. It's good. It makes me happy. I don't have any doubt that I'm going in the right direction. Now I'm eager to get back into the writing hot seat and having to wait until next week to do it is not necessarily a bad thing.

Call me 'marinating.'

Hope you have a great week! I'll be back next Tuesday.

Squeee! It's a Moleskine - Writing and Schedules

I am a schedule fetishist. I adore all kinds of planners and I have owned, at the same time, several competing brands of Modular Planning Paper Devices (Day Runner, Filofax AND Franklin Covey.) I covet Moleskine and Rhodia planners like other girls covet designer handbags. Nothing gives me greater joy than planning out, to the half hour if possible, how my day is going to shape up.

It never goes the way I plan, of course. I know that and am not surprised when at the end of the day only 2 of 20 items are checked off and several others have arrows (add to tomorrow's list) and question marks (what the hell was this again?) next to them. Amazingly, I don't get upset about what I don't accomplish (you know, except when it involves paying the power bill and such.) My schedules are not about finishing but about process. I know that the stuff that needs to happen will and the stuff that I think needs to happen but really is just me paying lip service to something, those suckers will fall to the way side. I have faith that the plan is the plan only until it isn't and that's ok. I am open (way the fuck open) to improvisation.

Today I was supposed to wake up at 6 and write for an hour. I was preempted by my two year old waking up at 4 with a raging ear infection and cough. I was supposed to write in the hour that she usually takes a nap AND I was supposed to treadmill for a half hour after they went to bed. She refused to take a nap but I did sun salutations while she watched Cat in the Hat and then burned off probably 10,000 calories ice skating with my oldest daughter's daisy troop. I didn't write today, but while putting my youngest to sleep, nearly falling asleep myself in the rocking chair, I realized an important scene that my WIP needed - I wasn't trying to work on it, I didn't schedule any 'thinking time' I just dozed a bit and realized that on the way to the City, Fin had to see the fields and towns around BookEnd deserted, destroyed, the people fleeing. I realized to NOT have this in there would make the rest of the end of the book not as strong. I'm feeling smugly satisfied that I figured that out, though it was literally a sleepy-time muse whispering in my ear.

So, what do you schedule, how closely to you adhere to that schedule and how do you deal with real life?