Trying for a daily routine
I’m of the opinion that having a daily routine helps protect space for creativity. If I don’t have a routine I tend to lurch back and forth between neglecting the mundane affairs of daily life and...
View ArticleHow much exercise?
I’ve always struggled to get the right amount of exercise. I used to blame much of my difficulty on having a job. My experience over the past three years makes it clear that it wasn’t so simple. (It...
View ArticleWriting—and exercising—daily
Theodora Goss has a good post about writing every day, comparing it to exercising every day. She makes the point that, when you’re used to exercising every day, missing a day makes you feel crappy. My...
View ArticlePancakes and the passage of time
Jackie made pancakes for breakfast. As we ate, I mentioned that I used to make pancakes when I was a single guy, but that I made them differently. And then I ran into difficulty when I tried to...
View ArticleEarly morning writing
I’ve known for a long time that writing every day is very helpful to my productivity. In the past couple of days, I’ve been reminded that, at least for my fiction writing, it’s also very important to...
View ArticleClarion at home: Writing
This is part 2 of a series on what to do if you can’t go to Clarion, which provides my thoughts on how you can capture part of the magic of Clarion—even if you can’t attend. This post is on the...
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When I’m unproductive
This statue at Allerton Park is called the Three Graces, but I like to think of it as the Three Muses. I was pretty productive these past two weeks. I finished a major rewrite pass on a short story...
View ArticleDaily routine of Vestricius Spurinna
I’m a student of daily routines. I like to imagine that I’m looking for good models for my own behavior, but that’s only true in an oblique way. By now I understand pretty well the structure of a...
View ArticleNot one of the busy people
All my life, starting in childhood and continuing through college, my career as a software engineer, and my career since then as a full-time writer, some of my friends and acquaintances have been busy....
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Mixed success at being monomaniacal
We keep harvesting them, but every time we return to the garden a few more of our Siam Dragon Peppers are ripe. I like to joke that I no longer multitask at more than one thing at a time. Related to...
View ArticleLosing weight
I’ve lost a good bit of weight over the past 18 months. I haven’t talked about it much here. It’s bad enough when this starts seeming like an exercise blog; it will not become a weight-loss blog....
View ArticleAgain with the writing daily
I think the first advice I ever got from a writer about writing was that I should write every day. It’s also probably the best advice. It’s certainly the most common. In any case, it’s advice that I...
View ArticleEnough exercise (and a calf update)
I recently came upon an old livejournal post about my struggles to get enough exercise. It had been written in April 2008, some seven or eight months after I’d quit working a regular job, and was about...
View ArticleAnother attempt at a daily schedule
One reason I haven’t been more productive these past two years is that I’ve let my fitness activities consume the morning hours that are my prime writing time. I know that, and I want to free that time...
View ArticleNovel update
I’m having pretty good success with my new daily routine. Things haven’t gone perfectly. One day last week I was coming down with a virus and took a sick day—no fiction writing got done. Yesterday’s...
View ArticleModest success with new daily routine, plus zombies
I’ve been waiting to post about how successful my new daily routine has been until I’ve had at least one day where I actually followed it in each particular, and today was that day. In fact, just...
View ArticleNot yet tracking wordcount (novel update)
After several abortive efforts to track daily wordcounts on my current novel project (dating back almost two years), I’ve not resumed doing so over the three or four weeks I’ve been back to work....
View ArticleMonomaniacal multitasking
I’ve long struggled to balance the need to be somewhat monomaniacal (in order to complete a large project) and the need to perform at least the bare minimum necessary tasks of everyday living. This...
View ArticleHey! I wrote a novel!
It kind of snuck up on me. I hadn’t realized how close I was to being done with an entire draft. After a couple of awkward starts, things had been going along pretty well until about spring. That’s...
View ArticleNoveling along
I’m making steady progress on my novel rewrite. Since getting back to work on it back on the solstice, I’ve put in a nice block of time nearly every day. (Besides Christmas Day, which I took as a...
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