Before I forget, this is important. Jim Hines is doing his annual fund raiser for rape awareness. Check out the prizes.
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You know, sometimes, when you track your energy? If I do it early in the day I’m going to give it my all. If I do it about now (1 pm – 3pm) this is the time of the day I really, really lag. So, here I am today, trying to snag my writing time right now. And I’ve managed to read through yesterday’s stuff so far, and think okay, this is where I should start.
You might be saying to me, well, what are you doing here, writing at ye olde Writer Tamago?
I’m maximizing tomorrow’s writer time, which will be morning time in part. And I’m also going to talk about goals and time.
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You remember about the post about getting organized? No? Well, here’s a brief refresher. I set a goal to make a chapter revision a week. Yup, been making that goal. And keen to stay on that. There comes a point in the writing process when I can plan, and the combination of goals and time is a heady potion.
A trap many artists fall into is overestimating what they can do in a given amount of time.
At this point, I’m not talking to you if you’re a writer who wants until a week before the deadline, and then makes a glorious kamikaze effort to hit that deadline, avoiding life’s little annoyances like sleep and going to the restroom. I got nothing for you. I’ve never had anything for you, even when I’ve taught your ilk, except the usual advice, said in a horrified tone of voice: “Don’t do that!”
I won’t judge you. I got nothing to say to you, though. This is not the journal entry you’re looking for. I just don’t have your crazy adrenaline-induced stamina, you wildcats you. You go and live on Snickers bars. Let the wrappers fall where they may as testament to your hubris.
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I’m talking to those of you who plan to write War and Peace before breakfast.
Author: I can write that novel in six months. Sure, it’s a 100K monolithic re-envisionment of the epic fantasy from the cultural stance of an imaginary amalgam of Latin and Sumarian culture told in the style of James Joyce, but piece of cake.
There might be some wish craft involved here. (Wish craft, for those of you unfamiliar with the term, is magical thinking). By sheer force of desire and will, you can make something happen, regardless of a realistic estimation of your time resource.
Yes, kids, time is a resource, to be allocated according to the importance and priorities which you afford tasks. Many people get to the end of their life and say classic things like, “I wish I’d taken more time off work.” or the classic “I wish I’d spent more time with my family.” Obviously, these folks were a little confused about the way they should have allocated their time resource.
At the beginning of a given pursuit, we really do not have a feel for the amount of time it might take us to do a thing. I remember making a really elaborate costume, and part of that costume involved doing techniques I had never done before. Casting elaborate latex based lace for the gigantic skirt of the costume took something like 3 days a panel, from casting to attaching. Perhaps there was a reason I finished this costume a year later than I had planned. My estimate of the spare time I had in my life to dedicate to this task was wildly different than the actual time I needed to complete it.
So, back to writing. I mentioned as I was getting organized that I thought completing the Abigail Rath draft through revision 5 would take me until November. You might remember that I allocate 12 hours a week to write. This magical lab tested number is the time I can find in a week to write and still work, exercise, cook, and have a relationship.
Can I revise a chapter a week? Yes. If I can get more in, bonus. As we get to draft 4 and 5, I pick up the pace. Note that I have not set an unrealistic goal. I’m not writing chapters from scratch and setting that as my pace, although that might be a realistic expectation if the story is particularly hot, or if a writer is particularly fast.
However, I’d rather say that I’m getting done in November and get done early. I would rather not say I’m getting done in September and not have finished.
I’ve made that mistake often. Even, as a matter of fact, on this story.
I am becoming a big proponent of the tortoise school of writing punctuated by hare-like periods of productive time. It is best, I think, to not plan on the windfalls.
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The other new edict I’m working under now is my vow to stop sending out crap. This one is much harder to measure. I’ll talk about it a little later on.
Cath
