Did anyone get the number of the truck that ran over me?
Or to be more exact over my schedule and my work habits?
Let me see, through most of last year there was fighting with international bureaucracy to make sure the kids’ wedding happened. Then August we had the sewage flood in our basement. Then we were getting ready to go to Portugal, then I came back very ill, barely recovered in time for us to host a friend for a while — he’s truly the world’s best guest. He’s our friend but — which completely disrupts my routine. (Don’t ask. Having anyone but Dan in the house makes it impossible to actually write fiction. I really don’t know why.) And this last week we had someone here fixing the sewage damage (and other stuff.)
And now I’m trying to work, and having trouble even staying sitting down.
I won’t lie, this is a difficult job. it always was. I mean, it’s easy to do this for a hobby. You write when you are inspired, or feel like. But as a job, cudgeling your brain to write while you’re worried for real things and over real things in your life, it’s not easy.
It’s considerably easier when you get in an habit: when I’m here. When I sit down. When it’s 12 o’clock (or whenever). When it’s this day of the week.
And at my best, I can get up and work eight to five easily enough.
But I fell off the horse. I’m going to have to get back on. This happens every few years, to be honest.
And it’s hard. It’s really hard. And it’s not getting easier as I get older.
I’m here to tell you there’s no work around. You still have to get back on that horse.
And the sooner the better.
Now I think I’ll take my medicine.
Mad Genius Club 
6 responses to “Fallen Off The Horse”
This resonates, though in my case, it’s less that I’ve fallen off the horse and more that I’m so bruised and battered that I’m no longer sure that I want to keep riding.
I’ve been experimenting with writing wildly self-indulgent stuff, where the beautiful, wise, and universally beloved princess, who is most definitely not a thinly veiled expy of Zsuzsa, swoops in and saves the day to thunderous applause—but I’m trying to write my wildly self-indulgent stuff on a regular schedule. The goal is to remind myself that this is fun, while at the same time getting me in the habit of doing it regularly.
I decided to try to start writing regularly, doing Laura Montgomery’s breakfast words. And since I knew I was way too stressed and crispy if not burnt out, I decided to make it a learning experience – to write something that was completely unpublishable, and that I knew I sucked at, and therefore to just have fun with it. (Because I can’t get better if I don’t try, so why not have fun embracing the suck?)
…It’s morphed into a very spicy tactical romance and just passed 66K words. Still completely unpublishable, but at this point, I’m just hanging onto the tiger by the tail, trying to see where it’s going and get to the end.
That’s what Charlie does. “Morning words”
Well, my indulgent stuff is the 250k word book. “The place I go when I dream” since I was very young. It has its place.
I need to focus more on works to get them done. At least working on stories for anthologies helps on that.
Me too. Not stories for anthologies, but stories.