Tag: life

September Write Day: Busy-ness

On By Steven D'AdamoIn Fantasy, On LifeLeave a comment

It’s hard to believe it’s September already. August really passed me by in a hurry. We managed to do a lot of family activities outside: theme parks, hiking, swimming. That helped the month fly by, and it also kept us very busy.

Last Month’s Goals

  1. Read three books.
  2. Exercise every day.
  3. Write at least every other day.
  4. Move to the next stage for my duology.

Read three books?

Yes! Aaaaand… I finally finished A Memory of Light. You can read my thoughts on that here. I actually read four books in August, which felt great, including a couple that had been sitting in my Audible library for ages.

With one epic fantasy series out of the way, I’m on the lookout for my next one. At the moment, however, I’m trying to work through some nonfiction books — actual print books — that have been sitting unread on my actual shelves for years. So, I’m in no rush to find my next fantasy series, but I am in the market if you have suggestions.

Exercise every day?

No, but I was generally more active, I think than in previous months. We’ve started using Sunday afternoons to spend time outside with our boys, and that has helped my own activity levels and keeps the boys interested in being outside. I like this little tradition, and I intend to continue it in all weather, as much as we can.

Otherwise, I leaned pretty heavily on a very basic yoga stretch routine to keep myself loose. I have not yet gotten gym membership at our local spot. Frankly, I’m having difficulty seeing where I can fit the gym into my weekly routine at the moment.

That’s definitely one theme from this month: we were so busy that a lot of routine things fell through the cracks. September isn’t looking any more open, and then, oops it’s the holidays. We’ll see how this goes, but I might be relying on Sunday afternoon activities with the kids for exercise for a while.

Write at least every other day?

No, but I fared much better than in July. I wrote nine days in August, including longer-form blog posts, and I made some strides in my duology.

Move to the next stage for my duology?

Yes! I finished reading through Uprooted and began a read-through of New Earth, the part two. I had completed this draft of New Earth sometime last year, and I hadn’t looked at it since, so it has been really exciting to dive back in. I’m about twenty pages into my read-through, and I’ll be aiming to finish it this month.

Goals for September

This seems to be the place where I’ve developed a solid routine, which is a good start.

  1. Read three books. I already have one down. The trick will be finishing my current nonfiction read-in-progress.
  2. Exercise every day. I’m playing loose with this for now. The goal is to do something every day, even if it’s just a basic yoga stretching routine. I have many things on my to-do list this month, and finding a way to incorporate more exercise into my day is one of them.
  3. Write long-form at least every other day. Focusing on long-form, again. I think this is a good way to focus my energy on the writing that takes the most time and effort. I just need to do it at least fifteen days in a month.

Steve D

On Moving and Opportunities

On By Steven D'AdamoIn On LifeLeave a comment

We’re moving this week. We bought a new house about 15 minutes away from our current house and are now in the process of transporting as much stuff as possible over this week. Saturday is the big move-in day, with a big rental truck, and big furniture, and big plans to be living in the new house full-time come Saturday evening.

Moving to new places comes with a lot of stress, soon to be followed by the stress of selling our current house.

It also comes with new opportunities, aside from adjusting to a living space that we believe and hope will enable us to build the family life we’ve talked about for years.

I’ve been thinking a lot about how my day-to-day life can change with our new house, and I’m trying to temper my own expectations but also remain open to those possibilities.

We will have a nice front porch and back patio to relax on, readily accessible from the house and also far enough from the noise of our road to feel somewhat private. I’d like to think we will spend many comfortable mornings, and afternoons, and evenings sitting and talking in our outdoor spaces with friends and family.

We will have both a grocery store and a gym (of a reliable franchise brand) less than ten minutes’ walk from my doorstep. Will I be able to reclaim a slice of the walkable suburban lifestyle I had grown so accustomed to during grad school? I sure hope so. I’m excited about the idea of walking to the store with my 4-year-old to pick up milk on a Wednesday night.

We will have a finished basement, soon-to-be-playroom, where our sons can have a space to play and yell and make messes that do not feel disruptive to the flow of our main living, dining, and kitchen areas.

We will have sidewalks in a quieter area removed from main roads and throughways. I hope I will feel comfortable letting our kids roam the neighborhood without fear of cars speeding by every three minutes.

We will have a backyard that is a relatively flat blank slate — just a cement patio and grass right now that, with patience, we can evolve into a vibrant, welcoming, and pleasant garden and play area.

I think we have a lot of hopes and dreams for our new house, and that’s what’s exciting about it. The opportunities it provides us affirm our decision to move. It will be fun to see these opportunities play out.

Steve D

On Writing in a Year without Big Goals

On By Steven D'AdamoIn On StorytellingLeave a comment

Each of the last couple years I’ve started January with big ideas for what I wanted to accomplish for that year. My goals tend to be ambitious, but still within the realm of possibility. Still, I’ve learned that it’s difficult for me to project progress on any long-term project more than a few months out–or sometimes more than a few weeks out.

Creativity Sessions writing process. Evening Satellite Publishing.

Looking at my annual goals posts from 2020 and 2021 may give the impression of a writer who overshoots and under-delivers, and that’s not inaccurate. I have had some big goals in mind over the last couple of years, notably the publishing of my still-in-progress novellas in The Herb Witch Tales series. I just also know that there have been other factors at play. The usual suspects come to mind: family, work, existential dread, a global pandemic.

As I mentioned earlier, it’s tough for me to project my progress on something more than a few months out. Projecting how much I can write in a year is a murky endeavor. Trying to throw the entire editing, revising, proofreading, and publishing process on top of that is basically insane.

At least, that’s what I’ve learned over the last couple years.

I’ve also learned that I am not the publish-something-every-year-or-two type of writer. My last meaningful publication was my 12-part short story, “The Grand Mythos of Úr’Dan“, which I ran as an experimental monthly serial throughout 2019. It’s probably more like every “few” years, depending on when I click Publish next. Basically, I’m closer to Patrick Rothfuss than Brandon Sanderson–in publishing cycles, not skill level!

The Year without Goals

That all is to say that I will not be posting an ambitious book marketing/publishing post this year. I definitely have goals, and I will detail them through my monthly Write Day posts. What has changed for me recently is that those monthly goals are enough for me at this moment in my life.

My long-term goals have necessarily and totally predictably shifted to bigger things: navigating the whole *waves arms emphatically* world right now; raising two boys, one of whom has learned the f-word from daycare (yea!); beginning the house-hunting process in the next year; family and friends and holidays, which all require a lot of extra planning and consideration and fuckin’ caution than they used to.

It’s a lot, and it means that thinking about where I might be in the publishing process in autumn 2022 is just not a concern for me today.

Writing Rhythm

However, that all doesn’t mean I haven’t picked up on a few of my writing habits…

  • I know that I can be a productive writer by writing immediately after work, or right after getting the toddler to bed.
  • I know that writing a couple days in a row or more than three times per week motivates me to continue, regardless of how much or how little progress I make in those sessions.
  • I know that once a character is embedded in my brain I find it easier to write them, which just takes practice and patience–not trying to churn out an entire novella in a month.
  • I know that motivating myself to write regularly helps my self-confidence, my self-worth, and my overall mental wellbeing.
  • And I know that writing 10,000 words each month is very doable if I stick to each of the above points.

That’s really my only writing goal this year–not to write 120,000 words on the dot, but to aim for 10,000 words each month, to build consistently and steadily until, come December 31, 2022, I will have written a whole hell of a lot.

I’m currently on pace for about 9,000 words in January, so maybe in February or March I aim for 11,000. The point is, it doesn’t matter much right now.

I’m moving forward. I know what the ultimate goal is, but I also know I need to focus on the day-to-day first.

Steve D

Leaning on the Small Things

On By Steven D'AdamoIn On Storytelling, Writers - Steve D'AdamoLeave a comment

Have you ever started writing something without knowing at all where it was going? That’s what this post is.

Today (Tuesday) was my first day back at work after a 5-day vacation to a family lakehouse. Five days doesn’t seem that long, especially over an extended weekend, but it was a strange return anyway.

I’ve found it more and more difficult to let go of work. Difficult is not the right word. I look forward to letting go of work things at the end of the day. But I feel more and more guilty about it. I don’t think anyone is placing that guilt upon me, except myself.

Our lakehouse vacation was supposed to be an escape from work, from our recent spate of home improvement projects, and from the occasional monotony of semi-quarantined life.

It was all of those things, for the most part. I just had one afternoon where I selfishly decided not to spend a lot of time with my son, and it’s been bugging me. I don’t think anyone else felt I was ignoring my family, but that’s how it felt to me.

All this is adding up to the notion that I am often too hard on myself, and I have trouble letting go of little things that have more to do with my perception of myself than with my interactions with other real people.

So I spent much of today (again, Tuesday) trying not to stress over things that are either done and in the past, or completely out of my control.

Fortunately, a few things made me feel better over the course of the day:

  • a solid yoga session, which is really the only reason I can be productive for 8-10 hours a day
  • reading and chatting with my son before his bedtime
  • This song, by an incredible singer/songwriter from somewhere near DC:

I’m going to listen to this for the third or fourth time tonight and then go to bed.

Steve D

August Write Day: Trying to Get over the Wall

On By Steven D'AdamoIn The Warden of Everfeld, Writers - Steve D'AdamoLeave a comment

July flew by. We were out of town a couple of weekends, and I went to Chicago for about 36 hours for work. It seems like that type of quick business trip for conferences and such will be a new normal for me. I’m going back to Chicago next week for not very long.

I’m not against it. It just means I need to take those trips into consideration when I’m thinking about my writing goals. Writing while traveling is hard. Writing on business trips and basically being “on” for work for the duration of the trip is nigh impossible.

So, July was a good writing month, but not a great one. Continue reading “August Write Day: Trying to Get over the Wall” →