“Complete”
Free-flowing plotting,
stalled shy of the finish line,
waiting for The End.
Steve D
Tag: writing
The Alternate Timeline Work Schedule
After years of food service and now years of office work, I’ve become increasingly convinced that my most effective work day caps out at six hours.
It’s not that I don’t want to work for eight hours — not any less than most 9-5’ers. It’s more that I find it difficult to be 100% focused across an eight-hour work day.
My mental energy tends to peak around six hours, and then flag. I usually end up taking a late break, powering through morning meetings and a couple of big to-do list items before I feel my attention span slip.
So I try to take a break, meditate or exercise or just get away from my computer for a bit. Then I return to my desk and see what I can get done in the remaining hours of the afternoon to clock my average eight. Obviously, there are days when I get caught up in something and work longer, and there are days where a life priority needs my attention.
Six hours.
I sometimes wonder what my daily routine could be with a six-hour work day instead of eight.
I would want to start at the same time, get the kids to daycare and jump straight in.
Then I could work a full shift with limited breaks — a few minutes here or there to refill my coffee, et cetera — and logoff with a couple hours to spare before I picked up the kids.
Some days, I might lounge in relative relaxation. Most days, though, I would tackle all the second shift priorities that I otherwise compartmentalize for most of the day:
- Laundry
- Dishes
- Cleaning
- Exercising with a real routine
- Appointments for the doctor, the eye doctor, the vet, the dentist, the mechanic
- Dinner prep
- Grocery shopping
- Yard work
Needless to say, that is far too many things to do in a single two-hour window, but across a week’s worth of six-hour work days? I could get a lot done.
Then I consider my alternate day job, the one so many are chasing or pretending not to chase.
Writing. What if writing could be my job, six hours per day. Six hours of dedicated writing, or world building, or publishing logistics, without the guilt over spending so much time on a hobby, or the anxiety over not spending enough time doing the things you enjoy.
That would be my schedule in an alternate life. I’m not actively chasing it, and frankly, I’d be content with just a six-hour work day.
Life has endless priorities as it is, and it feels like balancing them takes just as much effort as actually accomplishing anything.
I’m curious — who out there has a non-conventional work schedule? Part-time? Stay-at-home? Professional writer? How does the balance shift for you?
Steve D
August Write Day: Closing In
July was a fun month. We started it off with a two-week road trip seeing various parts of our families from northwest PA, to Michigan, and Wisconsin, which came with some great time spent on both shores of Lake Michigan. It was fantastic to just be with our boys for two whole weeks, and convinced us to do more family road trips in the future.
Coming back to work was not so great, of course. I feel like I’m still getting used to wok again in my third week back, but we have a relatively quiet month ahead. So that’s encouraging.
Last Month’s Goals
- Write 3,600 words.
- Read three books. Road trip audiobooks! I’m already thinking about which books I want to download to my phone for uninterrupted listening time while we’re on the road.
- Exercise at least three times each week. That’s kind of my bare minimum right now, to the point that I’m counting 15-minute runs as a full workout. I’m basically starting from scratch at this point.
- Disconnect. I feel like I really need to disconnect and just enjoy time with my family for an extended period, and I’m looking forward to it.
So how did I do?
Write 3,600 words?
YES! I wrote just over 4,000 words, in fact. Almost all of that came from two long writing sessions this past weekend, but it still counts! July was the first month this year that I actually hit my word count goal.
Part of the reason is that I’m closing in on the end of New Earth, The Herb Witch Tales #2. I always get excited to be nearing the end of a story, and I’m more motivated to finish it.
Read 3 books?
Nope! I listened to far fewer audiobooks on our road trip than I had anticipated. I’m nearly finished with Tower of Midnight, and not really reading much else at the moment.
Exercise 3 times per week?
I don’t think so. While on vacation, I was pretty good about being physically active most days. Aside from the loads of walking we did, I kayaked, swam, hiked, ran, and still did some stretching. Outdoor activities are my favorite way to exercise now. I just wish I had more time to do them.
Disconnect?
Yes. Two full weeks — the longest vacation I’ve taken in ten years — allowed me to just focus on being with my family. Traveling with a 3-yaer-old and an 11-month-old is still hectic, but we made sure to enjoy ourselves and appreciate our time with the boys as much as possible. We did manage to relax a little bit, too.
Goals for August
- Write 4,800 words. I think this should be enough for me to finish New Earth, so that’s my real goal this month.
- Take the next writing step. This will probably be to read through Uprooted, The Herb Witch Tales #1 and incorporate some edits/details that I know I need to flesh out more. But, this will depend on me finishing goal #1 above.
- Read 3 books. Same as usual. I already have the hard cover of A Memory of Light on my shelf waiting.
- Exercise 3 times per week. I have a basic routine formulating. I just need to stick to it.
Steve D
July Write Day: Distraction Summer
Some distractions are important, but they are distractions nonetheless. June has felt very distracted for me. I feel like I spent a lot of mental energy on work, for a variety of reasons, and the rest of my mental energy on things other than writing. Sometimes, it was on spending time with my kids. For a couple of relaxing weekends, it was on disconnecting, which is distraction of a different sort.
I don’t really know where June went or what I did throughout the month, but I know that it felt very full of such distractions from my writing.
Last Month’s Goals
- Write 8,800 words.
- Read three books.
- Continue the exercise climb.
- Reorganize this site.
Write 8,800 words?
Nope. I’m actually writing this post a few days before the end of the month, and I already know I’m not hitting that goal. I might get halfway there.
Distractions!
Read three books?
No, but I read a novel and a graphic novel and Did Not Finish another shorter one. The second half of the month was mostly me deciding what my next read would be while otherwise distracting myself with Obi-Wan Kenobi on Disney+. I liked it, but it had blatant storytelling flaws, which I’ve come to expect from most Disney+ shows in the Marvel and Star Wars universes.
Continue the exercise climb?
No, and at this point, I’m just frustrated. I’m generally bored with whatever I’ve been trying to do with exercise for the last several months, and really don’t know where to go next.
Some combination of yoga, resistance training, mobility training, and something aerobic seems like a good mix for what I want right now. I’m just not motivated enough to build a routine at the moment.
Part of it is also the time commitment. I find it difficult to stash away an hour-long break during my workday, and by evening I’m just tired. I need a reset.
Reorganize this site?
Not quite. I’ve started using my new category tags for each post, and I think it’s working well enough. I just haven’t gone back to re-tag older posts, because I’m not sure if I want to do that yet. Another project for another day.
Goals for July
- Write 3,600 words. We have a road trip coming up, from which I will try to post at least one haiku with a cool photo, so the writing goal is light this month. Road trips are the ultimate distraction of the best variety. Can’t wait.
- Read three books. Road trip audiobooks! I’m already thinking about which books I want to download to my phone for uninterrupted listening time while we’re on the road.
- Exercise at least three times each week. That’s kind of my bare minimum right now, to the point that I’m counting 15-minute runs as a full workout. I’m basically starting from scratch at this point.
- Disconnect. I feel like I really need to disconnect and just enjoy time with my family for an extended period, and I’m looking forward to it.
Steve D
The Herb Witch Tales – A Work in Progress Update
It has been quite some time since I’ve spoken in any detail about my current works-in-progress on the story front. Part of the reason is likely that I’ve been preoccupied with other things in life over the past couple of months. Between travel, work, family time, and the most socialization I’ve had since the pandemic, I’ve been pretty busy.
And yet, here I have these two stories, nearing completion of their second drafts.
The Herb Witch Tales parts 1 and 2
For longer than I’d like to admit, I’ve been working on a two-part novel. Really, it’s two novellas that I will publish separately in ebook and together in one hardcopy volume. The reasoning there has more to do with marketing than anything else — people are more likely to read an ebook if it’s not too much of a commitment. It will also cost less to publish 90,000 words as one volume versus two separate volumes of 45,000 words each.
In any case, that’s what I’ve been aiming for.
Uprooted, The Herb Witch Tales #1 has been sitting in its third draft form for a few months at 48,000 words. I rewrote it mostly from scratch earlier this year, so it definitely needs some fine-tuning.
New Earth, The Herb Witch Tales #2 is in its second draft at 41,000 words. Achieving my word count goal for June would put me just shy of 50,000 words for this one. It also needs a healthy dose of fine-tuning.
So in the near future I’ll have two novellas just under 50k words each, and I’ll have a few large wrinkles to work out:
- Add some more description to individual characters. I left out a lot of physical descriptions – quite unlike me – to expedite the writing process, but I recognize now that it makes some characters more difficult to distinguish, and now it may be difficult for me to go back and add those details in without sounding out of place in the narrative.
- Ensure that specific details – like the style of dress for my characters’ culture – are referred to consistently.
- Pacing. My overhaul of part 1 caused a similar overhaul of part 2, so I need to make sure their plots make sense independently of each other. If someone were to read only part 1, would the story and ending make sense to them without reading part 2?
I have a lot of work cut out for myself for these stories, but I’m pleased at how close I am to finishing the drafting process. From here, it will be revisions of each story individually and of the 1+2 volume in total.
Next, Next Steps
It’s been difficult for me not to think about my next full-length novel. The Warden of Everfeld: Legacy will be the sequel to my first (and so far, only) published novel, The Warden of Everfeld: Memento. I had written about 60,000 words of a first draft a couple years ago before shifting focus to what I had hoped would be a much quicker writing process for The Herb Witch Tales.
Turns out I can’t write and publish a full-length story every year. Oh well. I am definitely excited to return to Legacy and my favorite character I’ve created. But I want to finish what’s in front of me first.
So, my medium-term goal, say, through the end of this year, is to get The Herb Witch Tales #1 and #2 into a publishable state. Not to publish them, mind you. I just want to have polished drafts that I can consider publishing in the longer term, perhaps once I’ve really picked up and made new progress on Legacy.
We’ll see. I’m excited, and also just enjoying the grind, for once.
Steve D
June Write Day: Oops
Holy crap it’s June. Apologies for my recent absence. A week of time off and the holiday weekend threw me off. I forgot to post a haiku on Sunday for the first time in like… three years. And then I forgot to schedule this post for this morning. So now I’m cramming.
June is off to a great start!
Last Month’s Goals
- Write 6,600 words.
- Read 3 books.
- Continue the exercise climb.
Write 6,600 words?
NOPE. I think I write about 2,000 words to start the month, and then did not write again. I was away from home for the week before Memorial Day without reliable internet access, so I knew I had limited writing time in May.
My adjusted goal for available writing time was supposed to account for this, but I need to tweak it to a lower weird count goal.
I’ll probably try for 400 words per available day, or some such.
Read three books?
Almost. I finished two books in May, and I’ve made good headway on three others. One of this might be a comic volume, but who’s keeping track?
Continue the exercise climb?
Another hiccup in May. My week away consisted of virtually no exercise. That was due to the renovation work I was helping a friend with on his Thousand Islands cabin. Turns out that tearing out drywall and old wood, carrying supplies, and installing new flooring is damn tiring. Thus, I didn’t really need the extra exercise.
I had a great week in cabin in the river with a few friends, though.
Goals for June
- Write 8,800 words. This is my adjusted goal, counting 400 words per day for twenty-two available writing days. June is (hopefully) a slow month for us.
- Read three books. As I said, I feel like I have enough of a head start to reach this.
- Continue the exercise climb. I’m back on track, I think, so I feel pretty good about this.
- Reorganize this site. You may have noticed some new headers on this site’s navigation. Or maybe not. Either way, I’m shifting my writing topics to themes rather than formats. I’m debating whether I want to re-tag my archive with these new themes, so there may be more changes to come.
Steve D
May Write Day: Restart
After two years of avoiding it, I tested positive for COVID this week. And I’m furious with the Supreme Court, liberal Democrats who continue to do as little as possible to improve the lives of Americans, and the Right for… actively bringing suffering to the lives of Americans for the last 20 years.
I also forgot to write this post last night and schedule it for this morning. So I’m going to keep this short.
Last Month’s Goals
- Write 9,600 words. Oddly specific and yet not random. (See above)
- Read 3 books. My new podcast notifications have settled the last few days, so I’ll obviously need some other form of storytelling to distract me. If only I could look at words on paper and hear them said by the voice in my head… I’ll think of something.
- Continue the exercise climb. I think success here will look like me running/working out or yoga-ing 4-5 times per week for the month. Plus remembering to meditate.
Write 9,600 words?
No. I think it was somewhere around 4,000, but I’m not going to check. Too many distractions, and not enough focus time. I have a trip coming up in May that will keep me away from writing for a week, so my word count goal will be much smaller.
Read 3 books?
Also no, but I made some progress on a couple that I’ve been enjoying.
Continue the exercise climb?
Yes, until I got sick this week. I started a core-strengthening yoga program in April that I was really enjoying, and it helped me figure out a daily routine to build onto.
I’ve generally not been a preset routine type of exerciser — I always created my own routines and evolved them as needed, so this is new territory for me. But without a gym membership and with limited equipment at home, I think this is the type of thing that can keep my motivated day to day.
I would just like to stop coughing so I can get back to it.
Goals for May
- Write 6,600 words. I promise these numbers are not arbitrary. I’m just calculating 600 words per day that I anticipate being available to write. This still feels like a lot, honestly, so I need to get off to a good start to close out this week.
- Read 3 books. I will actually have some downtime to do this during my week off (I hope).
- Continue the exercise climb. I’m optimistic that I’ll be feeling much better tomorrow and able to get back to my yoga program. It’s not like I’m doing anything this weekend until I test negative.
Steve D
April Write Day: Fitting into a Routine
April has arrived and so has spring in Maryland (I hope). March was a surprisingly long month.
I spent a grand total of five days at the office last month, which is more than twice as many days as I had spent there in 2021. It was a chance to meet some colleagues in person for the first time, and it was nice being in that environment again.
Then everyone went home, and I returned to working from home.
Goals-wise, March was, on paper, less than great. But I feel like my mindset on these things has started to shift for the better. I feel like I know where I’m at in my writing endeavors, what I really need to focus on, and that what comes down the road should not distract me.
More on that next.
Last Month’s Goals
- Write 10,000 words.
- Read 3 books.
- Continue the exercise climb.
Write 10,000 words?
No, and this shortcoming has led me to a slightly new way of thinking about my monthly writing goals.
I wrote 7,122 words in March. The obvious problem, as always, is that I had three gaps in my writing progress that exacerbated how far behind I fell until I effectively gave up for the month. This happens basically every month when I fall behind early, or when something in normal life takes me away from writing for a few days.
To this point, my writing goals have been rather un-scientific. But that’s changing. One thing I’ve learned over the past few months is that if I really sit and focus, I can easily write 600 words (or more) in 30 minutes or less.
I realize how unimpressive that looks when many writers do 2,000 words per hour, but this is the first time I’ve really time-boxed my writing sessions with a clear goal to achieve.
I also now know that weekend writing is increasingly difficult and unreliable, because we just tend to have things to do. My twice-weekly posts on this site do not count towards my writing goal, but they definitely take up precious writing time, so I also need to account for that.
So here’s my new calculus:
- Total days in a month
- minus number of Saturdays and Sundays
- minus Tuesday blog writing
- minus days for any other or prior non-writing commitments
- x 600 words
For April, that gives me 9,600 words as a writing goal, which is right on target with my usual un-scientific goals. It also saves me the self-loathing of not finding the time to write on weekends or days when I have other things to do.
After two years of trying to shoehorn writing into my daily life and largely underachieving, it finally dawned on me that I need to ensure my writing routine actually fits around my daily life, too. So that’s what I’m doing.
Read three books?
I did not finish a single book in March. I have been reading, but my Audible listening has hit a dry spell, and I’m still taking my time with Towers of Midnight. I’m also really enjoying it at the moment and, strangely, have no desire to plow through it.
I definitely listened to a lot more podcasts than usual in March, primarily because that’s how I followed the early weeks of the Ukraine conflict.
I’m on the hunt for something different. Probably some non-dystopian sci fi or fantasy. The world is dystopian enough for me, at the moment. I’ll gladly take your recommendations though!
Continue the exercise climb?
I feel like I’m on the right path. I’ve finally decided on a pseudo-routine to guide me throughout the week. Basically, I want to alternate between longer (20-40-minute) yoga sessions and resistance training/running. My cardio is completely shot, so I’d like to start running 2-3 times per week, paired with push-ups and pull-ups for a more complete workout. If I feel physically tired or mentally drained, then I’ll do yoga.
I did not maintain a meditation routine, so I likely need a daily calendar reminder to… not forget.
The climb continues.
Goals for April
- Write 9,600 words. Oddly specific and yet not random. (See above)
- Read 3 books. My new podcast notifications have settled the last few days, so I’ll obviously need some other form of storytelling to distract me. If only I could look at words on paper and hear them said by the voice in my head… I’ll think of something.
- Continue the exercise climb. I think success here will look like me running/working out or yoga-ing 4-5 times per week for the month. Plus remembering to meditate.
Steve D
On Presence
I’ve been thinking a lot about presence recently, and especially how much I’ve caught myself not being in the present moment in recent weeks.
February was a tough writing month for me in part because I spent more time thinking about stories I haven’t written yet than thinking about my actual current work-in-progress. Even now, one week into this month, I find myself thinking a lot about the end game for The Herb Witch Tales. Not just how I want part 2 to end, but about how I want to reread parts 1 and 2 together and think of them holistically, how I might need additional drafts just to ensure I get them right before I publish, and how my publishing timeline seems to be in a state of constant expansion.
I haven’t even finished a full draft of part 2 yet.
A similar feeling has passed over me while spending time with my three-year-old. A moment at the park when he is playing a game with me but I’m thinking about what time we need to leave to be home for dinner. Or a moment where I’m watching him interact with his six-month-old brother and wondering if the two of them will make each other laugh as teenagers the way they do now.
Neither of those are “bad” distractions, but they are distractions nonetheless.
Even in writing this post, I can’t keep my fingers off my phone until I’ve settled on a song that both suits my vibe and allows me to focus. (The correct answer is “Monumental Holiday” by Dead Sara.)
What I have tried to do is take those distracting thoughts, let them pass through me, and let them go — a lesson I’ve taken from the meditation intro I listened to last month.
Am I going to be able to publish my stories this year? Maybe. Keep writing. What will my kids be like at X age? Impossible to know and always fascinating, but don’t lose sight of who they are right now.
What I can’t say for sure is whether I’m more distracted than usual, or I’m just noticing it more. This site is ostensibly A Writer’s Blog, but these things tend to bleed into each other.
Steve D
March Write Day: Rough Pass
So March is here, and I’m feeling pretty meh about it at the moment. If I had to use one word to describe my February with respect to my goals for the month, I would go with… distracted. I just didn’t give much thought to any of my goals during the month, and it’s not for lack of trying. I just had other things on my mind.
Our seven-month-old isn’t sleeping through the night, and we spent a good portion of February trying different bedtime strategies to nudge him in that direction. The closest we’ve gotten is him sleeping in his crib for a couple hours, then one of us bringing him into our bed when he wakes up for his midnight comfort snack. Now, we’ve just accepted that he’s a particularly cuddly kid, unlike the toddler.
My computer has also been BSOD’ing on me with such regularity that I compulsively save my work every sentence or so. Dear Micrsoft, please fix the REFERENCE_BY_POINTER error, or at least give me some more guidance other than “update drivers”. This computer is probably not even two years old and I’m already contemplating a replacement.
Anyway. Neither of those things are crises, but they’ve taken up my head space recently.
Last Month’s Goals
- Write 11,000 words.
- Read three books.
- Continue the slow climb to a decent exercise routine.
Let’s get this over with.
Write 11,000 words?
Holy crap, no. I didn’t even get close. I could try to blame the extended time we spent in the mountains this month, but that’s not even accurate. Look at this:
Look at that! That’s nine days in the middle of the month where I didn’t write squat. That’s terrible. And I can’t even tell you what I was doing during that stretch. It wasn’t catching up on shows or reading. The second stretch is mostly when we took an extra long weekend in the mountains. I worked mornings for a few days which meant I didn’t want to be on the computer much extra time.
Ugh. Moving on.
Read 3 books?
Technically, yes. Two of those three were one-hour shorts on Audible, and the third was a not-as-short study on meditation to increase productivity. That’s ironic, now that I think about it. Still, I’m counting it!
And I’m into meditation as a balancing effect on the stressful mind. I just need to start up a daily practice.
Establish a decent exercise routine?
I was on a solid pace of resistance training until our little vacation, but that pretty much always happens. I definitely want to jump back into it, so that’s a positive sign.
I might also want to (gulp) start running again. I have always found running boring, but I know I’m not doing enough at the moment, and if doing a loop through my neighborhood gets me outside and moving for 20 minutes, I might just take it at this point.
Goals for March
- Write 10,000 words. We’re not doing a ton of traveling this month, and I have three extra days compared to February. I just need to get back on track.
- Read 3 books. I’ve made solid progress on Towers of Midnight, even if I’m not reading it as quickly as I had anticipated. I’m kind of savoring this book a bit, knowing it’s the second-to-last in the series. Still, I’ll probably finish it this month.
- Continue the exercise climb. And add a meditation practice. My goal is 2 minutes per day. I feel like I’ve talked about exercise a lot, and I just want to do it at this point.
Steve D
Evening Satellite Publishing 