Some writers are very focussed. I’ve read the interviews in magazines: they drop the kids at school, then go home/the office/wherever and write all day until they pick the kids up. They don’t write at evenings or weekends because that’s not working time.
I, on the other hand, work at three in the morning, or over lunch, or on a Saturday night when I’m back from dinner/visiting a friend or when I haven’t bothered to go out because I need to get some work done. Oh, I have my timesheet, of course – otherwise I’m pretty sure I’d still be on chapter one of the first book 😉
This works for me and whilst I’m sure my partner would like me to put the laptop down some evenings (as would the dog, who tries to shut it using his nose), it doesn’t really get in the way of doing anything else. But now I am studying I thought it would be a good idea to look at the way I structure my time, and I found something interesting…
I am using my new course as an excuse to put off editing!
Over the last week, I’ve probably done less than five hours editing compared to around 15 hours of studying, and despite my general dislike for editing, even I can’t justify that…
I don’t need to spend so much on the course; I am doing extra reading and asking questions on forums and so on because it is all very interesting.
But I’ve signed up to courses through to the end of July at least, and I don’t want to still be doing this editing in the summer!
So I’ve decided that in order to get this editing done and dusted, I’ll start the day by editing the relevant month (the book is split into chapters by month; each month may have one or two chapters), and after that I can study. That’ll break up the time and mean I give the editing the majority of time – I can’t stop until the month is finished.
That means I’ll be done by next Sunday ready to be all happy and self-congratulatory in the blog post! If I miss my target for astrobiology-related reasons, please feel free to point and laugh.
In other news – thank you to Mandy Eve Barnett for nominating me for the Liebster award – I have nearly finished my award/nomination post so will get that out soon. There is a backlog so it might be a long post!
Also – I recently heard in a radio interview that Hilary Mantel’s two Booker-prize winning novels are being turned into plays by the Royal Shakespeare Company. I love this idea; it will be fascinating to see how the stories are re-imagined for the stage. I wish more modern novels were adapted in this way.
And finally – despite dropping the editing ball this week, I did spend some time reworking the new sections I wrote in, and that at least is going reasonably well!
Onward and upward, as they say…
Happy writing,
EJ
🙂
Becoming a writer 
In love the way your dog tries to shut the lap top with his nose – how cute! 😉
It is pretty cute, but very distracting. If I don’t take any notice he tries to push it with his paw. He sighs when I pick it up sometimes! 🙂
I need little excuse to get diverted from editing. I really find it a bind and not very inspiring, more of a chore. I did edit a story a couple of weeks ago and realised that it had been written 13 years ago. Wow. Not sure how to change that up, I suppose it’s all in my mental approach?
I need to stop having excuses – I really don’t find it much fun, as I’ve said far too often… 🙂
Things that work for me are to break it into chunks (I do 45 minutes at a time); have a date to finish by – even if I miss it, it focusses the mind; do it reasonably soon after writing so I am still familiar with the story; do it chronologically. I also try to intersperse it with other writing – notes, poetry or whatever – but I haven’t done that this time. Mind you the course makes up for that!
How was it revisiting a story you wrote 13 years ago?
Well, never been that disciplined with it. You know, looking back at that old story, it was a little weird. I recognise that it was an old version of me who wrote and I probably couldn’t write that way now. I remembered the story clearly enough (about serendipity and taking chances) and the message I wanted to portray, So while it was from the past there was still quite an attachment to it. Naturally was overly critical as I’m a better writer now, lol!
It’s good to revisit old work sometimes – it reminds you how far you’ve come!