You know it is not going to be a good day when your horoscope says :
"You're uncharacteristically scatterbrained at the moment, and you can't seem to remember even the most trivial of things. Stop for a minute and give yourself time to adjust to this new sensation of confusion. You have the feeling you might just lose your head if it weren't attached to you right now. It won't last forever, but it might last long enough to frustrate you thoroughly. You might want to start writing things down so you can at least remember where you put things."
This is not how I want to endure my day! What a kooky day! What does this even mean? Well, for me, let me break it down.
1. You are going to not be able to find clean clothes today.
2. You forgot to buy milk for cereal.
3. You have to scrape your car today (GOOD LORD! THERE'S ICE ON MY CAR!)
4. You may discover that your job would be much easier if you remembered to run the edit for the invoices BEFORE you tried to post.
5. You MEANT to go another way home, but your car is fixated on your usual route.
Maybe by the time I finally get home, get my laptop turned on, get my tired weary feet under a blanket and nice and toasty warm, the gods will bless me with alertness enough to write a few lines. That would make it all worthwhile!
What do you do when the muse is asleep, and your brain is overtaxed? Do you struggle to write something, anything? Or do you turn it all off and try again tomorrow?
Some authors believe that in order to keep going, you should try to write every day regardless of the situation. I find that hard to do. In my case, writing is a luxurious activity and I enjoy it. If my mindset is not in the right place, it's hard to do.
What about you?
Do you set deadlines for your writing? Sometimes when you are under contract you have deadlines to meet per your publisher. Sometimes you do it just to yourself. It is my honest belief that if you do not begin setting deadlines for yourself early in your writing life, you will have issues when they are imposed by someone else later down the road.
Right now I don't have a deadline, other than self-imposed, and I am curious to know how others are managing this.
Happy Kooky Thursday!
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Kim Smith is the author of the zany fun mystery series starring Shannon Wallace and her kooky sidekick, Dwayne Brown. The next installment in their series will be available at Red Rose Publishing on January 14, 2010.
5 comments:
Well, Kim , you know me, on a self-imposed deadline like you. And after working 40 hrs a week, etc., etc, by the time I sit down to write at night, my brain is fried. I may write a paragraph or two but usually, what comes out is pure junk. When that happens I turn the computer off and walk away. I’ll make up for the loss time in the early hours of the weekend.
When I first started to write I could write into one or two in the morning, get up at six and go to work without it affecting me or my writing. I think, however, that after I went through the editorial process with a publisher, my writing matured and what used to “just pour out” isn’t up to the standard I and frankly, my readers expect from me. So for me, it’s best to go for quality (when my mind is clear enough to work out the plots and come up with decent dialogue) than quantity.
For those out there who don’t know, Kim and I were separated at birth! I can’t tell you how often we write or talk on the phone and whatever one is doing or experiencing the other has mirrored it. It’s not only kooky, it’s spooky! LOL
Yes!! I totally agree the quality is the most important thing now, where before, I worried more about word count!
Sigh. I have deadlines. Oh boy, do I ever have deadlines...
I'm self-imposing an early deadline for my djinn sequel in the hopes I can get through revisions with my agent in time for the real deadline.
Why? Because I have this crushing fear she's going to hate the whole thing and I'll have to start all over again.
Huge sigh. Can't we cancel Christmas this year? I'm too busy!
Define writing every day. I make lists of stuff I'm suppose to do, like "Get dressed, make bed, brush teeth." Does that count?
When my little fingers refuse to cooperate, or my eyes are too droopy to focus, I become the director. I create my story in my head, gather all the characters together and rehearse like it's a video and my brain's the DVD.
We go over difficult scenes. Sometimes we start at the beginning and slowly advance forward. That ends up with me back at the computer because some brilliant scene just played itself through my brain, and now my heart's banging and I gotta get it down.
LOL I'm at an age that by the time the eyes get droopy, the brain is long gone! :()
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