When Writing Goes Slowly...

I have just discovered due to some suddenly planned meetings and scheduling issues that my writing day on Wednesday (aka the only day I have time to write in my book these days) is going to be compromised...if you get a shorter than usual blog post on Friday, you'll know why. I'll be trying to make up and recover lost time.

I have also been unable to write the 20+ pages a day I had hoped at the beginning of the fall. But really, I could have done it, right? Well, no, actually.

Don't get discouraged when your writing goes slowly. Unless it's the only thing you've got going on, it's not going to be the only thing you've got going on.

See what I did there?

Recently I calculated it out. On an average day, what with a full course load, my part time job, my internship, my classwork, my Editorship of the literary magazine on campus, and my attempts to get my life figured out, I probably work a good 16-18 hours a day. Work. Every now and then we'll throw in something fun and guess what-- that work load probably doesn't change. What does change is how much time I'll have to eat/sleep/shower/write/read etc. Because the work load can't change. What has to get done has to get done. For example, last night I stayed up so that I could finish reading The Hobbit. (You'll get to hear about that on Friday.) I woke up tired this morning and thought, you have only yourself to blame.

Well, it's true. Sacrifices must be made for the greater good. In this case the greater good included me reading The Hobbit. Don't ask me how. It's serious business.

I was originally going to be writing in my book three times a week. It has turned into once a week in order for me to keep up with this blog. I may have to alter the schedule and reorganize things to even it out-- perhaps move to once-a-week blogging and take the other two days for writing. We shall see. But on the average day of writing in my book I only chug out about 5-7 pages as opposed to twenty. Well, this isn't very surprising either. Sure, I wrote 20 pages all at once in my first run. That was when I was newly inspired, fired up, and had all day to do it. And it took me all day. My writing 'mornings' are just that-- mornings. About three hours in which I get to not only wake up, get ready for class, but try to be creative enough to plop out my tale.

So I guess I could say I'm doing well.

I still plan on being done by Christmas. I have a few 'vacations' coming up that hopefully will not be ploughed through by job-search and classwork. I'll get the work done. A good thing to remember--I've said it many times before-- is that our writing, though it be our passion and our joy (*cough*) is also our job, and it's work. It needs to be done.

Off to work I go!