Back on the trail this morning. Windy day! Merciful heavens. 🙂
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Your experience with this short story ounds like the advice about “build one to throw away” from the computer programming world. You might be facing that with Cape Grace, too. Zypheria’s Call shouldn’t be subject to it, as you’ve already done it with Ravenwood – but since you tried to handle Cape Grace differently, it is.
Listening to you talk about starting the story in the wrong place, reminded me of something that I noticed about my own writing in the past couple months. I always have at least one scene up front that I write to set the atmosphere for the piece. Once I get going, it usually turns out that I don’t really need that first scene, but I pretty much need to write that scene to get going. It seems that I almost always need to cut that first scene for the final story.
I’ve just accepted this as part of my process. I kind of like it as my transition from world building to story writing.
Doc
Not to confuse things up, but one thing about the astroid story: I think that for a lot of people, getting the money for next month’s bills is more realistic, and just as threatening, as being powerless in an astroid belt.
I have been thinking a bit while I listen, and a few things I think you may have got out of the workshop, from what you’ve said … and some things which I have concluded which may not match your own conclusions.
You’ve got some more insight into your writing, what you do well and what you aren’t quite satisfied with (though we all appreciate what you’ve done so far or we would not be listening!).
You’ve had an injection of enthusiasm and got to see how productive you can be. That is wonderful. 🙂 I hope it can release you to get back in front of that keyboard and really enjoying writing, not worrying about where to begin.
You’ve seen that you can in fact deliver work “on demand” when you need to (though this may in part be the double-edged sword “works well to a deadline” thing that many of us who aren’t always the best at doing things at a constant rate have to work with). I think this means that you need to set yourself goals on a shorter term (not “6 novels this year” but “write a story start before breakfast to get the creative juices flowing” or “sit down and write for 3 hours today”).
I think before you get too caught up in deliverables (or perhaps, if deadlines are keeping you productive, run with that but when you reach a point where you find yourself a bit adrift, productivity-wise…) probably your task #1 should be to figure out what sort of a work schedule you want to try to do–being realistic about responsibilities you can’t avoid–and communicate it to your family. If you have to drops kids to school and things like that, you have to work that in there, but your family needs to understand when they can and can’t interrupt you.
As you keep saying, since you’re at home all the time your family assumes you are available to do things whenever. You probably need to sit down with them and clearly communicate this problem, explain that you can’t write books and thus can’t bring home the money you all need unless you have office hours during which you should not be disturbed. This is nothing new — nothing you have not said before — but perhaps you could also say “look, there’s some things that have to be done on a given day or at a given time, but anything that isn’t urgent, don’t ask me to do it Monday through Friday”. So, yard work, lawn mowing, non-urgent shopping, all those things and more, perhaps if you let them know they can ask you to do those things or help them with those things on the weekend you might not have to have so many requests during the week. For that matter (and I’m horrible about this myself), you need to excuse yourself from doing things you feel the need to do — unless the urge to get things off the to-do list is holding you back from productivity. The problem is making sure that your family respects your right to your work day — that if you choose to do some errand/task because it helps you focus, that doesn’t mean they should feel free to ask you to do errands/tasks like it on other occasions during your work day. Well, there’s another problem if you’re like me, and that is figuring out which things you need to give in to your compulsion to do and which things you can excuse yourself from doing so you can get more important things done. Try not to let yourself fool yourself about which things you really need to do.
You need to cook dinner, I suppose, but perhaps you can cook a larger amount and then have left-overs the next night or two (or cook on days 1 and 2, have left-overs the next 4 days in #1, #2, #1, #2 order or something)? Or if that’s too much repetition, make things and freeze portions so you can intersperse them with more space between repetitions of the same thing. Perhaps you can do 1 night a week where you order in or go out and don’t have to cook. If that gives you extra hours to write, the royalties might pay for it. 🙂
[… and this is why I need an editor 😉 … consider it a first draft?]
Oh! One more thing!
I cannot count the number of times you’ve said “I really need to get some writing done today, but … I really owe Tony Smith that audio I promised him” or “I have to edit the story I read for Starship Sofa” [hmm, trend here? :)] or “I promised X some lines for her full cast story” or what have you. While occasionally you could break the rules on this, I think if you have, say, 6 hours to do work in the day, you should limit all audio production, editing, whatever for other people to 1 of those hours. If you need more than a 1hr block, take 2hrs on day 1, but no hours the next day. Putting work in for other people’s projects is great, and I don’t think you should stop, but if you know you get at most 1hr each day for that, perhaps it’ll give you a better idea how you can accept, or you can just say “sorry, I can’t deliver this on time”. Audio production of your own work is of course exempt from time limits.
… and on a similar note: Try to say no a bit more often! 😀 I don’t like saying no either, but you have great talents to offer and a lot of people clamouring for your time. You can’t say yes to everything. Or you can say “I have a stack of recording work I’ve already promised, so I won’t be able to do it until August”, and some of the requestors will let you off the hook so you don’t have to outright say no.
Tangentially, you produce your own books and that’s great … but can’t you say “Sure, I’ll read that story for you, Tony, but please find someone else to edit/produce it. I’ll happily provide the raw audio”? 🙂
Finally: Really, what the hell do I know? I’m just blathering. Sorry this is all a bit stream-of-consciousness. Hopefully there’s some tiny little nuggets of use amongst the chaff.
Hear, hear! I second Mr. Jacob’s comments!
Imagine the writing you could get done if you had a regular 40 hour work week as a writer, instead of squeezing writing in around the multitude of “to-dos” that every house hold generates! Sure, the kids have to get to school, and doctor’s appointments aren’t something you can schedule for Satuday mornings, but the type of prioritizing and planning that everyone who works a “regular” job outside the home does could yield huge benefits in terms of blocks of writing time.
I also agree that the lack of respect shown by your family for your job as a writer is baffling. Or at least, that’s the way I perceive it, as a regular listener.
In a lot of ways, we saw what he can do – remember the first two weeks of this past NaNoWriMo. And it’s not necessarily the typing itself – 30 wpm * 60 mins is 1800 words per hour, so a Lowell is about 5 1/2 hrs of pure typing at the minimum acceptable typing speed for the VoTech program I graduated from. Up that to 50 wpm, which is quite possible with any real amount of practice (and I’m rather certain Nathan has had *PLENTY* of practice) and a Lowell is just 3 1/2 hrs of typing. So it’s not even necessarily the typing time availability – it’s the thinking time undistracted to sort out the issues in the stories.
Thanks for the vote of approval, Joyce. Hopefully some of it was useful to Nate. 🙂
I would be slow to lay the blame at anyone’s feet. If Nathan doesn’t clearly define when he’s intending to work, then any time any of his family needs him for something, it is equally an interruption. So I totally understand Nathan’s frustration, but I also understand how when you don’t know when it is ok to interrupt, you just have to go ahead and interrupt.
I’ve been both the guy not doing a good job of letting people know when I can be interrupted and the guy being frustrated at not knowing when I can interrupt. It’s harder to figure out how to improve things, but I think there could be worthwhile benefits.
So … far better to put blame aside and figure out how both sides can be happier, and Nate more productive. 🙂
And to bring my comment to a close, I’ll reiterate: I could be talking nonsense. 🙂 YMMV, etc.