Plan B
I’m sorry to say I didn’t even last a week at the Write First Challenge. This just isn’t the time for me to not check email early. As I mentioned before, I’m taking a rather intense online course on querying given by C.J. Lyons. I’ve learned so much already that my head is spinning. The sheer number of messages produced by the participants has increased the mail in my inbox by about a thousand percent. When I let it get ahead of me, it takes hours to catch up.
Yeah, I know. Excuses, excuses.
The fact is I learned I’m not an early morning writer. I’ve trained my muse to be at the office by 9AM. Asking him to arrive earlier just doesn’t work.
Or maybe it’s the fact the caffeine doesn’t kick in until then.
Whatever. I’m going to come up with a different set of writing guidelines that work for me.
But probably not this week. This week I’ll be writing, but my nonfiction efforts will be taking priority. Hey, writing and getting paid for it is a GOOD thing. I’ll be covering two different events for Pennsylvania Magazine in the next few days. First, I’ll be lugging the Nikon around the Washington County Fair. Then on Saturday, I’ll be attending the statewide Battle of the Barrel. I’ve already had practice on that one when I photographed the Washington County BOB last month.
I’ve had lots of practice photographing the fair, too, but it’s been years. Back in one of my previous lives when I was doing portrait photography professionally, I shot rolls of film of the kids showing their horses, ran it through the one-hour processing lab, and returned to sell the pictures to the proud parents. It was one of my more lucrative ventures. I don’t expect to do any of that kind of photography this time around, but just being there will feel like old home week for this former 4-Her.
As for the new manuscript, my “plan” is this: Ten pages a week. I figure on most weeks, I have two days that I set aside for “bulk writing” and two more days when I squeeze in a page or two. This ten-pages-a-week goal is do-able as a minimum. It includes time to revise and plot, which was missing from the one-page-before-Internet plan.
If anyone wants to shape their own “plan” for writing, feel free to post it here. It just can’t be something like “I’ll write when I get in the mood.” No. This is about getting serious and committing to your work. But it’s also about doing it in a way that doesn’t promise failure.
By the way, to my commenters, I’ve been getting a lot of spam (sorry, but I can’t read Chinese), so I’ve done away with the word verification, which, like the page-before-Internet plan wasn’t working, and I’ve started moderating them instead. I apologize for the inconvenience, but the heat and humidity are making me cranky. Okay, crankier. NO SPAM ON MY BLOG!
Thank you.
Yeah, I know. Excuses, excuses.
The fact is I learned I’m not an early morning writer. I’ve trained my muse to be at the office by 9AM. Asking him to arrive earlier just doesn’t work.
Or maybe it’s the fact the caffeine doesn’t kick in until then.
Whatever. I’m going to come up with a different set of writing guidelines that work for me.
But probably not this week. This week I’ll be writing, but my nonfiction efforts will be taking priority. Hey, writing and getting paid for it is a GOOD thing. I’ll be covering two different events for Pennsylvania Magazine in the next few days. First, I’ll be lugging the Nikon around the Washington County Fair. Then on Saturday, I’ll be attending the statewide Battle of the Barrel. I’ve already had practice on that one when I photographed the Washington County BOB last month.
I’ve had lots of practice photographing the fair, too, but it’s been years. Back in one of my previous lives when I was doing portrait photography professionally, I shot rolls of film of the kids showing their horses, ran it through the one-hour processing lab, and returned to sell the pictures to the proud parents. It was one of my more lucrative ventures. I don’t expect to do any of that kind of photography this time around, but just being there will feel like old home week for this former 4-Her.
As for the new manuscript, my “plan” is this: Ten pages a week. I figure on most weeks, I have two days that I set aside for “bulk writing” and two more days when I squeeze in a page or two. This ten-pages-a-week goal is do-able as a minimum. It includes time to revise and plot, which was missing from the one-page-before-Internet plan.
If anyone wants to shape their own “plan” for writing, feel free to post it here. It just can’t be something like “I’ll write when I get in the mood.” No. This is about getting serious and committing to your work. But it’s also about doing it in a way that doesn’t promise failure.
By the way, to my commenters, I’ve been getting a lot of spam (sorry, but I can’t read Chinese), so I’ve done away with the word verification, which, like the page-before-Internet plan wasn’t working, and I’ve started moderating them instead. I apologize for the inconvenience, but the heat and humidity are making me cranky. Okay, crankier. NO SPAM ON MY BLOG!
Thank you.
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