Every Little Bit
I spent a week not working and am now spending a week working at half-speed. Getting the flu sucks. Getting over it seems to suck just as much, I still don’t feel 100%, but I know I’m close.
The biggest difference I have noticed is on my writing ethic. I would normally arise at 5am to start my daily writing. Now, and hopefully just for this week, it is more 6am. I don’t want to push my body too hard and have it collapse again. I find that that missing hour from each morning makes a difference, but I can deal with it. I get some work done, as usual, then I head to work. Upon returning home I have found that I am taking a bit more time to spend with the lady and even sit back and watch a bit of teev, which is kind of rare for me. But it’s been nice and relaxing as a change of pace.
I usually do well over a thousand words a day, but now those numbers have changed. I find each morning I do a few hundred, and that night I add a few hundred more. It usually adds up to roughly a thousand words, but never too far over. I was a little down about this fact until I saw that they all still add up in the end anyway. And that’s what I need to remember; it’s not about sitting down for twelve hours straight and knocking out 5k of words and only breaking to read a sandwich while you read a quick news excerpt online. Sure, those days are awesomely fun, but I need to have a life as well. I need to have other things in my life to draw on as inspiration and lean on as support. The day where 900 words comes out is fine, because it’s all extra fuel to the fire.
Yesterday I surpassed 70k of words. A superfluous milestone, but it’s always nice to see another milestone pass by. I’m now up to 71k and sure enough in not too long it’ll be up to 80k. Before I know it I’ll be finished and the novel will not have been written in one week, it’ll have taken weeks, maybe even months, and in that time every little thing counted. Each little piece of inspiration and creation was merited and worthwhile. Each sentence I added helped me to write the next one. It’s a flow of many things and you have to ride the current when it sweeps past you. And when it doesn’t, just float and look up at the sky and enjoy it.
It’s all meant to be fun and if it isn’t then you aren’t doing it right.
Posted on August 19th, 2009 by ryan
Filed under: life, Writing
Even with the flu, that’s an impressive work ethic. If you rise at 5, what time do you go to bed? Are you one of those lucky sould who can get by on 6 hours sleep a night? I wish I was.
Rol, yeah I get to bed about half ten or eleven most night. I find six hours sleep a night is fine, though by Friday I am so keen for bed, and the weekend is purely for sleeping in to recharge to do it again for the next week. It’s a cycle my body has surprisingly gotten used to.
Plus you bath in the semen of greek virgins!!!!!