September books: Still 1/5 (auuuuugh but close one at least one)
~*~*~*~*~
~*~*~*~*~
This week has been…a lot. Yet October looms and while I’m on my last short story for my project (and have written more this month than any other month this year), it’s not done yet and I cannot start the in-depth planning on the generation ship story until it is.
I may be starting to stress out about the situation.
When I first started writing regularly, I did it pretty much anywhere. Laptop. Notebook. Napkins a few times (not recommended, easy to lose track of). I was writing around classes and tests and meetings, all of which were weird intervals of time from each other, and so I had to take what I could get.
After I graduated, my time was more structured. Work from 7-3. Certain nights to hang out with friends. Sometimes I did need to go hang out in labs for hours or weeks at a time, in which case the notebook writing occasionally resurfaced. I got SO much writing done in this period of my life.
And despite the fact that I know–that I teach!–that you have to write when and where you can, I’m beginning to suspect that I have trained myself out of the idea. Of course it’s easier when you can go to the coffee shop for two hours! But in weeks like this one, where there are conferences and meets and theater performances, we need to, and should, break out the less preferred methods.
That being said, I am definitely out of practice. And distractions exist that did not when I was in college. I stuck with my non-smart phone for ages, which helped with my naturally easily-distracted thought patterns. Now there’s always some app I can distract myself with.
But we either need to rebuild the habit, or we need to accept that some self-imposed deadlines might be missed.
(I’ve been practicing by handwriting these blog posts. Still a lot of front end with the pictures of the cards, but at least the thinking is pre-done.)
Any habits you have that you used to do one way and now do another?
