![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
madwriterI managed some writing today, the second batch this week, while doing two things: Gearing up for the release of Lest Camelot Fall TOMORROW (the all caps is the way I'm thinking of it, not trying to get attention), and being well underway in the process of trying to buy a house. Writing has felt like a luxury with everything else going on, though it's also more necessary than ever just to keep my head on straight.
Right now there are multiple major uncertainties in my life. Even after jumping into the house-buying process I still have my doubts about whether or not it's the best idea, though the other options (including trying to stay where I am) are likely to prove even more difficult. As it is it's still far from certain that I'll be able to buy, but at least unlike the last time I tried to buy--at the peak of the credit crunch and banks gathering into the Department of We Don't Want To Loan Money Right Now Unless Your Credit Score is 800 And You Can Put 20% Down--I haven't been cut off at the knees.
Whatever the outcome, though, I'm still packing. By "packing" I mainly mean packing books. I have enough books that I figured I'd better get a good head start, and at fifty boxes that average printer paper box size I'm still only a third of the way through the library. This accounts for a big chunk of otherwise-writing-time in itself. I would take my books to the metaphorical desert island before nearly any other material things, but a few thousand can certainly make moving a wee bit more of a logistical challenge.
And of course, as I've been shouting to the rooftops, Lest Camelot Fall is out TOMORROW. (Yep, still shouting in my head.) Fourteen months after I sold the book to Musa, so the steam's been building for a long time. I don't need to detail my thought process here; it's stereotypical enough that you can guess. Mainly it revolves around me being afraid that I won't sell more than about nine copies. And trying to think up ways to promote it that aren't among the myriad of methods that would make people want to grab my ears and twist.
(At least I caught that typo in the very first line of the book in time, so that's something! That woke me up at a few 4 a.m.s.)
But these things and writing fall into two opposite categories:
House and Book Release? Much if not mostly out of my control. I can do some things. Fill out and mail paperwork. Blog about the book or make a YouTube video. But quite a lot of both, maybe the lion's share, are out of my hands.
Writing, though? Now that I can control.
I think that's the key to the whole writing while distracted thing. Often I'm distracted because I feel like I have little or no control over something (or things, or multitudes) going on in my life. But while I can't control what happens to my writing after it's released to the world, the placing of myself before the Writing Computer in the Writing Room (usually with Vegas the Writing Assistant perched by my side) is totally do-able, and the location where I am master of my world (and the world of the poor suckers I'm writing about). Sending out submissions is also within my power--I hurled out three short stories back to back yesterday, just because I could.
There's my balance. I takes my power where I finds it. House-buying? Book release? Whatever. Sure, there my collaboration with the universe is my choice. But when I'm pounding away at the keyboard (and I do pound, having learned to type on an old Hermes manual typewriter, though it's also cathartic), I create the universes, Jack.
PROGRESS REPORT
New Words: 1300 on chapter 3 ("The Seekers, 1882") of Copper Heart. Gus Beckett, chasing after Geronimo under the command of one Lt. Britton Davis, helps charge the camp where several Apache women and children (including Geronimo's wives, children, and grandchildren) are staying. Gus and his red hair subsequently become the new favorite thing of Geronimo's two-year-old son, whom Gus nicknames Little Robe.
Total Words: 138,100. So yeah, some mondo big trimming once the novel's done.
Reason For Stopping: Getting ready for work.
Book Year: 1885.
Mammalian Assistance: Vegas is back to being a Book Room regular now that I have rebuilt his box pile. (This is despite the box pile being in the wrong direction--which is to say, not facing the window that overlooks the woods.)
Exercise: A neighborhood walk with Laurie and the dogs.
Stimulants: Chilled liquid custard from the local dairy. Thick nommy goodness.
Today's Opening Passage: “Hell, Gus, I think there’s really someone there this time.”
The man whispering as he and Gus rode side by side in a double column that morning was the shavetail private who once thought that they wouldn’t have any problem catching the Apache renegades because there was only a few hours’ ride between them. He’s not a shavetail anymore, Gus thought with grim satisfaction. Not after near on two months and a few hundred miles of chasing Geronimo back and forth and never even getting a look at him. None of them are shavetails now, after all this.
Darling Du Jour: Gus accompanied Sieber over to Geronimo’s women and children, where the Chief of Scouts addressed them in a mix of Apache, Spanish, and hand signs. Gus felt a pair of eyes boring down on him, and turned to see a two-year-old boy staring at him intensely.
The boy reached up a tiny hand with fingers outstretched, and without thinking Gus kneeled down in front of him with a sudden urge to comfort the boy, assure him that things would be all right, that once they were back at Fort Bowie they could settle in again to a normal life and farm and be at peace once more.
Whether or not the boy understood any of this, or what was going on at all, Gus didn’t know. Instead the tiny fingers grabbed Gus’ hair and the boy laughed.
Sieber snorted a laugh beside them too. “Probably never seen anyone with red hair before, Beckett. Maybe the kid likes you too.”
“What’s his name?”
“Hell, I don’t know. I have a hard enough time keeping track of all the women’s names nowadays, never mind their kids.”
“Will you tell me your name?” Gus asked the boy. Sieber asked in Apache. The boy was oblivious to both of them, still running his fingers through Gus’ fascinating hair.
But Gus noticed the boy was wearing a tiny deerskin robe that he clung to with his free hand even as the morning heat increased. “You’re Little Robe, then,” Gus told him. “That’s what I’ll call you.” The boy had no objections and, strangely enough, his mother didn’t seem to either.
Non-Research / Review Books In Progress: The Golden City by J. Kathleen Cheney /j_cheney; The Given Sacrifice by S.M. Stirling; re-reading The World is My Home by James A. Michener.
Right now there are multiple major uncertainties in my life. Even after jumping into the house-buying process I still have my doubts about whether or not it's the best idea, though the other options (including trying to stay where I am) are likely to prove even more difficult. As it is it's still far from certain that I'll be able to buy, but at least unlike the last time I tried to buy--at the peak of the credit crunch and banks gathering into the Department of We Don't Want To Loan Money Right Now Unless Your Credit Score is 800 And You Can Put 20% Down--I haven't been cut off at the knees.
Whatever the outcome, though, I'm still packing. By "packing" I mainly mean packing books. I have enough books that I figured I'd better get a good head start, and at fifty boxes that average printer paper box size I'm still only a third of the way through the library. This accounts for a big chunk of otherwise-writing-time in itself. I would take my books to the metaphorical desert island before nearly any other material things, but a few thousand can certainly make moving a wee bit more of a logistical challenge.
And of course, as I've been shouting to the rooftops, Lest Camelot Fall is out TOMORROW. (Yep, still shouting in my head.) Fourteen months after I sold the book to Musa, so the steam's been building for a long time. I don't need to detail my thought process here; it's stereotypical enough that you can guess. Mainly it revolves around me being afraid that I won't sell more than about nine copies. And trying to think up ways to promote it that aren't among the myriad of methods that would make people want to grab my ears and twist.
(At least I caught that typo in the very first line of the book in time, so that's something! That woke me up at a few 4 a.m.s.)
But these things and writing fall into two opposite categories:
House and Book Release? Much if not mostly out of my control. I can do some things. Fill out and mail paperwork. Blog about the book or make a YouTube video. But quite a lot of both, maybe the lion's share, are out of my hands.
Writing, though? Now that I can control.
I think that's the key to the whole writing while distracted thing. Often I'm distracted because I feel like I have little or no control over something (or things, or multitudes) going on in my life. But while I can't control what happens to my writing after it's released to the world, the placing of myself before the Writing Computer in the Writing Room (usually with Vegas the Writing Assistant perched by my side) is totally do-able, and the location where I am master of my world (and the world of the poor suckers I'm writing about). Sending out submissions is also within my power--I hurled out three short stories back to back yesterday, just because I could.
There's my balance. I takes my power where I finds it. House-buying? Book release? Whatever. Sure, there my collaboration with the universe is my choice. But when I'm pounding away at the keyboard (and I do pound, having learned to type on an old Hermes manual typewriter, though it's also cathartic), I create the universes, Jack.
New Words: 1300 on chapter 3 ("The Seekers, 1882") of Copper Heart. Gus Beckett, chasing after Geronimo under the command of one Lt. Britton Davis, helps charge the camp where several Apache women and children (including Geronimo's wives, children, and grandchildren) are staying. Gus and his red hair subsequently become the new favorite thing of Geronimo's two-year-old son, whom Gus nicknames Little Robe.
Total Words: 138,100. So yeah, some mondo big trimming once the novel's done.
Reason For Stopping: Getting ready for work.
Book Year: 1885.
Mammalian Assistance: Vegas is back to being a Book Room regular now that I have rebuilt his box pile. (This is despite the box pile being in the wrong direction--which is to say, not facing the window that overlooks the woods.)
Exercise: A neighborhood walk with Laurie and the dogs.
Stimulants: Chilled liquid custard from the local dairy. Thick nommy goodness.
Today's Opening Passage: “Hell, Gus, I think there’s really someone there this time.”
The man whispering as he and Gus rode side by side in a double column that morning was the shavetail private who once thought that they wouldn’t have any problem catching the Apache renegades because there was only a few hours’ ride between them. He’s not a shavetail anymore, Gus thought with grim satisfaction. Not after near on two months and a few hundred miles of chasing Geronimo back and forth and never even getting a look at him. None of them are shavetails now, after all this.
Darling Du Jour: Gus accompanied Sieber over to Geronimo’s women and children, where the Chief of Scouts addressed them in a mix of Apache, Spanish, and hand signs. Gus felt a pair of eyes boring down on him, and turned to see a two-year-old boy staring at him intensely.
The boy reached up a tiny hand with fingers outstretched, and without thinking Gus kneeled down in front of him with a sudden urge to comfort the boy, assure him that things would be all right, that once they were back at Fort Bowie they could settle in again to a normal life and farm and be at peace once more.
Whether or not the boy understood any of this, or what was going on at all, Gus didn’t know. Instead the tiny fingers grabbed Gus’ hair and the boy laughed.
Sieber snorted a laugh beside them too. “Probably never seen anyone with red hair before, Beckett. Maybe the kid likes you too.”
“What’s his name?”
“Hell, I don’t know. I have a hard enough time keeping track of all the women’s names nowadays, never mind their kids.”
“Will you tell me your name?” Gus asked the boy. Sieber asked in Apache. The boy was oblivious to both of them, still running his fingers through Gus’ fascinating hair.
But Gus noticed the boy was wearing a tiny deerskin robe that he clung to with his free hand even as the morning heat increased. “You’re Little Robe, then,” Gus told him. “That’s what I’ll call you.” The boy had no objections and, strangely enough, his mother didn’t seem to either.
Non-Research / Review Books In Progress: The Golden City by J. Kathleen Cheney /
j_cheney; The Given Sacrifice by S.M. Stirling; re-reading The World is My Home by James A. Michener.
no subject
Date: 2014-01-17 11:55 pm (UTC)Anyway, best of luck with all of the above!