December Writing and January Goals

[osprey_archer]

I actually took the last week of December off from writing, on the grounds that (a) it is a holiday!, and (b) I’ve been having difficulty writing new material since the pandemic began and attempting to bulldoze through has not, so far, been successful, so maybe I should try a new strategy, i.e., taking a break.

During my bulldozing attempts, I have racked up an impressive number of partially-finished books (including two f/f novellas about college girls around 1900), so if/when I get my finishing-things mojo back, I ought to be able to knock books over like bottles on a fence. Right? That’s how it works, yes? This may be wishful thinking.

The only project I’ve made much progress on is David and Robert, which grows more unmarketable by the day. It’s fine. I’m telling myself that I will never publish it anyway so I don’t need to worry about pleasing anyone but myself. Sure, I could just stop in 1920, after our heroes get together (if I do so, I already have a complete draft!)... but why not continue for the next twenty years so I can drag them through the vast dysfunctional polycule that is the interwar English intelligentsia? David could get married! Robert could have a Bad Boyfriend!

(The Bad Boyfriend is a gift to myself; I love writing bad boyfriends. You can’t imagine how much extraneous Paul material there was in Honeytrap. I really grieved when I had to cut out his maniacal insistence that he and Daniel could never share a bed all night because BOTH BEDS NEED TO LOOK SLEPT IN, DANIEL, obviously it’s NOT ENOUGH to just throw back the covers in the morning.)

...Anyway, my plan in January is to start myself off with a Very Low daily word count (I’m thinking 250 words a day), plus a generous number of days off, and see if that strategy doesn’t work a bit better than bulldozing.

Comments

[asakiyume]

I think there's a real art in life to learning when pushing is what's required to get over or past an obstacle, and when it's better *not* to do that.

... It's an art I'm not sure we ever really master? I haven't anyway. I just go by feel.

I will say as a reader of your work that over the past year you've been very prolific: there was The Wolf and the Girl, The Time-Traveling Popcorn Ball, Honeytrap, and The Threefold Tie. That's a pretty punishing amount of productivity! I mean, established writers have a hard time keeping a pace like that.

[osprey_archer]

I think that a lot of the really important skills in life - not stuff like baking or knitting or what have you, but skills for how to live, how to navigate relationships with other people, things like that - are never really mastered. We may get better at them over time, but even as we're learning more about that skill we're also changing, and so are the circumstances around us. So a problem that last year might have been better solved by pushing through might now benefit from taking a break, or vice versa.

The Wolf and the Girl was actually 2019! But very late in 2019, so I take your point. And The Time-Traveling Popcorn Ball was actually written in 2013. I looked up the dates in my old LJ entries and I wrote the first draft in two weeks!

[asakiyume]

NITPICKING! December 2019 is essentially 2020. COVID-19, after all, was named that because it too began in 2019. And the TTPB was ~~completed~~ in 2020. And even if we subtract those two we still have A FULL LENGTH NOVEL and a novella.

(and absolutely exactly yes for the first paragraph)

[osprey_archer]

TBH I think of it the opposite way - everything before March is still part of 2019. It feels like a different year even if it was technically 2020. All of us wandering around promiscuously unmasked, clearly a 2019 mood.

[asakiyume]

Well you make a very valid and convincing point, but I'm afraid I can't admit it if it means suggesting that your performance this year was anything less than stellar.

[osprey_archer]

I bow to the inevitable and admit my performance this year was stellar. Lunar, even! Celestial by all means!

[asakiyume]

Hurray; we have reached a point of happy agreement ^_^

[asakiyume]

PS TWO SHORT STORIES FOR ANTHOLOGIES