One Week & 30,000 Words Later
Fri 2006-06-23 16:01:39 (in context)
Hullo. Not dead. About to collapse, however.
Have I mentioned what a horrible, horrible procrastinator I am? Yeah. Baaaad bad bad bad. Two months ago I met a work-for-hire deadline via a dire all-nighter enabling 15,000 words in 24 hours. Swore I'd never do that again. Next time I had a month to write two 15,000-word manuscripts, I'd be smarter and do a thousand words a day.
"Next time" would refer to the month ending about five minutes ago.
I, er, did it again.
*sigh*
At times like this I am grateful for having developed a solid relationship with an editor who seems to like the manuscripts I turn in. She's been pretty darn forgiving of my despicable last-minute-ness, even giving me sanity-saving deadline extensions here and there. Because she can evidently read my mind.
But I hate this. I totally hate the procrastinatory streak in me. It manifests as something like, I dunno, an actual-factual fear of the work, a Gods-damned phobia or something, and if I'm actually virtuous enough to try to start, my mind slides off the work like water off a greased tarp and I sorta fall into web-browsing or forum-loitering or just walking all over Gods-damned Boulder.
Yes. I have finally realized that my tendency to go cafe-hopping during a long day earmarked for writing comes from the subconscious recognition that I can't write while walking. I can knit while walking, oh yes indeed, but not write. Not non-fiction, anyway. Fiction, sure, I can brainstorm storylines, but non-fiction? Oh no. I get three sentences into the brainstorm and then I go all blank and start singing mindless tunes in the key of E minor.
And yet at the same time I get to feel virtuous whilst going for a 5K walk because by the time I get to Amante in North Boulder, hot damn! I'm gonna write! Yes indeedy! I am on my way to Being A Good Girl!
Then I get there, and I drink a Moriarti, rest my tired legs, and read blogs for the four hours allotted to the randomly generated wi-fi password printed on the little Qwest card.
So. There you go.
I am going to collapse now. The insane amount of writing done between ten last night and four this afternoon is matched only by the insanely little amount of sleep I got. So collapsing occurreth. Imminently.
When I wake up, there will be fiction doin's done. I owe a chapter 7 critique to one correspondent and story critiques to him and everyone who critted "Snowflakes". I owe everyone who critted either it or Golden Bridle the putting to use of their critiques. Revisin', we call that. And I need to get chapters 3 and 4 of Bridle ready for critique. And I need to read the stories of all my fellow Borderlands Boot Camp attendees. (Dude, I have totally paid my tuition for that weekend out of my work-for-hire manuscript earnings. I feel like suddenly I'm not lying when I put "WRITER" down on my tax returns.) And I need to crit a story from the local workshop I attend; that's due Wednesday. And I volunteered for yet another face-to-face critique session on an intriguing memoirish sort of treatise on storytelling whose previous version was very nifty indeed. That's due Monday after next. And I really ought to start a new draft of something, maybe the blue hallucinated angel story that's sorta growing out of the memory of an afterimage at Norwood and North Broadway. Hmm.
(Me? Overextend much? Naaahhhhh.... No worries, just a little bit every day until current projects are done and new projects spontaneously generate. You know.)
And then.
And then.
Then two more 15K work-for-hire manuscripts with a July 24 deadline. 1,100 words per day, starting Monday, will get me done by the time my plane leaves for New Orleans on July 22. I'll do this, dammit. I will.