Author: Scott William Carter

Challenging My Excuses and Other Stuff

I decided I needed to do a reality check on whether my 50% drop in writing productivity since my son was born was really related to that event, or whether it’s just been a convenient excuse.  It’s true that finding time to write isn’t as easy as it used to be, and it’s true that life is just plain harder than it was before, but if I’m waiting for life to get easier, I have a feeling I’m going to be waiting a long time.  I needed to challenge my excuses and see how well they held up under more objective scrutiny.

So I set myself a new goal:  write 1000 words a day for a 100 days for a total of 100,000 words.  I decided I would try my best to hit 1000 words every day, but if I occasionally missed, I could do 2000 the next day to catch up.  The words could be novel or short story words, but they had to be fiction, and they had to be new. 

Well, the jury’s still out on whether I’ll meet the challenge, but I did 13 days for 13,000 words and only had to do a 2000 word day once.  During that time, not only did I work the full-time day job and do all the normal family and household/yard stuff, I also did all the following in that 13-day span:

  • Spent a day helping give my daughter a pony party (with a real pony!) for her fifth birthday
  • Went to the zoo with my family, eating up a Sunday
  • Took an afternoon off and went on a coastal hike with my sister, who was visiting from NY
  • Visited with my father for an afternoon and evening Saturday, who was visiting from Hawaii
  • Spent an afternoon and evening out at the coast guest-speaking at a writer’s workshop

So all in all, a busy time, not crazy-out-of-my-mind busy, but an ordinary level of busy for how my life is now.  What did I learn?  I learned that through it all, I could write at the pace I’d like to be at — a pace that will help keep me in track with my goals.  There were quite a few days where I was writing late in my office, dead tired, but I was able to write.  I produced pages.  I learned that I could write and still have a social life, still have time for books, still have time for movies.  I also learned that through it all, I still wasted gobs of time. 

That last lesson was the most painful. 

So yes, life is harder, no denying that.  But the time is there.  It just has to be used more effectively, which is what I’m focusing on now. 

A few other things:

  • Speaking of that writer’s workshop, I had a great time out there on the Oregon coast.  I have lots of experience talking to groups because of my day job, but I was much more self-conscious talking about writing, but the writers seemed to get something out of it.  Mainly, it was about how to switch agents from a newer writer’s point of view (and from one who hadn’t even sold a novel at the time), but the the conversation ranged all over the place.  Great fun.  And I learned a few things that made it worth the trip all by itself. 
  • John Scalzi has some great thoughts on why YA science fiction/fantasy sells better than adult science fiction/fantasy — and also why writers in YA are paid more than their adult-writing counterparts.  Here and Here.  Great stuff. 
  • Now I know why I’m not happy all the time.  I should be a church-going conservative.  Hmm  . . . Nah . . .
  • Along those lines, a private Einstein letter confirms he really was an atheist, and that he only spoke of God as a metaphor for the laws of nature.  I wish he would have been more clear when he was alive on this matter, as Richard Dawkins has done, but it’s nice to know.  
  • Check out The First Book.  Two new writers up there since the last time I posted, both with great stories about their journeys to being published authors.  How long will I keep doing this?  Who knows, but I’m going to try to keep it up until I’ve done at least 100 of them — which should be about the time my own first book comes out.

Finally, a picture that explains why no matter how many places I visit in this great country of ours, I just can’t get myself to live anywhere else.  This is Cascade Head, where I recently hiked with my sister:

cascade-head2.jpg

Looking for New Socks

Sometimes I amaze myself at the lengths I will go to avoid writing. I often write during lunch at the day job — in fact, it’s one of the most reliable places I can find time to write these days, sadly. Today, when I should have been writing, I was suddenly struck with the dire need to buy new brown socks from the local Bi-Mart. I was halfway to the car before I realized what I was doing.

Yes, it’s true I need new brown socks, but was it really all that urgent? Not really. In fact, one of the things I hate is going to the store to buy one item, because it seems so incredibly inefficient. It was writing avoidance, pure and simple

I still haven’t figured out why exactly I do this. Writing is, after all, something I love. But I have noticed that writing avoidance increases when I’m in that middle part of a book, the part when a lot of the early passion has subsided and the rush I get from writing the end is still a ways off. It’s something I have to guard against. I may love writing, but it can also be damn hard at times, and the harder it is, the more my subconscious mind devises ways to help me avoid actually cranking out the words.

From here on out, I think I’ll refer to writing avoidance as “looking for new socks.”

Of course, writing blog posts can be a form of writing avoidance, too. Sigh . . .

Elsewhere:

  • Check out the The First Book Blog: New York Times bestselling writer Lisa McMann, author of Wake, is up this week. If you enjoy these mini-interviews, consider posting a link on your blog or website. The more web traffic these authors get, the better.
  • Doug Cohen, assistant editor of Realms of Fantasy, has an interesting blog post (and online poll) about writers factoring in whether a magazine accepts email submissions (or only postal ones) into their criteria when they’re deciding on where to submit their work. Frankly, looking at the poll and the comments section, I find it astonishing that so many writers use that as a criteria at all. I can’t say that doesn’t factor into my decision making a little, but it’s waaaaay down the list after such things as 1) how much the market pays, 2) the size of its readership, and 3) how much prestige it offers. But I guess I shouldn’t be surprised at the lengths writers will go to hurt their own careers. If you want your work read, you try to get it into the best market. Period.
  • Have you been reading Andrew Sullivan? If you want some relief from the madness of the mainstream media, look no further than Sullivan’s blog, The Daily Dish, published at the Atlantic Online. I don’t always agree with him, but I frequently do, and his comments during the political season have helped me keep some perspective on this whole silly process.  It’s also made me realize how useless the mainstream media is becoming. 

Friday Links

Two minor things for a cold and damp Friday afternoon here in the Willamette Valley:

  • If you’re into the social networks, check out my Myspace and Facebook pages.  And add me as a friend, if you like.  I doubt I’ll ever be as into these things as some people are, but with a book coming out down the road, I’ve been trying to put a little more effort into my Internet presence.  And it can never hurt to have a few more friends, can it?  Well, unless you’re someone like this guy.
  • Check out the First Book Blog:  the focus is on James Van Pelt, and his book Summer of the Apocalypse.  Van Pelt’s a great example of someone who used a quality small press — rather than a big NY publisher — to great effect.

On the First Book Blog: Misty Massey and MAD KESTREL

Up this week on The First Book:  Misty Massey and her debut from Tor, MAD KESTREL, a tale of magic on the high seas.

A snippet:  “Dennis Wong of Tor was interested, but he wanted to see a rewrite, with another subplot woven in.  I cried for about half a day, then took a deep breath and got busy.”

Read the rest of the interview here:  http://thefirstbook.wordpress.com

Running the First Book blog has been fun.  Not only have I got to interact with lots of fascinating writers, in the process of searching for these writers I’m forced to keep up to date with what books publishers are putting out these days.  Traffic on the site has been steadily increasing, too.  That’s the great thing about the site — the interviews are permanently archived, so hopefully they’ll keep helping the authors even down the road.