I finished "Pink Lemonade." Originally I'd written it in third person the day after I'd experienced most of it. My friend Chris and I had gone to Unos, as usual, before the Red Sox game, and...well, you'd have to read the story. I didn't like it in the third person, so I spent a few days revamping it into first person, so Foster's voice could be part of the story. Just sounded too mechanical without him. I finished 99% of it Thursday, then did the rest today, and then spent a few hours more editing it, tightening it, fixing a few discrepancies. Then I posted it to my writers group. Two days before the group meets, awesome group member that I am. After a few comments there, and maybe some more editing, off it goes to pound the internet pavement. That one, and two others I still have to send out yet. The last story I got published, "Hide the Weird," I sent out before my time came around for the group review, so that it was accepted by the magazine, and then the group reviewed it. That was unusual. It's too late to try that now, but I do things--even somewhat ridiculous things--when it's been shown to work. The story wasn't accepted because it was sent out before the meeting, but still...I'll send the next one out before the next meeting...
This is a good problem to have, but it's frustrating to be completing projects and then not sending them out. The Man gets in the way, doesn't he, when you have to create and do the business end of creating? Sounds ridiculous, but it's true--there is a business end to creating. It takes more time, in fact, than the actual creating.
I hope that tomorrow I can finish the job's requirements early, so I can send all that out. And the actual life stuff, like laundry, dishwasher, picking up the entire house? That'll all have to wait. I need an assistant.
I would be very interested to learn how to better organize my time, so that I don't feel as impossibly rushed and frantic as I do--which isn't good for the creating process, nor the business end that goes with it. How do you write a lot, work a very busy day job that is in itself very draining (though rewarding), and yet still meet life's other requirements? I wake up much earlier than I used to, seven days a week, and I go to bed as late as I used to, which, being an insomniac, was always late to begin with, anywhere between 1 to 3 in the morning--to wake up and be at work just after 7. And yet the house, the office, and, well, myself, all need tidying up a bit, all the time, and the work for the day job and for my writing never seems to be completed.
Anyone have any advice about how to better complete things, or to be more balanced with everything?
