Well, actually, it's moving and writing, but I've had a few better ideas lately, and I don't feel that all is lost like I have been for awhile. I've written a short nonfiction piece that I think I'll send out after I move--which is Thursday and Friday. Yup, two days. I'll be setting up an office, clearing a ton of space, and I'll be sticking to a few self-imposed rules. (I'm very excited about setting up this creative environment and writing more.) Among them:
--I'll write for at least one hour every day. After X amount of time, that'll grow to two; then three. I may hope to grow to four, especially on weekends, vacations and summers, but we'll see. Stephen King said in a video for his latest book that he writes for three hours a day now; I just finished reading a Writers Digest interview with him where he said he wrote for four to four and a half hours--in March 1992. I'll be happy with one, and ecstatic with two or three.
--I'll read for at least an hour every day. This reading time won't count into my writing time. In other words, editing my work won't count as reading time. I especially will read books and magazines. I have tons of Writers Digests and Times (just saw Susan Smith); reading those again would be cool--and it'll fire me up.
--I'll write a lot longhand again, and on something that doesn't have the internet. Too much of a distraction! I have an Epson Expert 2000 that'll do the trick. Also a typewriter from the 30s. And I think I have another word processor somewhere. But a notebook--both paper and electronic--will work. Looking forward to that.
--I'll keep track of my ideas, my submissions, and my rejections better. I often go long lengths of time in which I don't write anything or send out anything. Then something comes back and I don't remember sending it out to begin with. Now I'll keep a ledger of submissions. Keeping an Excel spreadsheet and a Word table about them just didn't work for me. I'm a write-it-down kind of guy.
--I'll work out, or walk, or run, or bike more. As reading gets my gears going, so does physically moving. I read an article recently that said that watching an hour of tv every day, on average, takes over 22 minutes off your life. It's not the TV, they say--though that's debatable considering much of what is on--but the slothful lifestyle of those who watch that much TV. It occurs to me that reading can do much the same thing. Some people--not me! not me!--are such vicious readers when they're on a roll, that they're not very active.
--I won't stop writing or reading when I go back to work. This is much easier said than done.
Well, that's it for now. I might not be around for awhile as I move out and move in, and then set up. And then return to work 10 days after I move in. But I hope to produce more writing, here and elsewhere.
