A Little Writing Time is Better Than None At All

Here it is, a new year, and I'm still not finished with anything. I haven't even finished inputting my corrections for “Crisis of the Mind.” I know I need to get on the stick. But the stick is a short one. I can either write new stuff in the early-morning hours in which I can still some time, or I can input corrections. I'm choosing the former for now. But when one is moving, it gets tough to steal the time at all. And that's what any artist of any profession has to do until they can make their art their profession. Unfortunately most of us will be completely unable to make it our profession. Most of us have to do a day-job to keep our minds inside our bodies instead of on to the next state of existence. Such is the human experience.

I, to compound the fact that I do have to worry about world matters for myself, have a family, small though it is, that I must provide for. Now that the financial needs are being provided for, again gratitude to my Heavenly Father for the job at Novell. Now we are just finishing up the move to our new condominium. We moved in December 27^th last year and are now almost done with our month-long move. We decided to pay the rent one more month on the old place to use it as a glorified storage unit until we can get the stuff moved in that we already have moved into the new place. Living right off the freeway in Murray has advantages too. It's nice that it has cut ten miles out of my daily commute.

I, finally, got twenty quick minutes in to write this morning after I had finished my scripture study because I slept in to 5:55. I need to try and get up at 5:00 to get out by 7:00 to allow myself the writing time I need. I almost missed a whole week of writing because of this move. The daily grind is along the lines of get up at 6:00, because we didn't get to bed until 12:00/1:00 AM just so I don't fall asleep on the way home from work in the car, a crash would suck. I leave for work, as I said, at 7:00 AM. I arrive at work somewhere just shy of 8:00 where I stay until 5:00 PM and after sometimes. If I'm lucky, and other drivers don't do something stupid, I may arrive home by 6:00 PM. Then there is time for dinner, and then we run back over to the old house, depending on if we can get someone to help watch the kids. I think sticking them in Harald's old room with the toys and locking them in is a good idea that way they don't get hurt while we move the last few things. Kori's friend Larry is coming back on Saturday with his truck again to help us get the last few big things out of there.

Regardless, if we're lucky, we get back home in time to get the kids down for their 9:00 PM bedtime and then we clean up and unpack usually to 10:30 or 11:00. If we get any time to talk it's after we're finally in bed and then we need so much defrag time that we'll both read our respective books and magazines until it's too late to do anything else. Then I'm up again at 6:00. Fun life, huh?

I look forward to getting things settled, it will make it so we all can get back into a routine that might help us all get a little more emotionally and temporally stable.

Well...

Well, I made my goal of 50,000 words. I made it three days short of the end of the month. But the search for the day job made it so I actually didn't get much further than 53,700 words for a final count and I would rather not deeply discuss the outcome of the story. I didn't like it. There are elements there that are good, but, I think, somewhere along the way, I lost control of my story and it nose-dived. I only pushed through the downward spiral to make it through my goal. I made it, so there.

Now that I've made it, I have kind of been spinning my writing wheels. A lot of external factors have contributed to that. I did finally land that day job. But it's in South Provo and my wife and I live with our two kids in Salt Lake City. Or we did until just this last Wednesday when we started moving into a three-bedroom condominium. It's nice, the rent is even nicer. And the space is the nicest. But between that move, the holidays, and sickness over said holidays, my writing has suffered. I started this morning, though, new year and all, to work at re-establishing my early-morning writing sessions. I forgot to stretch though, so I'll have to remember to do that tomorrow. But goodness knows hiking the stairs up to the seventh floor with a bag of about twenty-five pounds is stretching and exercising enough.

Today I decided that I have two stories I can work on in an effort to keep the writing wheels turning. After all, according to Bradbury, through quantity comes quality. Although I did decide to re-visit David Morell's section on neuro linguistic programming (NLP) for writers just to help me get a leg up. The two stories that I will work through in this time of dearth of a passionate new idea, have been kicking around in my head for some time: “The Wraith” and an untitled one about an alien abduction. I'll see how they turn out. I wish I had an extra me, one to just read all the stuff I wish I had in my head, and then the me to take care of the problems of daily life until I get my writing career off the ground and become an author. My friend Ken Jennings said that, “...a writer is someone who has completed a story. An author is someone who has had it published.”

Here's to authorship for Ken, me, and anyone else out there who writes. But I don't write for the goal of authorship. I write because I have to, the authorship is just a side goal. But the hope is there as well. Ultimately, I write my stories for myself, and if authorship comes, the I will ride that wave when it hits me.