September was a difficult month. Fall allergies raged out of control. Legal wrangling related to the divorce and financial stress made sleep a challenge. T minus 30 days and counting.
I’ve been thinking about writing but not actually getting any done. September broke my 2008 streak of one new first draft per month. Sitting down with enough energy to concentrate and be creative wasn’t happening. I thought about writing. I read. I highly recommend The Savage Humanists, edited by Fiona Kelleghan.
“The Savage Humanists” (Red Deer Press)
I also, finally, read Watchmen. Yes, I admit it. I have never read it before now. I’ll probably have more to say about it another time. I’ll just acknowledge that I understand why so many people were moved by it. The movie is coming out in 2009 (pending the ongoing legal battle with Fox).
I am fairly disorganized and I have a difficult time being productive when my work environment is cluttered. Quite the oxymoron, I know. I write my first (and sometimes second) drafts longhand. I was doing it all in one notebook and flipping back and forth was getting both tedious and ultimately brain-melting. I picked up a couple new spiral notebooks and last night, for the first time in weeks, I got words out. Just shy of a thousand words on the Tesla alt. history story that’s been kicking around since last year’s workshop.
Things aren’t looking any easier in the foreseeable future. October is going to be a busy month. I’ll be attempting to blog on a more regular basis as well as catch up on my writing goals for the year. Final preparation for D-Day, which involves refinancing the house, is ongoing. Then, literally as soon as I’m done at court it’s off to New York City for a tradeshow. NaNoWriMo is also in November. I won’t be officially participating; instead I’ll be attempting to write 50,000 words worth of short story.
Oh man.. NaNoWriMo /is/ right around the corner. Geesh. I haven’t read Watchmen either. Now that the movie is due out I think I’ll hold out till I can watch it… so there’s no room for disappointment (well writing wise). I know how you feel about getting first and even second drafts out on paper first. Trying to do so in a word processor seems too artificial. Good luck on D-Day and refinancing!
I could never write longhand but I respect those that do. It’s a bit too slow and my sentence structure end up looking like a third grader’s. Have you tried any of the OS X programs like Writeroom? I find them much more conducive to pure writing than a regular old word processor.
@Rian: Oh, I’ve used WriteRoom and the like before. When I’m ready to type my drafts up, I use Scrivener. It let’s me organize everything nicely and export it to whatever format it needs to end up in.
Writing longhand may be slower but it’s less distracting and seems more conducive (to me) to the creative process. Everyone’s method is different, though. This one just seems to work the best for me right now.