One thing
I sort of wanted to record my feelings right now about my time spent writing full time.
Right now (May 2015) I have spent the last four months working full time on me novel. Full time meaning: five days a week, three to six hours a day. In all honesty most days I only spent three or four hours working, but it was a solid three or four hours. There were a few days where I got up to six or eight solid hours, but those were rare.
I've been working in this novel since about Sept. 2013. I started it around the same time I submitted my last novel to publishers (it was not published). For the first year I was mostly just feeling out scenes, trying to get the plot together et c. I started with a few ideas in mind: a secretive and hypocritical Federal morality bureau, a teen pop star that is destroyed by here fame, a character that sinks into madness and worships the pop singer and believes she is a goddess and the immolation of the pop star. There were a number of minor points as well.
For the most part I was writing this before work in half hour or hour long bursts. At the time it felt like it was all moving along really slowly and I was sort of frustrated. I sort of had a few points in the middle of the novel but it was taking a long time to connect them and I didn't really have the beginning or the ending either which I like to establish early on.
I lost my job in January 2015 and after a little while got into writing full time. I had done this before between Jan and Mar 2013 and so got into it pretty easily in 2015. I wrote pretty steadily from between the end of Jan and April or so then took the 500 page manuscript, ran one pass of cuts, removing about 100 pages, then one pass of organizing sections and other pass of formatting, proofreading, writing connections and little new content and reorganization.
In the middle of MAY I had a manuscript that was ready to be shown to beta readers or a developmental editor.
I've hesitated to call myself a writer for a long time. I spend a lot of time writing, or have spent a lot of time writing, but it seems like sort of a pretentious thing to do IMO especially if you haven't published a novel. In a similar way I've been sort of uneager to discuss my novels, especially with people I don't know well because I've assumed they would be learning projects rather than publishable material. I've tentatively started to mention my writing to people I don't know well and discuss the plots of my novels but I still feel sort of strange doing it.
I really love the process of writing (and to a lesser degree editing) probably more than any other work that I have done. I hesitate to call it work because it seems like sort of a ridiculous thing to call it. Regardless sitting in a chair for a few hours just putting words down onto the screen is really enjoyable and fulfilling. I really could see myself doing this for the rest of my life if I could find a way to make money from it.
It is one of the few things that I sort of like feeling lost in, where I enjoy sort of sitting there and having no idea what I am supposed to be doing. I enjoy the feeling that I can just do whatever I want, come up with whatever I want, and get a way with it. I really like the feeling of just writing and hitting the flow where the ideas and words coming out of me sync up with the movement of my fingers and I am just sort of pouring words out onto the page. Writing is probably the only time or activity where I have been able to reliably reach flow, consistently and with not a whole lot of effort.
In a little more removed and abstract sense I really like the feeling that I am sort of participating in this really old and worldwide tradition or practice, like I am doing something that a lot of really, really smart people have done before. It makes me feel sort of less alone I guess.
It's cool too because even when things are looking the worst, when I am having a hard time writing or just swamped with my sense of failure or all those things I can sort of remember what I am spending my time doing and it sort of forces me into a better mood. Like I just have to remember that I am just spending my time writing and I feel significantly better.
Right now (May 2015) I have spent the last four months working full time on me novel. Full time meaning: five days a week, three to six hours a day. In all honesty most days I only spent three or four hours working, but it was a solid three or four hours. There were a few days where I got up to six or eight solid hours, but those were rare.
I've been working in this novel since about Sept. 2013. I started it around the same time I submitted my last novel to publishers (it was not published). For the first year I was mostly just feeling out scenes, trying to get the plot together et c. I started with a few ideas in mind: a secretive and hypocritical Federal morality bureau, a teen pop star that is destroyed by here fame, a character that sinks into madness and worships the pop singer and believes she is a goddess and the immolation of the pop star. There were a number of minor points as well.
For the most part I was writing this before work in half hour or hour long bursts. At the time it felt like it was all moving along really slowly and I was sort of frustrated. I sort of had a few points in the middle of the novel but it was taking a long time to connect them and I didn't really have the beginning or the ending either which I like to establish early on.
I lost my job in January 2015 and after a little while got into writing full time. I had done this before between Jan and Mar 2013 and so got into it pretty easily in 2015. I wrote pretty steadily from between the end of Jan and April or so then took the 500 page manuscript, ran one pass of cuts, removing about 100 pages, then one pass of organizing sections and other pass of formatting, proofreading, writing connections and little new content and reorganization.
In the middle of MAY I had a manuscript that was ready to be shown to beta readers or a developmental editor.
I've hesitated to call myself a writer for a long time. I spend a lot of time writing, or have spent a lot of time writing, but it seems like sort of a pretentious thing to do IMO especially if you haven't published a novel. In a similar way I've been sort of uneager to discuss my novels, especially with people I don't know well because I've assumed they would be learning projects rather than publishable material. I've tentatively started to mention my writing to people I don't know well and discuss the plots of my novels but I still feel sort of strange doing it.
I really love the process of writing (and to a lesser degree editing) probably more than any other work that I have done. I hesitate to call it work because it seems like sort of a ridiculous thing to call it. Regardless sitting in a chair for a few hours just putting words down onto the screen is really enjoyable and fulfilling. I really could see myself doing this for the rest of my life if I could find a way to make money from it.
It is one of the few things that I sort of like feeling lost in, where I enjoy sort of sitting there and having no idea what I am supposed to be doing. I enjoy the feeling that I can just do whatever I want, come up with whatever I want, and get a way with it. I really like the feeling of just writing and hitting the flow where the ideas and words coming out of me sync up with the movement of my fingers and I am just sort of pouring words out onto the page. Writing is probably the only time or activity where I have been able to reliably reach flow, consistently and with not a whole lot of effort.
In a little more removed and abstract sense I really like the feeling that I am sort of participating in this really old and worldwide tradition or practice, like I am doing something that a lot of really, really smart people have done before. It makes me feel sort of less alone I guess.
It's cool too because even when things are looking the worst, when I am having a hard time writing or just swamped with my sense of failure or all those things I can sort of remember what I am spending my time doing and it sort of forces me into a better mood. Like I just have to remember that I am just spending my time writing and I feel significantly better.
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