The rewrites are going well. I finished with Oracle/PeopleSoft on Friday. Had a lot of mixed emotions. But I also had a huge sense of relief. I was free! Free! Well — at least for a week or so, before the new job started.
So I went out for cocktails with some friends, I made a drive-by appearance at a birthday party, then ended up hanging out at bridget_coila and mistymarshall‘s place until 2 AM, playing a silly card game and chatting.
Saturday I worked on the novel, finishing another chapter. Saturday evening I went out to dinner with my brother (who drove up with the new wife from Portland.) Then I went back home and spent the rest of the night on my own — lovely unstructured time that I really needed.
Sunday — I needed more hours on Sunday. I was hating DST. I finished another chapter, worked out, then went to hear Justin King at the High Dive (a bar up in Fremont.) It was a very good show. Though I liked Justin King’s solo work, by the end of the set, all the band songs started sounding the same to me. The band before, though, Reily, was much more to my taste, as they had a huge diversity in both the sound and types of music that they played.
Monday (today) I worked on the novel and finished rewriting another chapter. My goal is at least one chapter a day, and on two days, two chapters, so that I’ll be finished with this level of rewrite by the time I start the new job. I still plan on sending the novel out to first readers by the end of the month. After I finish this level of rewrite I’ll one or two more rewrites. One will involve printing out the book and reading it out loud. The other will be applying the 10% solution to it, getting everything tight. It’s a lot to do in a short amount of time, but I think I can. And if I can’t, well, it just means the book goes out after the first.
I haven’t been around much lately — even less so than usual I’m afraid. The last couple of weeks with the day job were *busy*. This week I’m trying to catch up, but then next week, I’ll be in San Francisco for training for the new job and I’m going to be all kinds of busy again. Maybe once the novel goes to the first readers. . . though I’m planning on using that time for rewriting and submitting six short stories. (Six is just a number I picked, I don’t have six stories in mind at this point. I may do more, since I have more languishing on my hard drive, but I will submit at least six short stories while my novel is out of my hands.)
I hope that everything is going really well for everyone out there in LJ land. I have thoughts about the novel and the rewriting, re-visioning (that is, seeing again) process that I’m doing, but I’m going to save them for another post.
*grin* For all your I am busy still been feeling the Leah love…..
hee! That’s because you can see me in RL, as it were, and not just in the nebulous interwebs. And also because it’s Tuesday, and that means tea!
*grin* For all your I am busy still been feeling the Leah love…..
hee! That’s because you can see me in RL, as it were, and not just in the nebulous interwebs. And also because it’s Tuesday, and that means tea!
🙂 good to see that you managed work and your hobby
I like people carrying out their hobby passionately! I knew you when you sent your adieu in your x-org… I am in India. Would you tell me how you managed to do writing and work? If you don’t mind… 😀
Re: 🙂 good to see that you managed work and your hobby
Sorry for taking so long to get back to this comment!
One of the ways I manage it is by making a commitment to the writing. I have Tuesday nights where I write. I also have the occasional Thursday night where I write. Then on the weekends, I take as much time as I can to write. The writing comes *first* — before the cleaning, before the shopping, before running errands. The writing is a priority.
Also — I have looked at the people and things in my life, and judged each in terms of the writing. Does this activity or that person support the writing? Then I can keep them in my life. If they don’t — they get purged. It wasn’t a quick process, but a worthwhile one, for me.
Then, when I have set up my writing time, that’s all I do during that time. I’m cheating tonight, answering some LJ comments while I’m supposed to be writing, but I’m also writing. I won’t finish the rewrite of chapter 15 tonight, but I’m much further along in it than I was at the start of the evening. Normally, though, writing time is just that. Writing time. It isn’t time for checking email or surfing the net or anything else. My writing time is sacred. So is my home time — when I’m not writing or doing the day job.
Because I work from home, my day job time is actually sacred too. I only do the day job during the hours I’m supposed to be working, I don’t write, I don’t do home stuff. So I keep all the parts of my life rigidly separated.
This method isn’t for everyone. But it works for me. I’d like to get back to writing every day, but that is *not* going to happen at this point, probably not until after September, realistically. But I will finish this novel and send it to my agent — not by the end of May, but by the end of June. I’m determined, and that’s another way I’ve managed to do both.
Best of luck to you and to your own writing and to the day job and everything.
🙂 good to see that you managed work and your hobby
I like people carrying out their hobby passionately! I knew you when you sent your adieu in your x-org… I am in India. Would you tell me how you managed to do writing and work? If you don’t mind… 😀
Re: 🙂 good to see that you managed work and your hobby
Sorry for taking so long to get back to this comment!
One of the ways I manage it is by making a commitment to the writing. I have Tuesday nights where I write. I also have the occasional Thursday night where I write. Then on the weekends, I take as much time as I can to write. The writing comes *first* — before the cleaning, before the shopping, before running errands. The writing is a priority.
Also — I have looked at the people and things in my life, and judged each in terms of the writing. Does this activity or that person support the writing? Then I can keep them in my life. If they don’t — they get purged. It wasn’t a quick process, but a worthwhile one, for me.
Then, when I have set up my writing time, that’s all I do during that time. I’m cheating tonight, answering some LJ comments while I’m supposed to be writing, but I’m also writing. I won’t finish the rewrite of chapter 15 tonight, but I’m much further along in it than I was at the start of the evening. Normally, though, writing time is just that. Writing time. It isn’t time for checking email or surfing the net or anything else. My writing time is sacred. So is my home time — when I’m not writing or doing the day job.
Because I work from home, my day job time is actually sacred too. I only do the day job during the hours I’m supposed to be working, I don’t write, I don’t do home stuff. So I keep all the parts of my life rigidly separated.
This method isn’t for everyone. But it works for me. I’d like to get back to writing every day, but that is *not* going to happen at this point, probably not until after September, realistically. But I will finish this novel and send it to my agent — not by the end of May, but by the end of June. I’m determined, and that’s another way I’ve managed to do both.
Best of luck to you and to your own writing and to the day job and everything.