just a few words

August 14, 2008 Leave a Comment

I have to face it: my time is at a premium right now.

When the kids are up and about (that’s from about 8 am till 9 pm), I’m busy nursing, diapering, schooling, playing, sporadically cleaning, fetching this and carrying that, mediating sibling squabbles, admonishing, disciplining, reading aloud and once in a while, cooking. Often I’m doing two or more at the same time (before you ask, I have not, as yet, mastered doing *all* of these things simultaneously). After the baby goes down between 9-10 pm, I have some time to do uninterrupted cleaning or take care of personal needs, such as taking a shower. Even then, I’m “on call” for night feedings. Oh, and I need sleep, too.

Needless to say, my writing time is limited.

I used to be one of those people who couldn’t (or wouldn’t) write unless I could be assured of having an hour or more block of time to slip into The Zone and produce a lot of wordage. Since now the choice is between writing a little and not writing at all, I’ve started to use those 10-15 chunks of time I can steal from the rest of my day, which has netted me a daily few hundred words.

The quality of those words is not important to me right now: what I want is to create a habit of daily writing, a habit so ingrained that I feel antsy if I haven’t written all day. I’m pleased to say that tonight I did write, after having resigned myself to not doing so since I had a lot of cleaning to accomplish (I’m also pleased to report that the cleaning got done, too–go, me!). And the writing happened even though I was typing one-handed and had a sleeping baby on my shoulder.

Just a few words, but I feel darned good about them.

And tomorrow I’m taking a guilt-free evening off to hang out with my good friend and watch a movie. Writers just wanna have fun *grin*.

Filed Under: personal, writing process

finally finished

August 14, 2008 2 Comments

No, not the story, but this book that I’ve been reading for the past three weeks (a long time for me): Adams vs. Jefferson: The Tumultous Election of 1800 by John Ferling. It’s one of those books that are so densely-written that you can only take in five or so pages at a time. David wondered why it didn’t make my BLiTS List (short for List of Books I Abandoned Because Life is Too Short). That’s because, as a new citizen, I’ve made it a personal goal to learn about American history. I’ve been reading about the American Revolution and the early years of the republic for little over a year now. It sounds more impressive than it actually is–it takes me a while to get through books like, say, David McCullough’s John Adams which is a huge (but surprisingly entertaining and definitely informative) tome. I must say that I’m enjoying the process; reading different historians’ take on the same events and people is giving me a better grasp on the history of those times.

I expect that some of my fiction is going to be influenced by this course of study. So much fantasy tends to be boring when it comes to government: either monarchical or oligarchical. It would be interesting to explore the ideas of the American Revolution in a fantasy setting.

Next up is Ron Chernow’s Alexander Hamilton.

Filed Under: reading