Runic Progress Report -- Accountability

This is called public accountability. I hear a lot of big companies do something similar: board meetings, voter meetings, earnings reports, etc. Call it what you will. It's a rather ingenious way to motivate yourself. After all, if you know you're going to have to give an account for your actions, you'll likely follow through on goals and promises that you've made to yourself that pertain to those actions.

So that's what we have here.

Two things I want to say tonight:

1. I've "finished" the outline for my rewrite of Runic. Yes, it took way too long. I was travelling during the weekend, as you noticed. Work doesn't happen when I'm travelling.

As far as the outline goes, though, it's looking good. An intriguing opening, a solid enough ending, and a couple twists and developments in the middle. The middle bits will certainly need the most work, of course, but that's always something that I seem to work on during the actual process of writing. So...problem for another day.

With the outline finished, though, I should be almost ready to start in on the actual prose. I'm going to take the rest of this week's writing sessions to work on some much-needed worldbuilding and character development, that way I won't have to bog myself down with on-the-fly creation and/or fact-checking when I'm trying to crank out multiple thousands of words each day.

...which brings me to my second point.

2. My goal is to finish the first draft of the Runic rewrite by the time I leave for midterm break on October 12. That means, if I start writing sometime between Saturday and Monday, I'll have just around a full month to expand my initial concept from the 2009 rough draft into the bone structure for this year's edition. There's at least twice as much story and probably four times as much eventual plot involved in this rewrite. So...yeah, quite a bit to churn out.

That's my goal. This is me being held accountable. Let's see what happens, folks.

Work and Travel

Just a quick observation here before I turn it in for the night.

I've discovered that traveling is the bane of productivity. While traveling, it is truly impossible to get any work done. Sure, you can have some lofty goals for what you might do with "all that free time," but you and I both know that it's not going to happen. You're busy. You're keeping track of things, you're taking in new sights, you're connecting with people. There's a lot going on. It's understandable.

I used to think that, since I'm a writer, I could take my work anywhere. Anywhere. Such an all-encompassing word. All I need is my computer, right? Maybe a book or two. A few notebooks, pens, and other physical outlining tools can help. But really, in the end all I need is my computer. (Okay, if we're being really minimalist, all we need is a pad and writing utensil. But seeing as I'm talking about myself, primarily, I'm going to be honest and simply say that I need my computer.)

I don't think that anymore.

I used to get upset about traveling a lot, because I would always set these lofty goals (do I ever set non-lofty goals?) about what I could or would get done while I was gone. Then, when I didn't meet those goals, I would be really disappointed and upset with myself.

I don't do that anymore either.

Having done a lot of traveling (as you all know) during the past six or so months, I've been given a lot of opportunities to be at peace about this lack of productivity. It still annoys me a bit that I lose a day here and there (like today) or a week every now and again (like WorldCon) to travel opportunities. But it's a loss that I understand much better now than I ever have in the past. As much as I love writing and want to write, I'm slowly agreeing (with myself) that I wouldn't want to do it if it meant I'd have to be chained to the desk every day and would never have a chance to travel. It's just not healthy.

Speaking of unhealthy...it's time for sleep. For real.

Here We Go Again

Whoops! There goes another week without blog posts. (Probably longer than that even...) Sorry about that. As I mentioned at the end of the WorldCon series, I came home for about 36 hours before turning around and leaving for school. Not much room for writing in that kind of a time frame.

I am back on schedule now, however, and semi-regular posting should resume as the semester wears on.

A few notes on what's coming up: