I love this post. Learning about the fireplace video, alone, is a revelation. But I also love the other playful ideas you've offered up. As a career writer and editor who spends all day, every day doing just that (to help pay the bills, not finish a book), setting aside the time and getting motivated enough to work on said book is difficult.
Kinda like being married to a contractor and expecting the kitchen or bath to be remodeled after workday hours or even on weekends. It's not gonna happen.
Your ideas here make the prospect of writing creatively in those off-work hours much more appealing. And that said, I continue to be impressed with your habit of putting pen to paper first (and finger to laptop later). Makes settling into those soft pillows a little easier.
It's really tough when your work and art life drain from the same battery! Your mileage may vary, but I found that the best way to for me to manage my own writing when I was a full-time editor/journalism/marketing writing was to commit to doing my own writing BEFORE work, which admittedly comes with its own challenges (FOMO from early bed and fatigue to name two). But I found that even a short personal writing session made me feel connected to my own work. It also made it easier to dip into the work when I had an opening later in the day. At the end of the day when I normally told myself I didn't think I had energy I found I could find a few minutes to finish that paragraph I left dangling in the morning, and that few minutes often turned into a few more minutes. It was easy to say what use is ten minutes, but if I did ten minutes after work on six days, suddenly I'd found an hour I didn't have before.
Longhand helps, too. After a long day at the computer the prospect of more screen time is daunting, but longhand feels different, and when you're drawing from the same bandwidth--work writing and personal writing are both writing, after all--anything you can do to make them FEEL different can be hugely helpful in making progress where you thought progress couldn't possibly be made. Longhand also comes with the added bonus of giving you a map through the story when it comes time to type it in--I call this the type and tweak draft because I never just type it in. I highlight the lines I'm keeping--I like blue highlighter--and even when I'm only keeping a few lines from a certain longhand page, I'm always expanding and morphing as I go. Longhand is the rough draft while typing is the second draft.
I love playing CDs in the background while I write, as well as sipping my favorite teas. After reading how you inject play into your writing sessions though, I may need to up my game. I used to love writing in coffee shops but decreased that frequency when my kids when to college. Stopped cold with the pandemic of course. Haven't been back yet.
I love this post. Learning about the fireplace video, alone, is a revelation. But I also love the other playful ideas you've offered up. As a career writer and editor who spends all day, every day doing just that (to help pay the bills, not finish a book), setting aside the time and getting motivated enough to work on said book is difficult.
Kinda like being married to a contractor and expecting the kitchen or bath to be remodeled after workday hours or even on weekends. It's not gonna happen.
Your ideas here make the prospect of writing creatively in those off-work hours much more appealing. And that said, I continue to be impressed with your habit of putting pen to paper first (and finger to laptop later). Makes settling into those soft pillows a little easier.
Hey, DeeDee!
It's really tough when your work and art life drain from the same battery! Your mileage may vary, but I found that the best way to for me to manage my own writing when I was a full-time editor/journalism/marketing writing was to commit to doing my own writing BEFORE work, which admittedly comes with its own challenges (FOMO from early bed and fatigue to name two). But I found that even a short personal writing session made me feel connected to my own work. It also made it easier to dip into the work when I had an opening later in the day. At the end of the day when I normally told myself I didn't think I had energy I found I could find a few minutes to finish that paragraph I left dangling in the morning, and that few minutes often turned into a few more minutes. It was easy to say what use is ten minutes, but if I did ten minutes after work on six days, suddenly I'd found an hour I didn't have before.
Longhand helps, too. After a long day at the computer the prospect of more screen time is daunting, but longhand feels different, and when you're drawing from the same bandwidth--work writing and personal writing are both writing, after all--anything you can do to make them FEEL different can be hugely helpful in making progress where you thought progress couldn't possibly be made. Longhand also comes with the added bonus of giving you a map through the story when it comes time to type it in--I call this the type and tweak draft because I never just type it in. I highlight the lines I'm keeping--I like blue highlighter--and even when I'm only keeping a few lines from a certain longhand page, I'm always expanding and morphing as I go. Longhand is the rough draft while typing is the second draft.
I love playing CDs in the background while I write, as well as sipping my favorite teas. After reading how you inject play into your writing sessions though, I may need to up my game. I used to love writing in coffee shops but decreased that frequency when my kids when to college. Stopped cold with the pandemic of course. Haven't been back yet.