The Week’s Work So Far
For the past day I’ve been sorting through all the files on my 300 GB external hard drive. I’m prepping it for reformatting to serve as my Time Capsule backup destination disk, so I can set my Mac to initially back up completely then incrementally upon changes. I actually have all those files on my Mac (most of them more current) which is why I only backed up about half of the external music and documents to data DVDs. My external hard drive stuff is about four months out of date, but it’s better to have slightly out of date stuff than no stuff at all. And in fact I am doing this with the intention of being redundant, because I plan to back up the current documents on my Mac to data DVD as well. I added my newer music to the fourth music backup data DVD already.
And I have just realised that I have to back up all HRH’s stuff as well, since we put it on here when he switched computers two years ago. And he has about 10GB worth of files I have to sort out and put on two data DVDs before I can reformat the drive. Sigh.
So far this week, I have:
- done an entire manuscript review and handed it in (there was a bad moment where I thought I had a day less than I did, because I’d typed the wrong due date into my agenda; the day-later deadline was very welcome after the not-much-done day of Monday, when the boy was home)
- got the approval for it and closed the file
- sorted through all 300GB of my external hard drive
- backed up about half of my music to data DVDs (I didn’t bother with the stuff I own on CD)
- backed up the important documents to data DVDs (about half)
- baked foccaccia for lunches
- baked a loaf of bread
- did laundry
- reworked the first five pages of Orchestrated
- wrote about 800 words longhand on the Victorian supernatural story
- had the boy home on Monday, ran errands, went to the library
Now because the heat has finally gotten to me and I can’t focus at the computer any more, I am going to go spin for a while.
Stopping To Think; Or, In Which She Gets Philosophical
We tend to get caught up in our plans.
Plans are important. They give us direction and structure and context. But sometimes we forget to revisit them, to look at them and make sure they still match who we’ve become in the time between making the plans and the now. Because in the same way that adorable kittens become seventeen-pound cats and tiny babies become strong energetic children bound for kindergarten in less than two months and the novels you write take unexpected turns, we change, too, and to expect us to stick to a plan made for someone five years younger is moderately unrealistic. Five years is a lot of living, and a lot can happen in that space of time.
I’m not saying that everyone should scrap all their life plans. To completely reinvent a life plan every few years would be pointless and a waste of energy. But it’s important to re-evaluate, to seriously examine who you are and what you need on a regular basis to make sure that the details still apply. Otherwise, at some point you’ll lift your head and realise that you’re living the life or writing the book you planned out when you were twenty-eight, only now that you’re twenty years older you wish you weren’t.
Would those intervening twenty years be wasted? Not really; life experience is life experience. But it would have been nice to notice that you were changing along the way, and that the life path you had planned out wasn’t flexible enough to match you as you were evolving. It comes down to a question of efficiency, I suppose. And being as happy with yourself as you can be. Tiny changes along the way to match who you are at any given time are more efficient than a drastic life change at a much later date. Drastic changes are rather challenging to pull off; minor shifts are usually easier to handle.
Amanda Palmer, in a blog post wherein she did some self-examination in the light of her recent experience at a Lady Gaga show, said something that really made me stop and think:
here’s the thing.
it sometimes kills us to believe this, but you are ALWAYS free to choose a new path and hop off the one you’re on.
your expectations of yourself can change on a daily basis. it’s FINE.your expectations of YOUR LIFE from when you were 12 years old, 15 years old, 25 years old, they will gnaw and haunt you. no doubt.
every love you left, every love you never chased, every career path you didn’t follow, every instrument you didn’t practice, every time you kept your mouth shut and should have spoken up, every time you said too much.
but none of that exists NOW. it’s gone, over, non-existent.the same way your parents’ expectations haunt you. and your teachers and the noise of cultural expectations haunt you.
all these voices in your head bicker and argue and obscure the real key to freedom:
your ability to stand still and ask:who do i want to be
and what do i want to do
RIGHT. NOW.
?
No, I’m not considering something drastic; I’m more philosophical at the moment than anything else. I just found this interesting in the light of a discussion we’re having over chez Emily’s Stark Raving Cello Blog about regrets and pie charts and difficulty embracing the now. We can change the parts of our lives we’re not happy with. It can be a scary thing to do, yes. I left a perfectly safe job to write, and following my bliss paid off (and yet, as I pointed out over there, I very often do not wish to be doing whatever I am currently doing at any given moment, so a major life change is not a guarantee of eternal contentment). And significant change should never be a whim; life plans need to be taken seriously. But we can look at our lives, ask what makes us happy right now, and embrace it without judgement. We need to accept that past things are past things, stop letting them drag us down, stop worrying about things beyond our control, and start focusing our energy on what we can do instead. Because really, we all need more happiness and less anxiety in our lives.
Can I do all that? I have to be honest; no, not completely. But I can try.
More Astonishment
Another eighteen hundred words written longhand last night.
Yesterday’s total word count: approximately 2,800
At the rate things are going, I’m going to need a proper icon for this story instead of defaulting to the plot bunny ambushed-by-writing icon.
Tuesday Activity Log
Today, I:
- wrote a blog post about yesterday’s writing
- made a hair appointment
- handled an electronic agenda crisis (my iPod Touch ATE MY APP and all the data I’d input in it over the past six months, sob)
- wrote two-thirds of the interview (hello, four solid hours of work)
- uploaded the steampunk cello scene to Cate (only a month after I wrote it, good grief)
- talked with real estate agent (I am very tired of all this — the process and the contracts and the legal deadlines, not our agent, who is brilliant in every way)
- planned some more of the trip (just wee bits left over from yesterday’s huge session)
- made Rice Krispie squares
- wrote about 1,000 words longhand
In Which She Blinks In Astonishment
I edited yesterday’s activity log to reflect the writing I did before I shut down the computer before supper, because while twenty-one hundred words was once upon a time a regular daily output for me, I haven’t really been writing for the past year due to a variety of reasons. Accordingly, I felt it was worth recording for myself. I’ve done a couple of brief scenes this last month, but nothing major.
Well, after I put the boy to bed and had a bath, I pulled my notebook and pen out again, and wrote for another two hours.
Yesterday’s total word count: 4,224.
(Approximately. This is all longhand, after all, and I’m not counting every single word on sixteen pages of longhand. I did the counting how many words per line on half a page, averaged them, then multiplied by the number of lines on the page, then by the number of pages.)
Ceri has characterised this as being tackled by fiction writing. I will gladly take being ambushed by a story. It’s not like it came out of nowhere, though; I thought the initial scene out two nights ago while trying to fall asleep, a result of wondering ‘What would I have done with that situation instead?’ at someone else’s story decision. And it all unrolled, a scene with a different setting and characters and unique backstory, set several months after the different decision I would have made as a storyteller. After a day or so I decided to write it out so I wouldn’t forget it, because I really liked it, and I’m glad I did, because it led to another different scene that followed the first. It’s very in media res, and while I thought it was a cliffhanger ending for something it could very well be the beginning of something else. It would certainly be a very active way to begin a story. I am enjoying it very much.
(Alas, Cate; while this is set in an alternate London, it is not our ladies’ cello society steampunk adventure. Which reminds me, I need to finally upload the scene I wrote a month ago for you. But every little bit helps get me back on the writing wagon, so to speak. Or the writing stagecoach, perhaps, to use a more appropriate metaphor?)
