…or one of Good?
I spent the day at my dad’s helping him repair some vinyl floating stuff and taking a short boat ride on Claytor Lake. It’s a 5 hour round trip. It was good to see dad and do some stuff together. I woke up with a little cold or allergy-type thing – not a big deal, but enough to cast a weird floating feeling on the day (It wasn’t the boat ride, I swear). I’m home now and we just got our daughter down for the night (maybe). I had originally planned to get to some writing tonight, but I don’t know that I have the attention span to churn out something serviceable. Also, if I stay up late struggling, I don’t get the rest I need and go into tomorrow in a similar state. I thought I might concentrate on getting some good rest and hit it hard in the AM, my normal writing time. That’s my plan.
Would you go for quality or quantity if you were in my shoes? All two of you who read this blog, I’m asking you. I think I can get both tomorrow with good rest tonight.
My best writing time is morning, but because of my job that luxury is beyond me for now. So I write in the evenings and Sunday afternoons.
For me, it’s not so much a matter of quality or quantity, but a matter of maintaining the discipline of writing. There’s been many an evening that I’ve sat at my laptop drooling and half-asleep, but I force myself to make an effort to add something to a chapter, even it’s only a quick edit or a couple of sentences.
Then there are evenings when I’m churning out word after word and 11:00 p.m. rolls around (5:30 a.m. comes early), but I throw all caution to the wind and sail into the night.
I believe I read that Stephen King once said the most important part of writing is to create the discipline to write by writing everyday. When I was younger, I thought that and all other writing advice didn’t apply to me, but then again I didn’t have the passion for writing that I have now. I try to write something everyday, but I am by no means always successful.
Of course, I also have to attend all those other responsibilities that life has given me, and you’re right Jonathan, it’s important to be well rested. I’d rather lose one night of writing that lose two because I pushed myself too hard the previous day.
And when I’m sick, especially with allergies or a head cold? I definitely close shop for the day and dream. I’ve gotten the best material out of those weird dreams I have when I’m sick . . .
Well, I elected to rest. After that blog post, I read about 30 minutes of Quicksilver and called it a night. I managed about 1000 words this morning. Tomorrow I should hit the 50k mark. I feel like things are going well for a first draft – mostly because I am enjoying the process.
I’m at the 35k mark of my re-writes now. It feels like I’m crawling to the finish line, but last night was one of those nights when I had to close shop early. I thought about your post and just went to bed. 😉
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Hi Jonathan, I got here through Teresa’s wonderful blog. Sad to say, I have tended to burn myself out and then loose many a night of writing time instead of just one. lately though, it all depends on how bad the fire is, if I can wait a day to get it out, then I wait. After all, for myself, there is no real deadline, it is all self-imposed.
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