So, What Have You Written Today?

This age of pandemic, quarantine, or whatever you want to call it (I think we are going to have to come up with a name for this period. Any ideas?), seems like a good opportunity to write. You are home. Everything is closed so there are no distractions. Well . . . not so much. My job has not closed. I am not working from home. My worksite and hours are pretty much the same as normal. There are less people in my office, as about half of them can work from home. My job doesn’t really allow me to work from home, at least until our IT department decides to let me take equipment home and have full access to the network (not happening).

So, there is no extra time for me. But it is still true that there are fewer distractions. My wife and I can’t go to movies or plays, or out to eat. We can’t just pop in the car on a Saturday and go on a road trip to one of our favorite places. So, in that respect, I am spending more time at home. But it is amazing, the human capacity for finding ways to waste time. Reading, watching TV, doing puzzles, connecting with friends or family, it all lures me away from writing. I shouldn’t say waste time. It’s not all wasted time. I have to read. You can’t be a writer if you are not a reader. And going for walks or other exercise is important. Still, there are many hours when I could be writing that I find a way to procrastinate around the house.

I have done some writing. I haven’t been a total slouch. I have finished three short stories in the past two months, and there are these blogs, and I have poked around at some other writing projects. It is just that, I can see that it is not as much as I might have accomplished. Setting aside a time for writing, I mean, dedicating an hour here or there to writing is important if you want to get anything done. I have found that when I dedicate a specific time for writing, I will write. Don’t wait for the muse to come, just write. The muse will take care of herself. But I am not always as good as I should be at setting that time aside.

I am also waiting for responses from the three short stories I sent to various places. But during the great plague (seriously, come up with a new name for me, please) responses are greatly slowed. I can’t even know for sure if anyone is even working at these organizations. Anyway, I am not going to worry about it. Move on to the next project. Maybe an epic fantasy series . . . hmm.

(My novel Star Liner, is now available in paperback or as an e-book through Amazon and other online sources).

Link to Star Liner

Comments

A Child of the . . .

What was it like to grow up as a child in the 90s? How about the 1940’s? Thinking about a child growing up in each different decade, conjures up images in my mind. But that is all they are: images. I was a child in the 1960’s. I can tell you what it felt like to be growing up in the 60’s and 70’s, but what it felt like to me is not what the history books remember. History will tell you the 60’s was about the Viet Nam War, civil rights, and the space race. The 70’s was Disco and Watergate. I remember being aware of all of those things, but to me this era was about finding time to play with my friends, something I probably share with a child of any decade. It was about navigating the social intricacies of school. It was about the Beatles, Three Dog Night, The Moody Blues, The Animals, Jefferson Airplane. It was Bullwinkle, the Wonderful World of Color, and Ed Sullivan. There are things that a kid pays attention to that the grown-ups don’t. Then there are things the adults ...

Second Wind

You have heard about athletes getting their second wind? It is not that they feel better, that they are warmed up and ready to run more easily. It is not psychological (at least, not all psychological). No. There is an actual physiological truth to a second wind. It all has to do with respiration. When I say respiration, I am not talking about breathing. Respiration is a biochemical process that happens at the cellular level. It is how the cell gets energy. There are lots of chemical processes that are constantly going on in each cell, and those processes require energy. Without a constant feed of energy, the cell will die. The more demands there are on a cell, the more energy it needs. For example, every one of your muscle cells need more energy when you are running. In fact, you won’t be able to run if the cells don’t have sufficient energy for it. The energy currency of the cell is a molecule called ATP. You may have heard that sugar is how our bodies get energy, wh...

The Outsider

I am reading The Outsider by Stephen King. The first 150 pages or so I found disturbing. Not for the reason you might think. It is not scary, not creepy in a traditional horror way, but disturbing in a tragic way. The first hundred to 150 pages is tragedy on top of tragedy. The most disturbing thing to me (it is disturbing to me anytime I encounter it in any story) is a false accusation. A man is falsely accused and may well be convicted of a horrific crime. That kind of thing disturbs my soul. It makes the whole world seem wrong. I have always been disturbed by stories with that kind of thing. And why not? It happens in real life too. That makes it all the more horrific. In the Jim Crow South, all you had to do was make an accusation against a black man to set the lynch mob in action. No need to bother with a trial. But even if there was a trial, the outcome was a foregone conclusion, innocent or not. We see Vladimir Putin inventing charges against people and they get locked up...

A speculative mind

Search This Blog