Day 225
Getting back on the wagon has proven to be harder than I thought. It's especially difficult when I had different things pulling me or distracting me. I know, I know. No excuses, and I am not making any. It's all my fault.
It's just that writing is such a lonely profession that not only do I have to do it on my own, I also have to rely on myself to get things done. There are no bosses, no colleagues to push me. There are no deadlines. There are no penalties. It's all just between me and me, and I am the least strict person in the world. "You want to slack off today? Go ahead..."
But. Obviously it has worked before. Before my vacation knocked me out off the wagon, I was doing pretty well. I got over 40,000 words in and finished writing Part One. I'm about 10000 words into Part Two now. And Part Three is about 3/5 done. I guess I am just impatient. I want the first draft done NOW, but at the same time, I am a slacker.
Like I said, I have no excuses. No one to blame and no one to thank either. It's all me. So, the question is: do I want this bad enough? Do I have what it takes to finish this book?
On the other hand, I've had some really awesome dreams lately. In one, I had a complete short story played out: beginning, middle and end, plus themes and characters. That da awesome! Last night, I had another dream with some very interesting plot and characters. I literally woke up mid-dream because I didn't want to lose it. I remember dreaming about "I've got to get up and write it down!" and then I was becoming foggy and in my dreams, I traced back everything to remember all the scenes in my dreams. It's one of the most bizarre things. And I did eventually will myself from sleep to get up and write the notes of my dream down.
Below is my sleep cycle last night (I used the Sleep Cycle Alarm Clock app on the iPhone to record my sleep cycles -- neat little thing). It's surprisingly quite accurate:
Between hour one and 4, I was pretty much in deep, restful sleep. But then you see a spike at around hour 4. That's about 4 a.m. and that was exactly when I had the vivid dream and woke up. I remember looking at the clock after I got up, and it was about 4:15 a.m. I was up for about an hour, then I slowly got back to sleep and had a couple more dreams after that (which I don't remember). Fascinating.
500 words, 43000 words total
140 days and 138000 words to go
It's just that writing is such a lonely profession that not only do I have to do it on my own, I also have to rely on myself to get things done. There are no bosses, no colleagues to push me. There are no deadlines. There are no penalties. It's all just between me and me, and I am the least strict person in the world. "You want to slack off today? Go ahead..."
But. Obviously it has worked before. Before my vacation knocked me out off the wagon, I was doing pretty well. I got over 40,000 words in and finished writing Part One. I'm about 10000 words into Part Two now. And Part Three is about 3/5 done. I guess I am just impatient. I want the first draft done NOW, but at the same time, I am a slacker.
Like I said, I have no excuses. No one to blame and no one to thank either. It's all me. So, the question is: do I want this bad enough? Do I have what it takes to finish this book?
On the other hand, I've had some really awesome dreams lately. In one, I had a complete short story played out: beginning, middle and end, plus themes and characters. That da awesome! Last night, I had another dream with some very interesting plot and characters. I literally woke up mid-dream because I didn't want to lose it. I remember dreaming about "I've got to get up and write it down!" and then I was becoming foggy and in my dreams, I traced back everything to remember all the scenes in my dreams. It's one of the most bizarre things. And I did eventually will myself from sleep to get up and write the notes of my dream down.
Below is my sleep cycle last night (I used the Sleep Cycle Alarm Clock app on the iPhone to record my sleep cycles -- neat little thing). It's surprisingly quite accurate:
Between hour one and 4, I was pretty much in deep, restful sleep. But then you see a spike at around hour 4. That's about 4 a.m. and that was exactly when I had the vivid dream and woke up. I remember looking at the clock after I got up, and it was about 4:15 a.m. I was up for about an hour, then I slowly got back to sleep and had a couple more dreams after that (which I don't remember). Fascinating.
500 words, 43000 words total
140 days and 138000 words to go
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