Saturday, August 17, 2013

The Change is Coming

by
Scott D. Parker

Nothing major happened this week. Yesterday was Day 82 on my consecutive days writing streak. It was also Day 44 on my mini-streak of consecutive days with 1,000 words or more. I passed the 100-page mark on the new book on Tuesday. I’m up to 137 now. What I’m saying is that this week, like every day since August 1, I’m just producing words on Book 3. I’m just pounding away on the keys and loving just about every minute of it.

The summer of 2013 will always be remembered as the time I finally finished Book 2. What made it possible was the very fact it was summer. My boy was out of school and he slept in most days. Thus, I didn’t have to make sure he was awake and in the shower at a certain time, fed by a certain time, and driven to school at a certain time. I was free, especially on the four days a week I work the day job at home, to write from around 6am to when I clock into the day job, usually around 8am. Nearly all of that time, I wrote on my desk, outside, with dawn breaking and the animals waking up. I know who walks their dogs and when, I know just about the time the sun crests the east roof of my house, putting a glare on the screen, and how to be really, really quiet so as not to wake the family. It's been a magical time, a time consisting of 1.5 to 2 hours of writing time a day. It lets me get the words flowing pretty easily.

For me, that ends on Tuesday. My boy returns to school and my morning writing time vanishes. On that day, and the subsequent days throughout this coming school year, I’m going to have to produce books at a different time of the day. I’m pretty confident that the creation of Book 2 this summer was not a fluke, but I need to get Book 3 written while my boy is in school and we’re in school mode. And then get Book 4 done. And five. Et cetera.

That will be a huge change for me. Option 1 is to wake up at 5am. Not sure I can do that despite me having become a morning person. But it is possible. The only other alternative is 10pm at night. Ugh. The options aren’t pretty and that’s what I need to figure out: When am I going to write?

Tune in next week (and the following weeks) to see how it all shakes out.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Good to see you at the signing today, Scott.