It’s Okay to Adjust Your Goals

by
Scott D Parker

Remember a few weeks ago when I wrote a post about finding time to write? The thrust of the piece was that there are lots of little chunks of any given week to devote to writing. I stand by that assertion, but two things happened in the past week. I realized I wasn’t leaving time for all the other things an indie writer needs to do, and I was getting worn down.

When do I edit my stuff? When do I create covers for my stories? When do I do the website upkeep? These activities are crucial to being an indie writer/publisher in 2022 and I simply wasn’t giving myself time to do any of it. Why would I? Doing those things meant I would write less.

But, but, but I have a minimum word count of 1,000 words. How am I supposed to do all that other stuff and still get in my thousand?

I’ve been trying and doing reasonably well. Actually, that may not be entirely accurate. I have been working in the editing and the cover creation, but doing it by sacrificing sleep. The Olympics didn’t help because of the time zone difference, I’d be up watching live coverage prime time through 11pm yet still getting up at 5am. That, of course, wouldn’t last, but it crystalized just how much time in the day I had at my disposal. It is finite and there are things I need to do, and keeping myself healthy is high on the list.

But what about that minimum word count? What about hitting that thousand? Well, if the words are crap and you’re just writing to hit a number, then what’s the point? I intuitively recognized my internal self was stretching out scenes just to meet some arbitrary number. For example, the short story I’ve been working on is nearing 10,000 words. Are they all needed? A critical edit will tell me the truth, but there’s a sense I’ve been padding the story to reach that 1,000/day threshold.

But to do this, to accept that I’d be doing less in the given time allotted to me, I’d have to give myself permission to downshift and try something else. That’s a big mental hurtle for many of us, myself included. We want to be super productive, but if that productivity either ruins our health or delivers sub-par writing that you’re going to have to fix anyway, what’s the point?

Better to be efficient even at a slower pace than the opposite.

So I gave myself permission to drive the writing career at a slower speed. My goal is to create better content at a consistent pace without sacrificing my health, both the body kind and the mental kind.

What also helped me reach this conclusion was this week’s post from Kristine Kathryn Rusch. She links to an article ostensibly about “Covid Cloud” and how we can overcome our concentration issues, but the author, Jessi Gold, makes a point about doing less. “Normalizing doing less feels uncomfortable, vulnerable, and might even make us feel like a failure. This is because we often measure our success by our productivity.”

Yup, that was me. And it’ll still be there, truth be told, but I am trying something different. Still writing everyday, but allowing myself time to breathe and do the other things required of me, like re-reading a novel to determine next steps.

Do y’all ever have moments like this? What do you do?

Working Out and Writing: The Obvious Revelation

by

Scott D. Parker

Today, my wife and I turn twenty-two and we have reached that stage in a marriage when we get joint gifts. 

My wife is an accomplished jewelry artist (her website) so from the jump, store-bought jewelry was off the table, a thing that's both more a blessing than a curse since she can dream up anything she wants and just make it. Moreover, we are blessed with my full-time day job so we really lack for nothing. 

So we opted for a joint gift this year: a rowing machine. It's a svelte little ditty that sits adjacent to our entertainment armoire in the TV room. It folds up with not in use, and there is room right in front of it for me to put my Chromebook in easy viewing range so I can follow along with the YouTube workouts I'm following.

For me this week, I've been doing my rowing exercises first thing in the morning. I wake, put on the workout clothes, and hop on the machine. Having never really worked out on a rowing machine before, this is Week 1 so I'm doing one of those beginner workouts. It's challenging enough to leave a thin sheet of sweat on me as I fold it back up and head on over to the kitchen table and bring up the latest novel-in-progress. With hot coffee next to me, I start writing.

And boy what a surprise I got this week.

Those ten minutes on the rowing machine not only woke me up way better than coffee, but it did so by getting my heart pumping and the blood flowing. Look, I know that's obvious, but before this week, I've never done a workout and a writing session back-to-back. It's an eye-opener.

With my body fully awake and ready for more--I'll be doing a longer workout next week after I get used to the technique of rowing--the only outlet I have is the imagination of writing. And the creativity pours into me and onto the screen.

As the anecdotal evidence was revealed to me this week, I remembered one of the DVD extras on season 1 of Castle. Stephen J. Cannell took actor Nathan Fillion through what a normal day for Cannell the Writer is like. A key part of his daily routine is working out. 

I pump iron and do push-ups and pull-ups everyday, but it's the cardio workout right before a writing session that really enlightened me. I rarely need any outside prompt to sit at the keyboard and create stories, but I certainly have a new process I'm excited to keep trying. I can also imagine that day when the story isn't flowing as seamlessly as it should that I jump on the rowing machine and let the body do the heavy lifting and get the blood flowing while the brain rests. I suspect it'll clear the cobwebs pretty darn well.

How about you? Do you combine a workout and writing session?