And I’m not talking about coffee . . .<\/p>\n
This week, I began work on my newest YA in earnest.\u00a0 Unfortunately, I missed a day so today, I’m on the job, working to make my goals for the week.\u00a0 Kind of like a piece-worker who hasn’t stitched enough shirts.<\/p>\n
People are always surprised when I call what I do a job.\u00a0 Most people think of artistes<\/em> as fairly unstructured characters, waiting for the muse to tap them on the shoulder. \u00a0 There are lots of apocryphal stories about people like Thomas Mann only crafting a paragraph a day.\u00a0 (A practical impossibility if you take into account how much he wrote.\u00a0 The guy wouldn’t have made it a third of the way through The Magic Mountain<\/span> before he died.)<\/p>\n Writing is work.\u00a0 You want to write?\u00a0 Well, then, it’s a job.\u00a0 Every working writer knows and has done this, whether now, in the heydey of pulp fiction, or back when Dickens prowled the darkest streets in London. (Because, hello, he was a reporter before he made it with Sketches by Boz<\/span>.\u00a0 Dickens knew about work and making deadlines.)\u00a0 Before I started writing full-time, I was working another full-time job.\u00a0 Now this is my full-time job.\u00a0 There are good and bad aspects to it, just like any job.\u00a0 I go through some days not interacting with another soul except, maybe, my cat.\u00a0 Other days, I force myself to get out and about just so I don’t grow up to be one of those people who wanders around talking to themselves . . .<\/p>\n An interesting question at Shore Leave was whether or not writers should give up a job that takes them away from writing.\u00a0 Some people thought you could, others thought you shouldn’t because then you lose touch with the world around you.\u00a0 I can understand that.\u00a0 I also know it’s physically impossible for me to keep my writing to the level I want it if I DO other work.\u00a0 Been there, done that, bought the t-shirt.\u00a0 Not that I don’t daydream about going back to some kind of practice.\u00a0 I entertain that about once a month.\u00a0 Then I lie down and wait for it to go away–or my husband reminds me that I was ALWAYS complaining about not having enough time to write.\u00a0 That, too, is a bogus complaint.\u00a0 There’s time to write.\u00a0 There’s as much time to write as there is to brush my teeth, and I never tell myself I don’t have time for that.\u00a0 The point is, if I did go back to work outside the house, I could write–but my goals would have to reflect my changed circumstances.\u00a0 So, instead of three or four or six hours, I might have two.\u00a0 Some days, one.\u00a0 You adjust.\u00a0 But you don’t ever NOT write.<\/p>\n What’s in a day’s work?\u00a0 Well, I know writers who work until they get a certain number of words.\u00a0 I go for pages, about 12, and I frequently make more.\u00a0 Sometimes less, depending on the stage the work-in-progress (WIP) is in.\u00a0 Beginnings are always hard, and I’m lucky to crank out 8 pages that first day.\u00a0 Then, I cut myself a break and try not to fret, although I’m always fretting, trying both to keep my internal critic at bay (i.e., this book STINKS!<\/em>) and my butt glued to the chair until the work is done.\u00a0 Sometimes I’m done in a couple of hours.\u00a0 Sometimes not.\u00a0 If that means I’m here all day and into the night, so be it.\u00a0 Takes something called “discipline,” which I’ve always had.\u00a0 Believe me, you don’t make it through medical school without it.<\/p>\n Kris Rusch<\/a> has written, along with other articles, an excellent piece on discipline and she is one of the most disciplined writers I know.\u00a0 Worth a look, believe me.<\/p>\n * * *<\/p>\n What I’m reading: Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac<\/em> by Gabrielle Zevin<\/a><\/p>\n An article worth the time: “Watching Whales Watching Us”<\/a> by Charles Siebert (and a nice interview with a Siebert bibliography on Lisa Brown<\/a>‘s blog).\u00a0 Also, take time to listen to Terri Gross’s interview with Siebert and wildlife biologist Dr. Toni Frohoff<\/a>.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" And I’m not talking about coffee . . . This week, I began work on my newest YA in earnest.\u00a0 Unfortunately, I missed a day so today, I’m on the job, working to make my goals for the week.\u00a0 Kind…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-76","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-on-the-writing-life","wpcat-12-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ilsajbick.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ilsajbick.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ilsajbick.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ilsajbick.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ilsajbick.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=76"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.ilsajbick.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":86,"href":"https:\/\/www.ilsajbick.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76\/revisions\/86"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ilsajbick.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=76"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ilsajbick.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=76"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ilsajbick.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=76"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n <\/p>\n