Back in the saddle

As you can tell from the time of this post, I'm finally back to my morning writing schedule. It was a long time coming--almost three months--and in that time, I learned a lot about writing momentum.

The loss of my computer, and the resultant destruction of my schedule, totally killed my rate of production. I guess that shouldn't be a surprise, but the change was so sudden and so drastic, and I wasn't prepared for it. Then, once I did have computer access again, I just couldn't summon up the gumption to get started immediately.

Partly that's because I knew that I had a major trip coming up at the end of January, which would destroy any schedule I managed to get established before then. But it was also, in part, because of what I came to discover about my own momentum.

Keeping up a constant writing schedule is a lot like driving on the highway. You get up to a high speed and maintain it for long periods of time. Losing my computer was kind of like the engine giving out at 75 mph and wiping out in a ditch. Even after getting a new car, it still might take a little while before you feel comfortable getting back out on the highway.

So I've been metaphorically tooling around the city for about a month, and now I finally feel confident that it's time to get back up to speed. But I'm not going to do it all at once. For a few weeks, I'm going to be accelerating up the on-ramp of writing.

To leave metaphor behind for a moment, I need to get my body used to the early schedule again. There are a few short stories I want to write, and others that I want to revise and submit. Then, once all of those small tasks are out of the way, I need to refamiliarize myself with Bryony and her story so that when I start writing again, I can pick up fairly seamlessly from where I left off.

One major questions remains--do I revise any part of Bryony before pushing forward? I'm not going to give a definitive answer on that right now, but the guiding principle in my review will be to worry about the big strokes and not the fine detail. In other words, I'm not going to go around changing a word here or there, but I might decide I need to rewrite an entire scene or chapter.

There's going to be one other change. I'm taking weekends off. That's not to say that I won't ever be doing any writing on the weekends, but I'm no longer going to include them in my schedule and calculations. There are other hobbies that I want to continue with or start, and I need some down time in between writing sessions. I didn't realize how much I missed actually reading, and activity I did very little of during my last writing binge, but which I have rediscovered over the last few months.

So that's the plan. See you tomorrow.