10 Minute Rule

This is supposed to be about Healthy writing time. I am writing this while also listening to strange time slip stories (building an understanding of how these stories inspire fiction even if they themselves are fiction) which is really one of those things I shouldn’t be doing but tend to on occasion in spite of not having the level of multi-tasking I want to have. I am trying to build that skill in moments, but fewer moments than I have in the past. This post is usually about the past. Turning back to what I’ve done over the years I recognized that I talk about writing time and writing schedules and scheduling itself a lot. The key to healthy writing time, at least for me, is locked in these old posts with new evolutions coming in future ones.

Here’s what I know:

1. Technology is not the answer. Back in 7.366 I argued for the use of tech like Skedpal AI. That ain’t it, folks. These heartless algorithms don’t take into account how you feel or what are the best moments for you to be with the people you love.
2. That brings me to number two: Write when you aren’t trying to make time for someone else. You know what I mean. You know the hours you leave open for people. You know when those people are going to need you or you’re going to need them or at least to be available to them. Ideally, you should sync up schedules so you are working when your partner is working, kids are at school, etc.
3. Gamification is hit or miss. For me it’s often a hit. If you reward yourself for good work, fine. The real key here is to build that discipline in order to help you stay on task with the daily work. I’ve been doing well these last few days.

“I don’t have time to write”

~Every Failing Writer.

Two hours a day is a lot of time. It is not enough time. It is too much time to “give up.” All of these things are true and all of these things are excuses that remain shockingly common to writers. We all have time in our day. We just choose how to use that time differently. A truly useful post from Wait But Why (a much more efficient and better written version of this here ‘ting man) speaks of the 100 block system of time management where you can break down the time you have into 1,000 minutes or 100 ten minute blocks. I’m using one of those blocks as we speak. There are a lot of them and the often go to waist. add up the time you spend in the bathroom (talking to you, fellas), scanning through social media (no, it isn’t research, faker), watching bad media (even that anime you love so much), and just screwing off (like we often just stare at stuff. Really). You can find the blocks of time. Two hours may not even be it for you. I chose that 120 minutes at random as a constant in a mathematical equation, but the truth is that it is a variable. The factors that function into the page per day equation are entirely under your control. I learn more about this every day. I also am realizing how I tend to sabotage myself.

Today I moved my writing hours to more reasonable and manageable calendar slots. This is not entirely fixed and it is not, as I hoped it to be, at the same time every day. My life isn’t built like that and I needed to allow myself to realize that. I will be writing from 2-4 on Monday and Wednesday, because I will have the house to myself. Thursday and Friday I can go from 9-11. Tuesday varies, based on when I need to drop off the kid. The issue with Tuesday is the collision between work, relationship, and writing. I will need to fit the hours in before 10 AM, which may mean splitting the two hours up and or getting up much earlier on that day. This “sacrifice” allows me to get the work in before I know I can no longer.

The key is to be willing to be flexible within yourself and understand your personal limitations, needs, style, and most of all, outside factors. You want to say, “Writing comes first” but unless it pays the bills or there are no bills needing paid or no lover needing loved or no kids needing parented, etc. It doesn’t come first. Hopefully you’ll get to the point where it is your full time job–if that is what you want–and we can have a ten minute talk about scheduling that reality. However, in the meanwhile, the everyday reality of our lives is that writing needs to be scheduled in a healthy and realistic way.

I talked about the real. I’m out of time, so I’ll get to the healthy tomorrow.

Yesterday was a whirlwind New Orleanic experience. I found myself walking miles across a city I am beginning to understand in segments. The idea of that cultural difference was on my mind the entire time. At one point we rode through the hood in a cab, and that entire area stared at our passing. It wasn’t because of who we are. It was because of the reality that people don’t come through there unless they need to and we were clearly out of our area. It felt like parts of the Harlem of my childhood. There were the boys lined up on the steps of a building that was long past condemned. There was the dad standing in the street watching his daughter but also watching for anyone who didn’t belong. There were families walking around and living life. It felt like a community. It felt tight knit and dangerous to anyone who would try to disrupt what was.

I wanted to see more of the city, but the parts I saw made me feel like I could actually enjoy being here for longer stretches of time. The touristy stuff is fine, but the Garden District with its old homes and front porch charm called to me. I even found my favorite coffee/wine shop to write at on Magazine street. This was a successful journey. It has me excited for the next new thing.

Some Thoughts:

1. All things have a season. Will the season of yoga pants ever end? please?

The culture of place is something that I find myself thinking about more and more as I build towards creating new worlds. When I think about place I think about the people and where they come from and what influenced them in a way to make them different from everything around them. There is a bit of bleed between cultures at the boundaries of places. People in New Orleans won’t be like people in Alabama, but closer to the border the similarities become quite apparent I imagine.

Culture is also driven by place in a geographical way. Weather plays a factor. All of these things coalesce to form who people are where tese people exist. It is not a simple thing to design a world based on multiple cultures without understanding how and why existing human cultures exist.

I didn’t write today and probably won’t tomorrow. You gotta give yourself a few off days a week. Sadly, given the nature of the coming Sunday, I may not write then either. I will make every effort to get one hour though. I need to keep the momentum going. I am proud of myself for turning the corner/page and getting going on this new novella. I have a lot of good energy surrounding the work, but it is taking time to fall into the minds of the characters and understand the situation unfolding between them. All story is situational. All story is ultimately about the choices made through interactions with some opposing force. Generally it is an outside antagonist, but it can take many other forms. In the case of this story it is an outside antagonist but it is also a character at odds with himself and his desires. He has to overcome this idea of who he should and should have been in order to realize what it is that he is becoming. I love that construct. Often I think my own life is built around this idea. Writing comes from the self in some fashion always.

Some Thoughts:

1. Short ‘upper post’ leading to a few of these needing to be tagged on. 200 words indicates I am moving much faster than the numbers I said I put out, but the fact is it is way too hard to remain this constant speed of 30+ WPM without slowing to a crawl at some point. My brain log jams. The outside world interferes. Shit happens.
2. Things are happening here in N.O. We are about to attend a Krewe Carvnival–the Krewe of Cleopatra. It will be my first such parade, and I am geeked to experience something new to me.
3. Speaking of the term Krewe… That’s a dope term. Why didn’t New Orleans name their Basketball team the N.O. Krewe instead of the Pelicans?

It is extremely hard to dive into a narrative anymore. I used to do it with such ease as a kid. I used to do it the way kids on TV jump into the water. It tracks then that I slip into the water the same way I slip into any new piece of fiction–hesitantly with worry that the sudden change (from dry to wet, from not cold to dang cold) will overwhelm me; with fear. That fear is largest when I am worried about not knowing as much as I can about the project. It is the fear that holds me back from writing the Justice Engine as we speak and the same fear that has held the Torathae at bay for twenty seven years. Fear should not consume a person. A little bit is valid, but to let it become the driving factor in what and whether you create is silly. What am I afraid of? Not having the answers–the plot. Writing myself into a corner and not knowing how to get out. The story not being good or being too short or being too big for me to handle. I fear more things than make sense. So, I guess I fear moving forward at all.

How do you overcome that fear. To me the answer lies in those caution-laden steps at the start to ever pool descent. Either you go in as slowly as you feel you can, or you accept that fear, leave your feet, and let it happen. I am going to attempt the latter. Today we begin the novella. One hour. 500 words. That is all I can ask myself. Yeah, it sounds more like the creeping in than the jumping and maybe it is such to some people, but to actually set that timer and determine within yourself that this entire span of time belons to this one task is a leap. It is a leap of faith in yourself, your concentration, and your ability to follow through.

I’m doing it. Heck, at the rate I’m churning out data, I may get further than 500 today.

Some Thoughts:

1. I watched the clock turn to 10:50 before I started this. A clean ten minutes. There is something about the last ten of an hour that makes it feel like I am turning into a new moment or mode. It is a beautiful feeling to finish as the hour begins.
2. I need to update my author page badly. This page is public, after all. Someone may like what I say and actually want to bring me in as a writer!

I don’t have a ton of sports stuff to talk about. I’ve been trying to pull back from being so involved in the banter and the media of it all. Like anything else, sports is really centered around this idea of keeping you hooked full time. If I remain hooked full time then I find that I am less focused on the game and more focused on the narrative and the hype surrounding the game. Football is the worst for that. There is not a real break at all. Now its about who is going to the combine and who is getting hyped ahead of the draft. Who cares? Stop making mock drafts, because you don’t know anything. Most of these pundits are generating fulfilling predictions that they use their media cudgel to force on teams–as if a team didn’t draft as they predicted then THE TEAM made a mistake. Sure, teams make mistakes but it generally isn’t because they didn’t go with your guy and thereby damaged your pick reputation.

I had to stop listening to all of it–especially as a Giants fan. I don’t know what will fix the team. Honestly, it comes down to good coaching, flexibility on both sides and a schedule that allows for really beneficial matchups. That truth applies to High School and college as well, where I do have some skin in the game. I want to see these boys become greater success stories. It is going to take a lot for that to happen. It starts and ends with them, of course, but the stuff in between matters.

Some Thoughts:

1. That is more than 84 words… Meaning I can really put more than 500 in an hour even given some breaks in between, but 8.4 a minute average still feels safe. I ought to be able to do that on any given day–even the ones where I really don’t want to.

I’m becoming obsessed with this idea of words per hour and words per minute as a construct of how to write and profit from writing and, perhaps of greatest importance, stay on track and target as a writer. It has me thinking about novels and shorts and planning, etc. Here’s the thing: Yesterday I talked about a novella length, which is usually 18000 (with a novelette being 7500-17,500) to 40k. I am writing a story that figures to be 50k, but still isn’t the 80k I am told to deliver when signing a novel contract. That writing will measure out at 110 hours where as an 80k novel comes in at 160. We are now talking about weeks here. 2 hours a day, 5 days a week means 16 weeks to churn out a novel, given the 500 wds per hour or 8.4 words a minute. We established that my speed is somewhere in that realm–given that in ten minutes I can churn out anywhere between 60 and 600+ words. All of this is math, but none of it takes into account the mental side of things. When I woke up at 3 AM all I was thinking about was that side. Eventually, I rolled out of bed and found this:

When typing something that I am rewriting/reading from I type 30 WPM with 75% accuracy. This argues that I am faster making crap up than I am when otherwise applying hand to key. Part of that argument suggests that the average length of these posts ought to be 300 words. This also argues that there are many a night when the words burst right out of me and many a night when the words must be dragged out as though clinging to the sides of my brain for dear life. ~3.291

This wasn’t the only time I spoke on the subject of words. I found that I did speak specifically to the non mathematical side of the situation in a separate post:

It is far easier to write about what is unfolding in your life. The realism and depth of character is far more genuine than some contrived fantasy steeped in years of reading Dragon magazine and hacking at trees with swords.  ~ 1566

Here I really leaned into the idea that it is in fact easier to write when you are writing from feeling. This is why some posts are long and others quite short. This combination of factors is what I need to take into account in the equation of how long it takes to write as well as what I am indeed writing. The Shadowrun novella is about stuff I know. It is memory mixed with old story intentions that are unfulfilled. It will go fast–perhaps faster than 110. The Justice Engine will not. I’m not there yet. It is building, painfully slowly, in my head. Hopefully I will be ready for it in 110 work hours…

Not a cohesive string of thoughts in my mind today. Instead I’m going to focus on…

Some Thoughts:

1. Unintentional ASMR is a much purer form of the art. Seriously, the internet is loaded with sex-driven ASMR in which scantily clad women whisper suggestive things. How is that supposed to be relaxing? I’ve been into just random interviews with people whose voices are ‘right’. These can be male or female. It is more about tone, speed, and cadence.
2. One really good example of the above is a video showing the Alexander technique as shown by Diana Devitt-Dawson. She has the vibe. Not quite Bob Ross level, but good.
3. Self-haircuts are terribly difficult. You cannot know how difficult until you realize how madly you’ve mangled the back of your head. I’m going to give it another shot this evening and see if the Lady Talis can tell if it looks good. No, I won’t ask her to do it. Never.
4. Yes, it is stupid not to ask. Freedom means having the right to be personally stupid.
5. I finished the office upgrade. The new look means a movement of the C64 keyboard (which will still be upgraded to use as a keyboard), an additional low shelf replacing a short table. This gave me more storage and surface area. Now I am excited about being able to keep this space clean.
6. It is extremely cowardly to direct my attention to yet another Shadowrun novella–a non contracted one at that! Nah, I’m still doing it though. Scared of the Justice Engine. I’ll just build up more steam and further the daily habit with this ‘easier’ piece.
7. It is easier because I know the story. I already have a solid outline and pieces of chapters. I can knock this out, given the argument of hours to words, in 110 hours. That’s solid time for a 55,000 word novella. I ought to be paid 5500 for such work. Sadly, novellas do not get that kind of money. I could sell it through the holostreets interface on drivethru rpg for a few bucks and see if I recoup the hours. More important than the pay for this is the proof of concept that this works.
8. Turns out this minute per post thing mostly works, but some of these entries are taking a bit longer to think and thus type through than others. Some less. The speed of words is a curious thing. This post is over 400 words for example, which argues my processing to typing per minute speed is under 7 words a minute, which sounds pretty darn lousy. I’m going to need to get back to being better at processing.
9. I think going back to daily exercise is really going to help me with that process. More on the exercise to mental function thing tomorrow…

I think I am dodging a particular novel. To be clearer: I am.

Yesterday I restarted work on a modern novel that I am struggling to find the narrative thread for. I have a banger idea and some solid side character concepts. I even have the thread of a protagonist–though I remain uncertain about writing a female protagonist though I truly feel like this is her story. I got a good amount of outlining and reconnecting in. Then, as I was cleaning the office and putting away old work, I stumbled on an unfinished novella and instantly decided to finish that instead. The novella is Shadowrun based and as such familiar and easy. It is the novel equivalent of low-hanging fruit given how far along it is and how well I understand the scenario and the motivations. Everything I do not know about the modern story, I know about the Shadowrun novella. So, I convinced myself in principle that it makes more sense to finish the SR story and have that ready to push out to publication than it does to tackle this other story I’ve been dodging for 5 years.

I am a punk. There, I said it. I am running from the story I don’t know how to write because I am afraid of failing at it when I know it can and should be so very very good. This is movie rights type stuff and I am selling the entire bag. Fear, then, is the focus of this ten minute post. I don’t wish to sound preachy, but I personally realize what fear can do to a writer. I am watching it happen in real time. I am watching it hold me back from what could be the start of a new path of writing for myself. What is it I am afraid of? Well, I am presently reading Seveneyes by Neal Stephenson, and it is loaded with incredible science, ideas, and world building. Yet, he entirely bungled the character story. He’s writing women –largely as the POV characters– that I cannot accept as being anything more as an insult to women on a psycho-sexual level. The narrative thread is more milieu than character story, which is probably the point, but so far from what I want to do and so much exactly what I am afraid of doing to my own work. All of that fear pushing me back from the keyboard makes me a punk.

I think a lot of writers are punks. We get scared to do different things and lock into doing what we are good at. If you want to be more than genre. If you want to tell relevant stories, you need to embrace that fear and keep going. I’m going to do that.

Right after I knock out this novella.