My holiday travels concluded right after New Year's, but I took all of last week off from writing so that I had time to catch up on various life tasks and tackle some "not urgent but it sure would be nice to have this done" projects that there's never time for. That was the theory, anyway. Mostly what I did last week was sleep and read, but I'm not going to complain about getting to do that.
On Monday, I returned to the novel after more than two weeks away. It was nice to get back to it. Sort of. Writing is rarely more fun than reading and napping, and my brain hasn't been enthusiastic about switching out of vacation mode. I've had to force myself to sit down at my desk. And then force myself to stop looking at Twitter. And then to finish the paragraph instead of looking at Twitter again.
But at the moments when my willpower is stronger than my urge to procrastinate, I've put some words down, and they're good words. I made it through a couple of troublesome scenes and into a section that will change relatively little from the previous draft. I'm writing again, whether I want to be or not, and writing is never as horrible as I imagine it will be when I'm faced with the prospect of doing it. I guess I even sort of enjoy it.
Maybe that's why I've chosen to keep plugging away at the work of writing a novel. Oh yeah, duh.
Good Stuff Out There:
→ Jonathan Gourlay sends a dispatch from his time In the Land of the Non-Reader: "After a week of non-reading, I said to myself that I was busy. So busy. Too busy, really, to start a new book. After three weeks of non-reading, my brain felt a bit numb. I told myself that I was working so hard that I couldn’t engage with a book." (Thanks, The Millions!)
→ Jennifer R. Hubbard wraps up her series of authors' "second book" stories by sharing the tale of her own upcoming second novel.
2 comments:
I've just started getting back into the swing of things after the holidays. I look at the pile of new books I received as gifts and think, "Reading is an important part of writing!" and want to go off and read. And I have. Now, though, I'm getting back to writing, so I don't think you're alone :)
Yeah, it's so hard to manage the reading balance. It's definitely important for writing, but it takes time away from writing. And since reading doesn't generally involve the hard work that writing does, when I'm feeling lazy, I'd much rather read!
Good luck to you in getting back to work as well.
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