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Thursday, April 10th
Apr. 10th, 2014 11:00 amThe Daily Report
Yesterday, I stumbled near the end of the day and ended up a little bit short of what I consider to be the safety margin for the day before a chapter is due. In thinking about how it could have prevented, I realized I've become hidebound about my process.
Now, the process is important. It gives structure to what I do. But when the structure confines rather than supports, it's harming rather than helping.
There are two traps I've fallen into here.
One is the idea that the four day writing process should always be four days. When I decided to stick with a predictable weekly schedule, I considered that it would give me an extra day each week to absorb the shocks of life... if something happened on one day, I'd have another day to make it up. I didn't consider ever using it in the matter of course to spend another day writing when a chapter just seems like it would need/benefit from it. I don't want to routinely take five days for a chapter because I like the padding and they don't all take that, but I need to adjust my thinking to see five days as an option rather than a failure.
The other is getting too locked into my blocks of time, particularly the idea of keeping them at more or less the same length every day and always giving them over to different things. I almost always start my last block at the same time in the afternoon, and it's almost always Tales of MU. And that's almost always enough. But for the day that I call the "major writing day", the day where my highest goal is to have the chapter functionally done and my fallback goal is to have it doable with one more working day, it just makes sense to start earlier and devote more time for it.
There's a reason I don't just throw an eight hour block of time at each chapter, and that's because it's just not fruitful to force things. But there's a lot of ground between "the entire day" and "one block at the end of the day".
So, that's going to be two adjustments to my work process: I'm going to start writing earlier in the day on day 3, and leave open the option of making day 4 into another day 3.
The State of the Me
I'm pretty sure I was asleep before 2:00 a.m. last night. I slept through my alarm today... my phone got buried in the blankets, which tends to muffle it. But I woke up feeling pretty good, so I'm inclined to think I needed it.
Plans For Today
Block 1 is going to be spent... kind of warming up. It's a slow wake up day. I'm going to be doing some writing exercises, and some introspection.
Block 2 and 3 are going to be Tales of MU. Given that I don't want to push this chapter back a day, rather than just starting block 3 earlier, I'm giving it most of the day.
Yesterday, I stumbled near the end of the day and ended up a little bit short of what I consider to be the safety margin for the day before a chapter is due. In thinking about how it could have prevented, I realized I've become hidebound about my process.
Now, the process is important. It gives structure to what I do. But when the structure confines rather than supports, it's harming rather than helping.
There are two traps I've fallen into here.
One is the idea that the four day writing process should always be four days. When I decided to stick with a predictable weekly schedule, I considered that it would give me an extra day each week to absorb the shocks of life... if something happened on one day, I'd have another day to make it up. I didn't consider ever using it in the matter of course to spend another day writing when a chapter just seems like it would need/benefit from it. I don't want to routinely take five days for a chapter because I like the padding and they don't all take that, but I need to adjust my thinking to see five days as an option rather than a failure.
The other is getting too locked into my blocks of time, particularly the idea of keeping them at more or less the same length every day and always giving them over to different things. I almost always start my last block at the same time in the afternoon, and it's almost always Tales of MU. And that's almost always enough. But for the day that I call the "major writing day", the day where my highest goal is to have the chapter functionally done and my fallback goal is to have it doable with one more working day, it just makes sense to start earlier and devote more time for it.
There's a reason I don't just throw an eight hour block of time at each chapter, and that's because it's just not fruitful to force things. But there's a lot of ground between "the entire day" and "one block at the end of the day".
So, that's going to be two adjustments to my work process: I'm going to start writing earlier in the day on day 3, and leave open the option of making day 4 into another day 3.
The State of the Me
I'm pretty sure I was asleep before 2:00 a.m. last night. I slept through my alarm today... my phone got buried in the blankets, which tends to muffle it. But I woke up feeling pretty good, so I'm inclined to think I needed it.
Plans For Today
Block 1 is going to be spent... kind of warming up. It's a slow wake up day. I'm going to be doing some writing exercises, and some introspection.
Block 2 and 3 are going to be Tales of MU. Given that I don't want to push this chapter back a day, rather than just starting block 3 earlier, I'm giving it most of the day.