Post-Day Wrap Up and Paradigm Shift
Sep. 9th, 2011 11:18 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alexandraerinI wrote ~3,000 words today. A lot more than I expected based on how my arms were feeling. I probably overdid it on a physical level... I have very little mobility left in my them right now.
I think I've figured out why they're hurting, though. It's been a bit cooler, so I've done most of my writing at my upstairs work space this week. My monitor up here is set up on a table so I can recline in my chair with my legs under it and not have it be six feet away from me, as it would be on a desk. The keyboard rests on the table when it's not in use, and on a lapdesk when it is.
Or at least that's how it's supposed to be. I realized that for some reason I've been sitting upright and writing earlier today, which puts my arms in a very awkward position, reaching up to type on the table from my fairly low chair.
Ah... Mr. Dorian, my feline associate (Jack says he's my supervisor... I don't like to argue with Jack but I have my doubts) just reminded me why I was sitting upright at the computer. He's acquired the habit of standing in front of the screen in the space where the keyboard would be if I don't. Well, I've moved the screen closer to the edge of the table (it's actually an LCD TV with a wide base so this is less precarious than it sounds), which solves that problem and brings the screen a bit closer to my eyes. It doesn't leave as aesthetically obvious a place to set the keyboard when not in use, but I do have a whole table here.
I laid down for a few hours earlier this evening to help with my sleep deficit and see if it would help my arms (it did, until I came back and started doing the same thing) and while I did I had a bit of a shift in my thinking about the MU schedule. I realized that when I'm looking back at a month and trying to figure out if it was a good month or a bad month, I'm usually counting how many updates I had, not my adherence to schedule. 6, 8, 10 updates = good month. 2, 3, 4 updates = bad month.
Then I started kind of running with that a little... if that's the benchmark I'm judging myself on, shouldn't I also be using it as my goal?
This might sound weird even to people who don't regard writing as a form of manual labor or a process akin to turning on a word faucet, but as soon as I started thinking that, I found a lot of my thinking shifting. When I approach things on a weekly/daily level, I have a really hard time breaking out of that framework. Like, I finished today's chapter and I had the beginning of the next one because I hadn't realized that I'd already passed the best stopping point without writing another thousand words or two. Being on such a roll, I might have posted the chapter and kept writing anyway... or kept writing for half an hour and then gone back and posted the chapter, so as to not lose momentum.
Why didn't I? I didn't think to, and if I had thought to, I probably wouldn't have gotten very far. The reason for both of those things is that the next chapter "belongs to" next week. I can start it the day before without any significant psychological impact, but doing it today would have felt "wrong".
As soon as I stopped thinking of it as "next week's chapter" and started thinking of it as one of "this month's chapters"... well, things changed. And having a production schedule that's divorced from the publishing schedule (as opposed to being identical to it) stopped feeling like something that's weird and alien and forced. And of course, this jibes well with my idea of a monthly plan for other things.
I'll have to think about this more, of course. Right now this is more in the way of being an idea than a plan. But it's a good idea.
I think I've figured out why they're hurting, though. It's been a bit cooler, so I've done most of my writing at my upstairs work space this week. My monitor up here is set up on a table so I can recline in my chair with my legs under it and not have it be six feet away from me, as it would be on a desk. The keyboard rests on the table when it's not in use, and on a lapdesk when it is.
Or at least that's how it's supposed to be. I realized that for some reason I've been sitting upright and writing earlier today, which puts my arms in a very awkward position, reaching up to type on the table from my fairly low chair.
Ah... Mr. Dorian, my feline associate (Jack says he's my supervisor... I don't like to argue with Jack but I have my doubts) just reminded me why I was sitting upright at the computer. He's acquired the habit of standing in front of the screen in the space where the keyboard would be if I don't. Well, I've moved the screen closer to the edge of the table (it's actually an LCD TV with a wide base so this is less precarious than it sounds), which solves that problem and brings the screen a bit closer to my eyes. It doesn't leave as aesthetically obvious a place to set the keyboard when not in use, but I do have a whole table here.
I laid down for a few hours earlier this evening to help with my sleep deficit and see if it would help my arms (it did, until I came back and started doing the same thing) and while I did I had a bit of a shift in my thinking about the MU schedule. I realized that when I'm looking back at a month and trying to figure out if it was a good month or a bad month, I'm usually counting how many updates I had, not my adherence to schedule. 6, 8, 10 updates = good month. 2, 3, 4 updates = bad month.
Then I started kind of running with that a little... if that's the benchmark I'm judging myself on, shouldn't I also be using it as my goal?
This might sound weird even to people who don't regard writing as a form of manual labor or a process akin to turning on a word faucet, but as soon as I started thinking that, I found a lot of my thinking shifting. When I approach things on a weekly/daily level, I have a really hard time breaking out of that framework. Like, I finished today's chapter and I had the beginning of the next one because I hadn't realized that I'd already passed the best stopping point without writing another thousand words or two. Being on such a roll, I might have posted the chapter and kept writing anyway... or kept writing for half an hour and then gone back and posted the chapter, so as to not lose momentum.
Why didn't I? I didn't think to, and if I had thought to, I probably wouldn't have gotten very far. The reason for both of those things is that the next chapter "belongs to" next week. I can start it the day before without any significant psychological impact, but doing it today would have felt "wrong".
As soon as I stopped thinking of it as "next week's chapter" and started thinking of it as one of "this month's chapters"... well, things changed. And having a production schedule that's divorced from the publishing schedule (as opposed to being identical to it) stopped feeling like something that's weird and alien and forced. And of course, this jibes well with my idea of a monthly plan for other things.
I'll have to think about this more, of course. Right now this is more in the way of being an idea than a plan. But it's a good idea.