Some new thoughts on productivity

I’ve been thinking a lot about writing and productivity, mostly because I seem to be struggling a lot with it lately. With nanowrimo just starting, this is a pretty topical thing to blog about, but I also want to look at it from a long-term career perspective, since that’s what I’m personally more interested in.… Continue reading Some new thoughts on productivity

Managing time and mental space in a foreign country

Some of you asked for a writing update, so I figure I might as well do a quick post on my current projects and where they are.  I’ve also been experimenting with my daily schedule a bit, so it would probably be good to blog about that as well. Right now, the main project taking… Continue reading Managing time and mental space in a foreign country

Writing log results

For the last month or so, I’ve been keeping track of my daily writing habits to look for patterns that might give me some insight on how to improve my creative process. I’ve amassed somewhere around 65 data points, and I think the results are clear enough to notice some trends.

Climbing the 10k mountain

I recently read an amazing blog post by Rachel Aaron, in which she explains how she went from writing about 2k words per day (about what I’m doing) to routinely breaking 10k. This is something I really want to do with my own writing.  As I noted a couple of weeks ago, I need to… Continue reading Climbing the 10k mountain

Picking up the pace

I’m writing this post from somewhere in Iowa, riding the California Zephyr from Chicago to Salt Lake City. Since I hate sleeping on the train, I figured now is as good a time as any to write a blog post. One of the good things about traveling by train is that you have lots of… Continue reading Picking up the pace

Plans for Edenfall

I’m trying something a little different with Edenfall: I’m writing the first draft entirely in longhand. I first got the idea a couple of years ago, when I was camping in Moab.  The beautiful landscape of southern Utah made me realize that I wanted to write Edenfall while experiencing that sort of connection with nature, and pen and paper seemed to… Continue reading Plans for Edenfall

Soundtrack for an untitled book

I’ve got this great idea for a novel, with a rough plot outline, an awesome ending, setting and characters all worked out, even the soundtrack–but no title. I enjoy making soundtracks for my novels, but this is the first time I’ve made one before writing the first draft.  Usually, my first drafts are so all over the… Continue reading Soundtrack for an untitled book

Encouraging realizations

So today I realized something about my writing process that encouraged me quite a bit.  With every project so far that I’ve finished, revised, and polished (or will soon be polishing), I went through a depressing period where the draft absolutely sucked and I questioned whether I was just wasting my time with the whole… Continue reading Encouraging realizations

10k words and going strong

Today I crossed the 10k mark for my newest project, Into the Nebulous Deep. It’s a little bit behind in terms of nanwrimo, but I’m confident it will be on par before the end of the week.  I wrote 2.6 words today, and I’m hoping to keep that fairly steady as I move on into… Continue reading 10k words and going strong