Last night, I got together with an old friend from last year and went camping down in Sanpete county, in the Manti-Lasal National Forest.\u00a0 Even though I didn’t get a whole lot of writing done, it was a much needed change of scenery.<\/p>\n
Man, southern Utah is so different from the Salt Lake and Utah valleys.\u00a0 More rural, more laid back, more of a back-country attitude but not in a California kind of way…I don’t know if that makes any sense, but I like it out there.\u00a0 It feels like the kind of place you’d pass through on a road trip, that mystic old-time Americana that always feels like it’s just out of reach.\u00a0 Part of me wants to settle down in a place like that someday, while the other part doesn’t want to settle down ever.<\/p>\n
Spending time away like that gives you a renewed perspective.\u00a0 I wouldn’t say that I feel more “centered” now, but getting out in the wilderness certainly made me see the daily grind here in Provo a little differently.\u00a0 It’s so easy to get caught up in a routine, where the weeks and months go by until suddenly it’s summer again and you don’t know where the last year went.\u00a0 Unless you take the time to step back, you can never get perspective.<\/p>\n
Unfortunately, in order to save up for Worldcon this August, I’m going to need to work 40 hours per week almost right up to the convention weekend itself.\u00a0 I’m not complaining; I feel blessed to have a steady source of income right now, especially in this economy.\u00a0 But as a writer, it’s hard when your job takes so much time and energy away from your writing time.<\/p>\n
Lately, I’ve only been spending two or three hours a day writing, and a lot of that time is filled with interruptions.\u00a0 Part of it is just procrastination, but another part is that my day is so split up that the only periods of unbroken free time are from 9 pm to 8 am. That’s tough, because I need a big chunk of writing time to do my best work.<\/p>\n
Even though I’ve been making decent progress on Desert Stars<\/em>, I feel like I could be doing so much more.\u00a0 If I could take a week off for a retreat where I did nothing but focused on my writing, I could probably finish this draft in a matter of days, with time to start a bunch of new projects.\u00a0 In fact, I already have about a half dozen stories in embryo, with scenes and characters just begging to be written.\u00a0 Once this latest project is finished, I don’t quite know what I’ll be starting next.<\/p>\n Since I should be writing right now instead of posting to this blog, I’ll wrap up by saying that I really wish I could take some time off for another retreat, this time to focus solely on my writing.\u00a0 But since I can’t, I’ll do my best to carve away large periods of unbroken time for writing, and unplugging myself from distractions both online and off in order to make the most of it.<\/p>\n It’s a difficult balance, one that’s a constant struggle to maintain.\u00a0 Right now, I feel like I’m on the losing side of the battle, which means it’s time for a change of routine.\u00a0 Thankfully, taking some time off in the wilderness has helped me to better see what I need to do.\u00a0 I only hope I can maintain that perspective in order to break out of this stifling routine.<\/p>\n <sigh> One of these days, when writing is my primary source of income, this will not be nearly so difficult of a problem.\u00a0 You have no idea how much I want to make that happen.\u00a0 In the meantime, back to work.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Last night, I got together with an old friend from last year and went camping down in Sanpete county, in the Manti-Lasal National Forest.\u00a0 Even though I didn’t get a whole lot of writing done, it was a much needed change of scenery. Man, southern Utah is so different from the Salt Lake and Utah… Continue reading Craving another retreat<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[44,1],"tags":[335,120,147,599,268,312,562,197],"class_list":["post-5366","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ds","category-uncategorized","tag-adventure","tag-daily-routine","tag-momentum","tag-thoughts-reflections","tag-time-management","tag-work","tag-worldcon-2011","tag-writing-lifestyle","entry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7iXK-1oy","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5366","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5366"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5366\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5375,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5366\/revisions\/5375"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5366"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5366"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5366"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}