{"id":8070,"date":"2013-02-10T04:27:08","date_gmt":"2013-02-10T09:27:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/?p=8070"},"modified":"2013-02-10T04:27:08","modified_gmt":"2013-02-10T09:27:08","slug":"productivity-yeah-about-that","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/productivity-yeah-about-that\/","title":{"rendered":"Productivity? Yeah, about that…"},"content":{"rendered":"

So, for the past week, I’ve kind of been between projects.\u00a0 I finished the revisions for Stars of Blood and Glory<\/strong> last Saturday, after a week or two of light revisions, but since then it’s been a bit of a struggle. I’m still working on Star Wanderers: Benefactor<\/strong>, and progress on Lifewalker<\/strong> had been coming along, but haven’t managed to really immerse myself in either those stories yet.\u00a0 As a result, I don’t really have much to show for this past week, other than a scene or two in Benefactor<\/strong> and a new first chapter for Lifewalker<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

One of the problems, I think, is that I haven’t really been able to turn off my internal editor.\u00a0 Even with my blog posts, I’m constantly going back and rewriting the previous sentence.\u00a0 This sucks, because it slows down the writing, makes the process tedious and painful, and doesn’t necessarily improve the quality of my writing either (at least, not beyond a certain degree).<\/p>\n

What I really<\/em> need to do is run with a project until I hit my stride, and then do all I can just to keep a steady pace.\u00a0 So that’s what I’m going to do with Lifewalker<\/strong> this next week: force myself to write without really caring too much about whether the stuff on the page is pretty good.\u00a0 Because usually, when I don’t angst about it too much, it actually turns out pretty well.\u00a0 Sure, I might write myself into a hole I can’t get out of (at least, not without breaking the story), but if that’s the case I can always toss out a couple of chapters and redo things.<\/p>\n

So far, Lifewalker<\/strong> has surprised me quite a bit.\u00a0 I have a general direction I want the story to go, and a vague idea of where the main character is going to go up, but when it comes to a particular scene, things will pop up out of nowhere that takes the story in all sorts of interesting directions.<\/p>\n

For example, my main character is currently wandering a post-apocalyptic Utah with just a handful of possessions.\u00a0 One of them is a copy of Brandon Sanderson’s Mistborn: The Final Empire<\/em>.\u00a0 At one point, he spends a night among the people living in the ruins of Santaquin (“Sannakin”).\u00a0 Out of nowhere, I decided to have him read them a chapter or two from the novel, which of course confuses the heck out of them.\u00a0 So then they start asking him questions, like whether the world before the apocalypse was covered in ash like in the novel, which leads them to all sorts of wild and ridiculous speculations.\u00a0 The aside only lasts a couple of paragraphs, but it takes things in a whole direction that I hadn’t planned it to–one that really fleshes out the world.<\/p>\n

This is my first time writing post-apocalyptic fiction, and while it seems a bit daunting, when I actually sit down and focus on putting out new words, wild and interesting things happen.\u00a0 The research is a bit daunting, but the story takes place two hundred years after the apocalypse event, so there’s actually a fair amount of leeway.\u00a0 As long as I’ve got Google Earth running in the background, with ready access to Wikipedia when I need it, I should be all right.<\/p>\n

As for Benefactor<\/strong>, don’t worry, that one’s coming along as well.\u00a0 When I’ve had too much of the post-apocalyptic world, it’s actually quite refreshing to come back to the familiar universe of the Star Wanderers<\/strong> series.\u00a0 Bouncing between the two stories should be a good way to avoid burnout–though at my current pace, that’s the least of my worries.<\/p>\n

Next week is going to be fairly eventful.\u00a0 I’ve got a job on Monday that will take up most of the day, and LTUE will keep me occupied all Thursday, Friday, and Saturday.\u00a0 Still, I should be able to get in at least a chapter or two in both stories.\u00a0 We’ll see how it goes.<\/p>\n

That’s about all for now.\u00a0 It’s getting late, so I’d better turn in.\u00a0 Night!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

So, for the past week, I’ve kind of been between projects.\u00a0 I finished the revisions for Stars of Blood and Glory last Saturday, after a week or two of light revisions, but since then it’s been a bit of a struggle. I’m still working on Star Wanderers: Benefactor, and progress on Lifewalker had been coming… Continue reading Productivity? Yeah, about that…<\/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":"Last week wasn't as productive as I'd like, but my post apocalyptic story is going in some interesting directions.","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[857,569],"tags":[192,42,147,107,454,155],"class_list":["post-8070","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sw","category-sbg","tag-discovery-writing","tag-frustrations","tag-momentum","tag-post-apocalypse","tag-productivity","tag-rough-drafts","entry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7iXK-26a","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8070","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=8070"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8070\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8071,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8070\/revisions\/8071"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8070"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8070"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8070"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}