Blog Post No. 456
Since I’ve been called back to the day job, my schedule has fluctuated greatly. I may call my supervisor on one shift with a question and be offered another shift for latter in the week. Since, for the most part, the rest of my schedule consists of writing the first draft of Snow From a Distant Sky (the next novella) I’ve taken every shift that’s come my way. Technically, I have to if I want my income to continue to be supplemented, but I can also get that daily writing in almost any time (though I’ve almost completely lost my late night writing chops since I’ve been getting up so early for most of these shifts). Continue reading “Working at Work”
I’m worried that I’m going to mess this one up and forget something, because I seem to have a lot of events on the horizon. Often I’ll go to one or two a month (I try to get at least that regularly) and sometimes an opportunity arises and I’ll take on a third, but this is starting to get exciting. Events are being planned as far out as February, which seems farther than it actually is, but that’s still only four months. Plus there may be one or two private things happening where it’s an event for me, but you aren’t invited. 
I work up on Sunday morning and knew something wasn’t right. My weekend had been the culmination of two solid weeks of work (no time off for good behaviour, or writing). Lots of terrible thing happened that had no choice but to be dealt with. Friday night was seven hours of crap that stuck to me through Saturday morning for my back-to-back shifts. While I managed to get a solid chunk of text written Friday morning, nothing was getting done on Saturday. As soon as I got home from my thankfully easier shift (minus having to mop the floors as the cleaners failed to do for the umpteenth time) I took a much needed nap and prepped all my stuff for Sundays RetroRama. No time for love Doctor Jones. I did my best to get to bed early Saturday night, knowing what was in store for me. 
Last week, I was on a bit of a tear with my novel. I was catching up after a couple of less than stellar months. It was a good feeling. I was getting things together for the long haul. Now, after a busy week of work (and really busy weekend) and too many tasks left for too long. To top it all off, I have the dreaded layout to finish. A huge jumble of micro tasks assembled into one element that, when one task is finished, it screws up something else, leading to a never ending stream of necessary fixes and adjustments. Like I said last week, it’s a doozy. I promised myself that I wouldn’t let it interfere with my writing, and I was partially successful. The writing related tasks didn’t disrupt my flow, but work, more basement construction, and a last minute invite to help out in a music video did. 
In January, I decided to stop writing the book I was working on and started writing another one. The idea was that I would be able to knock out 40 000 words in a few months and have myself a finished novella. It took me until the end of July to reach my original goal, but by then, the story was nowhere near done. I shifted gears and from then on I’ve called the story a novel (or short novel) and had the intention of hitting 60 000 words. From the beginning of August (sitting at near 40 000 words) to the end of September, I struggled to get another 10 000 words. It was a rough time. I did poorly. 
Ben Van Dongen 