What I Did During My Vacation

Hellllooooo! I'm back! Did you miss me? (Please say you did. I'm NEEDY, y'all. Needy-ish. Okay, usually not super needy or high maintenance, but requiring minor doses of reassurance now and again. Plus, I missed YOU! So it's only fair for you to have missed me. Except this parenthetical has been going on for some time, and you're probably thinking, "Oh, I forgot that she's MENTAL. I really didn't miss this AT ALL" and that makes me sad. Wait! Don't GOOOOO I'll start over. Right now.)

Hello!

I'm back. Pretend I didn't start this out with a bundle of neurosis. We'll all be a little happier if we ignore that bit, don't you think?

You might be wondering what I did during my vacation. Well, wonder no more, because I will TELL you:

I wrote.

A LOT.

I think that people think that writing isn't really work. (I'm basing that on the fact that a lot of people think that working from home isn't really work, or that unless you're in an office for eight hours a day, you're just faking it.) To those people I'd say that not only is writing work, but it's kind of ... hard.

Maybe it's not hard for everyone. But it's hard for me. Because it turns out that I lack discipline. I mean, I manage to crank one of these here posts out every day, and some days that's hard-ish, depending on whether I'm tired or hungover or feeling lazy (not that ANY OF THOSE THINGS ever happen) but mostly? It's not super hard because I don't have to worry about continuity or characters. There's just me. Well, me and Bean. Other than that, it's just what I feel like blathering about on any given day.

Writing a novel?

Oh boy.

I confess that  I've been "writing a novel" (and if you were to read that out loud, it would need to go into air quotes) for, oh I don't know, years? But I've not SERIOUSLY been writing one. I've been dabbling with it, here and there (which is one of the reasons I've never, you know, finished one). I have NOT been working at it on a daily basis.

Which is kind of what you need to do if you're writing.

Last week? I made myself sit down and crank out 5,000 words a day. EVERY DAY. (Well, not Thanksgiving. I did some other stuff on Thanksgiving. Like eat.) And here's what I found out:

1. I am very good at writing in the morning. In the afternoon? Not so much. This may be related to the fact that while writing, I have a tendency to drink a lot of coffee. How much coffee, you ask? HAHAHAHAHAHAHA.

Six. Or seven. Six and a half? It's a lot. I mean, maybe for the course of an entire day it's not a lot (okay, yes it is) but over the course of four or five hours? It's a lot, and it means that when the afternoon hits? There's no writing. There is CLEANING. And DANCING. And then crashing and needing a nap. But no writing.

2. I am easily distracted. Come to think of it, this could ALSO be related to having 2 gallons of coffee sloshing through my person.  At any rate, here's an example: I like to have music when I'm writing, and then I thought, Oh, you know what would be awesome? Playlists! So I started making playlists and THEN I started thinking about making mix tapes when I was younger and how those were challenging (Rewind! Fast forward! Listen! Rewind! And ......... RECORD!) and how making a playlist is kind of not the same thing, payoff wise. Not so much effort. (Although, if someone were to make a playlist just for me? SWOOOOOOON.) And then of course I was hip deep in debating the writing-help-ability of one song over another and -- oh gosh, look at that. I was supposed to start writing two HOURS AGO AAARRGGGGH.

Annnyway.

I also read. I read ... um, 10 books. I'm not listing them, though, because I think that would be boring. Unless you want to know what I read, in which case I'll tell you.

I may (ahem) also have watched about 110 episodes of Criminal Minds? (That's an exaggeration, but a mild one.)

That's what I did during my vacation.

And now I'm back to bother you.

Wheeee!