Monday Morning

So here I am, locked inside my office, supposedly working on those darn revisions, and what am I doing? Anything but. Revisions, I've decided, are a state of mind. I have to not think about them for a while before I can actually start them. It's something in how my brain's wired, I guess -- my subconscious has to wrestle those pesky little problems into shape before my conscious mind can tackle them. The only problem with that is that sometimes it's hard to tell whether my subconscious is really working or just goofing off. Surfing the Net, playing Free Cell, piddling around the house -- whether it's work or not, it all looks the same, even to me.

See how good a handle I've got on this creativity gig? My writing day is mostly gone, and I don't even know whether I've started work or not.

Writers' schedules is one thing that always seems to interest non-writers. (Another is "How much money do you make?" And "Do you research all the sex scenes yourself?") I used to have one -- a schedule, I mean. I wrote all night, got to bed around 6 a.m., and slept until around 3 p.m. It worked for a while, then suddenly I began getting up at 5 a.m. and working all morning. That worked for a while, too, until I started playing through the morning and writing in the afternoon. Right now, I'm back to mornings . . . sort of. The problem is when I get up around 8, get dressed, work out an hour, shower, get dressed again, check e-mail, have breakfast, and finally make it to the office, the morning's practically gone -- not a good thing when my treacherous subconscious looks at the clock and says, "Almost noon -- hey, it's quitting time.\"

That's why my real honest-to-God got-a-deadline-to-meet schedule doesn't rely on time but on real honest-to-God work. I have to focus on the number of pages produced rather than the hours on the clock. Generally, I shoot for ten or twelve pages a day, though I might get twenty, or I might have to settle for three. Those are the times when the muse just isn't cooperating, and it's a total waste of time to continue. I'm better served walking away from the computer and doing something mindless -- rearranging cabinets or chopping down trees works nicely to reenergize the muse and get her to working again. Good thing I've got too many messy cabinets and thousands of trees on the property. Otherwise, I might have to beat her into submission, and who knows what she might produce then?
Rachel9:19 AM