In 2000, I lived in Miami and worked for a dot com. I made almost as much money freelancing as I did in regular salary. I made some great friends but Miami never really took, and the excesses of the industry were starting to worry me (after growing up in West Texas I was familiar with the boom and bust cycle) so I moved back to Austin in July. Then I had a pretty ugly and (in retrospect) ridiculous break up. I also met Nate and after I relocated to Austin I realized I had moved about a block up the street from him.
In 2001 I was working for another dot com in Austin and feeling like I needed to make a career change. We were firmly in the bust part of the cycle, I knew it, and I wanted to do something different anyway. I began looking into grad school. I wrote the first 50 pages of what later became my first novel as my writing sample for my grad school application. Also I started dating my neighbor, Nate. Three months later he got transferred to Chicago. Eventually I moved up to Chicago with him.
In 2002 I began the MFA in writing program at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. I kept writing and tried to adjust to life in the frozen tundra. We got engaged.
In 2003 I wrote a bunch of pages and cut many of them. We got married in August and honeymooned in New Mexico. That December we took our “real” honeymoon, or luna de meil 2.0, to Playa del Carmen.
In 2004 I got a great job at the Mexican Fine Arts Center Museum as a grant writer. I graduated with my MFA. Then Nate got transferred to Dallas. I finished the first draft of my novel (500+ pages) and then I got the worst job I’ve ever had, masquerading as my dream job. We bought a house in East Dallas, near White Rock Lake.
In 2005 I got another job. I tried to acclimate myself to Dallas, but kind of like Miami (and for some of the same reasons, some different ones) it never quite took. I felt a little like the stinky hippie at the fancy lady garden party. I also did not like being lectured about god. I went to Catholic school so I’ve had plenty of lecturing on the subject already, thankyouverymuch.
In 2006 we began doing a lot of cosmetic work to the house (the bones were all solid). We ended up painting almost every room in the house and had a ton of yard/garden work done. We also took a trip to Mexico and Zoe was conceived (we think) in Zacatecas over Labor Day weekend. I started doing a lot of freelance work around this time and completed a few revisions on my novel.
In 2007 we had our Zoe. Almost immediately I felt the severe need to move from Dallas. I tried to talk myself out of this because we had good jobs, a nice house we had finally gotten where we wanted it, and it’s hard to start over. It’s apparently harder to ignore those persistent little voices, too. My novel was now somewhere in the 370ish range and I began submitting to agents.
In 2008 we took an Easter weekend trip to Austin and that sealed it. We decided to make the move to Austin happen somehow, someway. We began applying for jobs and getting the house ready to put on the market. The market imploded right around then. I found a daycare and made the move to Austin in June and began to work at the LAF. Immediately I relaxed. I was back, bitches! Only I was a single parent while Nate was still in Dallas. He found a job in Austin in July. We had some great friends who let us live with them during this transition. When it seemed our house wasn’t going to sell, we rented a small apartment in our old neighborhood, preparing to pay both rent and mortgage. Two weeks after we moved in we got an offer and our house was sold in October. I decided to quit freelancing because it was interfering both with my fitness goals and my personal writing.
In 2009 I continue to make progress on some important goals. We pay off debt, we find a great Montessori school for Zoe, we like our jobs. We also find a rental house in South Austin and finally get out of our small apartment and storage. I lose 14 pounds (yeah!) and have plans to walk/run the Austin half-marathon in February. After several submissions to agents and a few nice notes in response, I conclude that the publishing industry is suffering as much as any other and decide to work on my next project instead of continuing to submit the old one. Right now I’m a little more than halfway through the first draft.
I think 2010 is going to be a good year. Right now the goals are to continue to pay debt, maybe buy a house if the time seems right, finish my draft of my current work in progress and at least start the next project this year. I also have an another big goal that is private for now and a few small ones that I may mention as they come up. All in all, I am so ready for next year. 2009 has been a bear in so many ways.
Wednesday
Tuesday
Reading List 2009
This might be my last reading list update this year.
Finished Carrie. Also read:
Bag of Bones, Stephen King
Home Safe, Elizabeth Berg
Fathom, Cherie Priest
Four and Twenty Blackbirds, Cherie Priest
Tales of the City, Armistead Maupin
In progress, The Time Traveler's Wife, Audren Niffengger
Finished Carrie. Also read:
Bag of Bones, Stephen King
Home Safe, Elizabeth Berg
Fathom, Cherie Priest
Four and Twenty Blackbirds, Cherie Priest
Tales of the City, Armistead Maupin
In progress, The Time Traveler's Wife, Audren Niffengger
Friday
Word Count
I'm now where I was (approximately) before I lost 1.5 days of work. Strangely, I expanded a scene I summarized before. Now I have to rewrite the scene that made up the bulk of those lost words.
I've also made a list of the remaining chapters so I know where I'm heading.
Tomorrow may be a tough writing day. We need to clean the house, then have a school potluck followed by a date! I hope to see some writing time on Sunday.
I've also made a list of the remaining chapters so I know where I'm heading.
Tomorrow may be a tough writing day. We need to clean the house, then have a school potluck followed by a date! I hope to see some writing time on Sunday.
Method and Madness
Folks, this here is a writing entry so if you’re not interested in that sort of thing you may just want to move along.
I started working on my second novel in late March/early April earlier this year. I wrote about 30k in a month or so, using a daily word count but giving myself weekends off (for errands and family time). Things were going pretty well. Not speedy writester or anything, but decent.
Then two things happened. I kicked up my workout routine and work got really busy. We are busy all the time, but spring and summer ratchet up to insane. As in, arrive at the office, stay busy all day, often eat lunch at my desk, and do some work at home after Zoe goes to bed. During this time I was getting up early to work out, so between fitness and work I didn’t have much time or energy for the book. Summer was not a productive writing time at all.
Over the fall and early winter, I reached almost 50k in the book (before I lost a few pages yesterday—ouch), where I now find myself. I estimate this novel will end up in the 80–85k range.
When I’ve had time off, in-between jobs because of a move or job change, I tend to write a chapter a day. For me this translates somewhere between 8–12 pages, or a rough average of 2500 (plus or minus) words. I would guess that’s pretty average. There are people out there who can write a lot faster and some who write a paragraph a day. But those paragraphs, when they are finished, are perfect. I do a lot of revising.
When I’m working a full-time job, around 1400 words a day seems my average, and I finish my chapters in two writing days. With regular practice I think I could start hitting around 2,000 words/day. But that’s if I actually have time to write when I get home, instead of having to answer emails or edit for the day job after Zoe goes to bed.
Now we have entered a slower time at work. It’s still busy, but I’m not having to take work home with me. This may be the case (I think/hope) for the next two months or so. Which means that now is my time to finish this draft so I have a complete book to noodle with once we get to the insane-busy phase again.
I think I can revise even if I’m busy with work. For some reason revision and writing are very different processes for me. For writing I need a semi-dreamy state, a chunk of time to imagine the scene and then get it down. With revising, I already have the scene in my head. Either it is mostly there, and (in the best case) I just need to brighten and heighten what’s going on, or (worst case) it’s dead wrong and I need to rewrite it. But at least I know what’s happening, who’s there, what’s wrong, and how to fix it—usually. If it’s a really tough problem I might need to reenter the dreamy state to figure it all out.
My goal is to finish the draft in this lull at work (lull as in a normal 40 hours, ha!), and then try my darndest to revise what I can when it’s full-tilt crazy again. If things are really nuts, then I might have to wait until fall/early winter to revise. In any case, the book won’t finish itself. No magic elves for me.
Yesterday, due to a boring technical glitch I won’t go into, I lost a day and a half of work, or 2,000+ words. Yesterday I thought it was 1500 but then remembered I'd written another 700 or so that I'd lost as well. I am really lucky that I had just backed up my file a day before, so the loss wasn’t nearly as ugly as it could have been. But it was a wake-up call for me. It’s time to write while the writing is possible. So I’ll keep track of what’s going on here, maybe as a way to hold myself accountable.
I should note that I love my job and consider myself extremely lucky, not only to be employed during this very rough time, but also that I am paid to do something I love and believe in. However, this is also my reality. All of my coworkers struggle with work-life balance. Work eats into personal time for almost everyone at the foundation, and in most cases it’s because they are passionate about what they do. But…I still need to find a way to meet my own goals and give my dreams the space they need to grow, and hopefully so much space they get really funky and odd the way dreams are wont to do.
So… here goes.
I started working on my second novel in late March/early April earlier this year. I wrote about 30k in a month or so, using a daily word count but giving myself weekends off (for errands and family time). Things were going pretty well. Not speedy writester or anything, but decent.
Then two things happened. I kicked up my workout routine and work got really busy. We are busy all the time, but spring and summer ratchet up to insane. As in, arrive at the office, stay busy all day, often eat lunch at my desk, and do some work at home after Zoe goes to bed. During this time I was getting up early to work out, so between fitness and work I didn’t have much time or energy for the book. Summer was not a productive writing time at all.
Over the fall and early winter, I reached almost 50k in the book (before I lost a few pages yesterday—ouch), where I now find myself. I estimate this novel will end up in the 80–85k range.
When I’ve had time off, in-between jobs because of a move or job change, I tend to write a chapter a day. For me this translates somewhere between 8–12 pages, or a rough average of 2500 (plus or minus) words. I would guess that’s pretty average. There are people out there who can write a lot faster and some who write a paragraph a day. But those paragraphs, when they are finished, are perfect. I do a lot of revising.
When I’m working a full-time job, around 1400 words a day seems my average, and I finish my chapters in two writing days. With regular practice I think I could start hitting around 2,000 words/day. But that’s if I actually have time to write when I get home, instead of having to answer emails or edit for the day job after Zoe goes to bed.
Now we have entered a slower time at work. It’s still busy, but I’m not having to take work home with me. This may be the case (I think/hope) for the next two months or so. Which means that now is my time to finish this draft so I have a complete book to noodle with once we get to the insane-busy phase again.
I think I can revise even if I’m busy with work. For some reason revision and writing are very different processes for me. For writing I need a semi-dreamy state, a chunk of time to imagine the scene and then get it down. With revising, I already have the scene in my head. Either it is mostly there, and (in the best case) I just need to brighten and heighten what’s going on, or (worst case) it’s dead wrong and I need to rewrite it. But at least I know what’s happening, who’s there, what’s wrong, and how to fix it—usually. If it’s a really tough problem I might need to reenter the dreamy state to figure it all out.
My goal is to finish the draft in this lull at work (lull as in a normal 40 hours, ha!), and then try my darndest to revise what I can when it’s full-tilt crazy again. If things are really nuts, then I might have to wait until fall/early winter to revise. In any case, the book won’t finish itself. No magic elves for me.
Yesterday, due to a boring technical glitch I won’t go into, I lost a day and a half of work, or 2,000+ words. Yesterday I thought it was 1500 but then remembered I'd written another 700 or so that I'd lost as well. I am really lucky that I had just backed up my file a day before, so the loss wasn’t nearly as ugly as it could have been. But it was a wake-up call for me. It’s time to write while the writing is possible. So I’ll keep track of what’s going on here, maybe as a way to hold myself accountable.
I should note that I love my job and consider myself extremely lucky, not only to be employed during this very rough time, but also that I am paid to do something I love and believe in. However, this is also my reality. All of my coworkers struggle with work-life balance. Work eats into personal time for almost everyone at the foundation, and in most cases it’s because they are passionate about what they do. But…I still need to find a way to meet my own goals and give my dreams the space they need to grow, and hopefully so much space they get really funky and odd the way dreams are wont to do.
So… here goes.