Fan-Dandy Day, or a Day Where You Don't Procrastinate

One of my personal goals is this: make all priorities fit. For those in the know, the benefit of deciding your own hours does have its downsides. There can often be a feeling of falling behind or taking on too much and ending up sacrificing something else. It can take a long while to balance priorities and even once you have a system, the flexibility sometimes causes carelessness.

For some of us, schedules are absolutely impossible. We almost pray for a regular 9-5 job, but it's also the furthest thing from locking in on your most productive periods. Some people will swear by circadian rhythms: you're a night owl, a morning glory, a grumpy bear that rouses slow but hunkers down once you've dosed on caffeine. Even though I fancied myself a night owl for a long time, it became apparent that I fall off that wagon and long for days, my muse throwing down the towel until I fix it.

One thing is certain; I fuel on dreams. I don't actually dream at night often, but when this happens and I wake on the edges, I'm grabbing for a notebook, scribbling in haste to capture this blockbuster moment to paper-- hopefully in a way that will make sense later.

This is what happened to spark my fan-dandy day. Yesterday, I was in serious doubt that my struggle to join the daywalkers was paying off and went to bed exhausted, half the day spent struggling to stay awake. I expected serious burnout today but my friend Joe graced my action-spectacular bounty hunting dream and I woke with the coveted motors running full blast. Jotting it down, I was pumped then made my way to make my spectacular morning egg sandwich and throw on some coffee. The moment I did, I felt the drag of an energy drop and thought 'oh no... not again...'.

A nap maybe, but my maybes are usually thoroughly ignored, this being no exception. My nephew Dameon stumbled in, sporting his usual adorable bedhead and his chirpy 'good morning' and I jumped onto my PS4 to play some Sims, a game he enjoys for hearing me boss around my pathetic 8 person family as they battle for who gets to use the one shower.

The down spike passed and the muse was waiting, tapping her foot and pointing at my laptop. Now? Okay, now... I did my slumpy Sim walk over to the laptop table, tossing them on my bed and cracking open the lid. Staring at the last thing I wrote, I nodded. Cool. I can do this. I didn't just hang it on an uninspired part. Things are happening as I planned and I got this.

A couple hours tapping away and noon was rolling into the picture. Break time, whether I like it or not. I belted out my crunches and push-ups (a thing getting satisfyingly easier each day) then skipped off to make lunch. Back to writing.

Ha, I crack myself up. Had to share it to a couple of my friends then back at it. Oooo, I get to write a puzzle. This is where my gaming experience shines and I've spent a lot of effort towards translating my love of puzzles into the intrigue of a novel format. Dun, dun, dun! And done, but not quite. The puzzle is done, the mystery hangs beyond it annnnnd.... stop.

I can't for the life of me remember where I learned it (could just be my own experience for all I know) and a search didn't help, but one thing I've used repeatedly that never fails to work: Don't stop writing when the interesting scene is finished, stop when you're itching to keep going.

You'll hear a lot of this-- don't stop, bleed, eat sleep breathe writing. None of this is actually advice, it's just the nature of those passionate moments. To me, a more direct explanation is something of value, something I strive to give back. When you finish something, the jitters of starting over can hang you up. It doesn't matter that technically you're in the middle of a novel. While a finish is a place of pride and accomplishment, it's a place where I like to use that momentum and confidence to dive on ahead. If I know it's getting to be that time where I can't ignore other things in life, I wander off unfinished. Because of that, I had been able to kick my ragged ass back into gear.

There's an odd occurrence for me that time away from my story can sometimes flatten it in my mind, make me doubt it, or down on it. When I've seen a few bestselling authors (and ones whose work I admire for its quality rather than its commercial success) admit that they can't bring themselves to read their books once published, or famous actors who can't sit through a screening of their movie, it was an immense comfort to know that the fragility is not just for the newly initiated. It's a war between humility and the ego to tear apart something you know you put every bit of yourself into. You released it out into the world-- don't you dare suffer it. This is so much why the drafting is ever more fragile. You have to keep seeing it as worthy to finish writing, worthy to edit, worthy to release and you can't second-guess it.

And it's terrific. No matter what it amounts to, no matter how long it takes to get noticed, it's releasing a baby bird you nursed back to health. It's the first hint of bark on your tender green sprout. At some point, it has to grow without your constant supervision.

Take your craft in stride. You might have days without it. It's not 'use it or lose it'. There's no guarantee 10,000 hours equals mastery. You might need those kicks in the ass sometimes, but sometimes gentler mantras are enough. Even wishy-washy ones where you just tilt your head after reading that last paragraph and say 'I think I'm onto something.' 

If you also had a fan-dandy day, let's hear about it! I know I'm relatively new and I'm not crawling to collect the masses in my basketses, but I genuinely enjoy the interactions, the new insight. I will never profess to be an expert and even when I teach, I show up to learn. Whether today or tomorrow, do yourself one favor:

Keep writing.