2024-W09 EOW Report

Highlights This Week

• Monday night/Tuesday morning was the worst. The MRK SSC had a critique session scheduled for Wednesday night and our work was due on Monday morning at 7AM Pacific. I didn’t submit until 3AM Tuesday morning. I walked into work on Tuesday a zombie. See “Project Status Dashboard” below for more details. The shorter version is I’ve downloaded Habitica and I’m using that. More details under “Four Thousand Weeks” as well.
• The MRK SSC critique session went well. I finally feel like I’m starting to maybe get my footing and just starting to develop a rhythm and it’s two-thirds over. That part I don’t like. I need to find/keep this cohort together as accountability.
• Was briefly tempted to learn one of Simonitch’s games and looked at solo-RPG rules on Friday afternoon. Shut that bullshit down fast. Focus. Discipline. Don’t veer just because you’re hitting friction or barriers. Just keep going.

Project Status Dashboard

The following are ongoing fiction writing projects broken down to what stage they’re in. Legend in footnote¹.

Had a good morning sesssion during MRK’s MMW on Sunday writing a strong opening scene for MINOS. And I was like, I’ll get back to it later in the day and on Monday. I didn’t get back to it later on Sunday. Instead, I got back to it Monday morning. This was a huge mistake. The deadline was technically 7AM Pacific… on Monday. So I write in the afternoon. I write after dinner. I’m writing until 3AM to get it done. During this entire drafting time, I am still dealing with the situation from last week regarding the Jekyll & Hyde friend. I go to bed at 3AM. I hate myself. I literally have three hours of sleep. Maybe less. And I can’t do this with my life anymore. I cannot do this. It’s unhealthy.

Tuesday, I’m napping before my day of meetings, I’m napping after lunch, and I’m napping before my son fetches me afterschool. I continue to hate myself for this bad habit. This habit is from the time I was… shit… my son’s age. I have been completing projects the night before a deadline for almost three decades now. This is absurd. I need to instill daily habits in a disciplined way moving forward for the second half of my life if I want to still be writing in my old age.

Wednesday, I download Habitica on MRK’s suggestion. So far, it’s helping me. I’ve kept the dailies simple: 45m of fiction writing and 12 minutes of streches as recommended by my PT to keep my hip flexors OK (hammies, pigeon pose, and quadwall). I’m actually stretching when it’s not a gym day now. This is good.

Thursday - Saturday, I’m back to drafting BECKY. There’s still a lot of prewriting and thinking text, and brief interludes into research rabbit holes… but I’m actually making progress. It feels good. It’s like a good slow burn. I feel satisfied at the end of my short 45m sessions as opposed to destroyed after an all-niter. Surprise! Srsly. Fuck my bad habits. What never helped was I got positive reinforcements by getting A’s on my writing in high school, university, and as a copywriter, my words worked. Made my clients money even though I pulled them out of my ass the night before. It’s the worst kind of positive reinforcement you can get. To be rewarded for bad behavior.

Daily Tracking

This will be the future space for tracking either daily time spent, or daily word count.

EOW Time Tracking

The following is based on logged productive hours using Timeular. Parameters and definitions in footnote².

In Summary:

• F = 27% (but only b/c I was working until 3AM to write MINOS)
• X = 18% (high due to MRK-SSC critique session on Wednesday)
• C = 46% (lots of writing here too)
• P = 5% (back to regular board meetings)

Four Thousand Weeks

The biggest thing is getting hurt again by my 27-year-old habit of completing projects last minute before a deadline. I think these are my most important goals this year:

• Creating Space for Boredom/Creativity. I’ve been writing about the neverending distractions and “clearing the decks” for a few weeks now. I’m now hyper-focused on managing this out of my life.
• Creating a Daily Habit/Discipline. I need to break this cycle I’ve carried from my high school days. Pulling all-niters to write an essay or a copywriting project for a client is just not feasible anymore. My energy levels are depleted at 43. I cannot pull these stunts anymore.

Book Reading

• Started A Promised Land (2020). 50% through at 1X speed. On one hand, listening to a competent politician talk about politics competently is almost like a weird SFF in our darkest timeline. But on the other hand, I’m also realizing competent politics is boring. I mean, that’s what it should be I suppose. Good government should be boring. I mean, sure, yes, he has a great story, being the first black president. And yes, he dealt with the Great Financial Crisis, the two wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, etc… but it was “business as usual” since he’s basically center-left. We can all only dream of a time when politics is boring again.
• Crap. Hero of Ages (2008) became available on Libby. Need to wrap up Obama and then 2.3X this.
• Knocked off another 10, 12% on Stranger in a Strange Land. Haven’t touched Pride and Prejudice all week. I’m on the cusp/brink of hate-reading Heinlein at this point. It’s skewering culture/society in a tongue-in-cheek way and I just don’t care for it. One, because it’s a sixty-year-old POV and a lot of it doesn’t apply anymore or is weird. Two, because it’s not storytelling. It’s the author being clever and inserting his platform here. Dramatize shit or get out, that’s all I care about now in my fiction/storytelling. I mean, yes, I want theme and social commentary, but hide that shit. Do it in an oblique, poetic way. Do it so I, as the reader, have to discover it. Don’t outright tell me what your thoughts are!

Archive of all EOW reports here