author: Nicole J. LeBoeuf

Intensity of intention has an inverse relationship with productivity.

To wit: This morning I got up and said to myself, "You've only finished three paid content-writing articles all month! And the third requires a rewrite! And when this month have you done anything substantial, fictionwise? But it's a brand-new day! 24 potential stuff-doing hours remain in August! Do your rewrite, and then spend the rest of the working day doing articles! See how many you can do! I bet you can do a lot!"

Then I did absolutely nothing all day. I read a lot of blog. Blog this, blog that. Answered emails. Read more blog. Walked around downtown. Ate pizza. Ran out of blog to read, so went back and read previous blog after hitting refresh a lot.

Finally, finally, roughly around stupid o'clock PM, I did a quick Denver Metblogs write-up and I completed that one article rewrite.

And that was all.

So at one end of the spectrum is "Eh, whatever. Kick back and relax." At the other end is "OMG panic panic panic GET A MOVE ON!" It's a stress-and-guilt spectrum. It goes from zero to stomach-churning. But it's a weird little spectrum in that it's not a line but a circle. The two ends curve back around and meet up at a single point, and that point is called total lack of productivity.

Somewhere in between is a happy area, a land of the blessed, a sort of Avalon of stress-free motivation where tasks are approached in a Zen-like state of detached intent. It's all, "Yes, I have stuff to do," but it's missing that instinctively self-destructive component of "and any sense of self-esteem I can rightly lay claim to hangs on my doing it!"

I'm not sure I've ever actually been to Avalon. I'll tell you this, though. I'll know it when I see it.

I'm still under orders to keep mum concerning the details regarding my recent sale of "First Breath," unless by some chance said orders have been rescinded without my knowledge. Playing it safe, I assume that not. But apparently it's never too early for a success to turn me into a stupidly immobile writer-wannabe hack. I shouldn't be surprised; it takes so very little to do that. Besides, we all know how success itself can turn around and cause writer's block. I should have seen this coming.

Now, first off, I feel pretty weird referring to the sale as "success." A success, yes. A very important success, very true. A landmark I've wanted to reach since, oh, age 14. But, nevertheless, a single short story sale cannot be considered Success With A Capital "S" Or A Definitive Article, not when the long-term goal is to be able to support myself and my family by making stuff up and writing it down.

This is why I keep saying, "Time to write the next thing!" Which is... a lot of pressure, oddly.

Because here's the thing: I keep catching myself trying to write not simply the next thing, but the next thing that this editor will buy. Instead of simply looking for another idea I can turn into a story, I've been searching for the idea. You know the one. The one that will turn itself into a story by dint of yanking the hapless author out of bed and plunking her down in front of the typewriter with an inviolable command to Write! and Write now! and Not To Stop Until It Is Finished!

If that's what I've been doing, it's no wonder I'm not getting past "I don't know what to write" these days. Because that idea? That idea is a myth. It is a fantastic creature. It is--

Well, wait. That's wrong. I know it's wrong, you know it's wrong, every writer who ever had an idea haul them to their daily work by the scruff of the neck or had fictional characters insist they take dictation knows that it's wrong to say that such an idea is mere myth. It exists, all right. Really and truly--but only insofar as, given a working writer's full attention, every idea is that idea. It's the difference between "There are no such things as unicorns" and "Of course unicorns exist, duh. Here's a picture of a narwhal."

(For the record, I absolutely believe unicorns exist. Unconditionally.)

There are a lot of wrong lessons to learn from having sold a story. Among them are "Write something else JUST LIKE IT!" and "Save your energy for writing stories that obsess you, like that one did!" It's all well and good to make your ideas compete for your attention and only work on the one that succeeds in grabbing it. But to wait, sit there with your pen or keyboard motionless, until the right idea appears? No.

Any lesson that takes the writer out of the driver's seat is the wrong one.

A better lesson is, "See what you did there? Take the next idea you have, and do it again." Do what again? "Give it your attention. Feed it to your right brain. Dream on it. Spend time typing about it." Take an active role, and turn the next idea into that idea.

Which will turn around and hijack you.

Enjoy the ride.

(...I'm not sure I'm OK with that metaphor, really. Perhaps tomorrow I'll have a better one. Sleep tight, kids.)

I'm only up to chapter 3 of the re-type? Really? Really?

That... ain't right. For serious values of "ain't" and "right." Maybe what I'm calling Chapter 2 is really, really long and ought to be divided into two or more chapters. Or maybe I'm just slow.

Well, if so, the "serial publication" aspect isn't going much faster. Got to appreciate these small blessings.

Seriously. You're a great pen-pal, an exemplary long-distance acquaintance. I hadn't seen you in the flesh since, oh, 2003 or so, and that was actually really truly OK. When you visit, things get... messy. Uncomfortable. It doesn't help that you send no warning, that you stay some 16 hours, and that it takes another 36 to clean up after you. Look, email next time, OK?

(Then I can hide until you leave again.)

So, yeah. Dearth of blogging has many sources, but the most immediate was TEH SIXXOR. But now I am, if not all better, then much improved. Dressed and showered. Active. Had some caffeinated tea this morning and took a walk outside in the sun, both for the first time since onset of symptoms Tuesday night. Am contemplating foods not on the BRAT-plus-broth diet.

Writing may actually happen today. *gasp* Stay tuned.

Funny thing is, all day Tuesday I couldn't seem to motivate myself to do anything beyond some necessary household chores. I suppose the lack of energy wasn't just due to the all-day rain and my personal species of seasonal affective disorder, but possibly also to the oncoming infection. Next time I have one of those days, I'll try paying attention rather than beating myself up for getting nothing done.

Not that beating oneself up for failures is ever a good idea, understand.

No, that would not be the Dairy Queen ice cream treat. That would be the sort of all-day blizzard that dumps a foot of snow on Boulder and turns any day into a "why bother?" sort of day.

I was feeling fairly chipper, otherwise. More than chipper, in fact. Yesterday, I finally sat down with my much-marked-up copy of "First Breath" and completed work on a thorough revision. The result was 150 words longer, one character shorter, a bit more focused in, and hopefully less confusing at the end. The other result was me tripping along in a euphoric haze of "See? See? I'm a writer! I did writerly things, like writing!"

That evening I relaxed with a long-overdue reread of Margaret Mahy's The Tricksters. Its teenage protagonist is a secret writer, and the story she's writing becomes the vessel for a ghost to embody itself. And... huh. I only realized the overlap between that and "First Breath" just now. Ghost-like creatures needing an external vessel to embody themselves in, I mean. Neat. But last night, what kept catching my attention was the way Mahy's treatment of the magic inherent in the creative act of writing made me even more happy with having seriously written that morning.

It doesn't take a rocket scientist to know that when you write a first draft, you're not stuck with it. You can go back and change it, make it better, make the story grow closer to being the reason you wrote it in the first place. I know this; you know this. Anyone who thinks half a moment knows this. But for me sometimes it takes actually engaging in a serious rewrite to know it, know in the bones and blood and gut and in the happy place. It's the difference between knowing you're capable of something, and then actually doing that something and reveling viscerally in your own capability. (This would be why writing is like rock climbing.)

So: Rawr! I rock! But there's nothing like a morning-after full of so much snow and wind that we can't even take out the trash to remind me not to get carried away in my euphoria. "Yes, very good. You rocked yesterday. But it's today now. Write the next thing."

*sigh*

It's amazing how "Just another half hour" turns into a day with absolutely no nutritional value.

Seriously. I know exactly where today went wrong. I can put my finger right on it. It was the bit where John left for work and I said, "I've set my alarm for 9. I'll get up then." And I went back to sleep. Somehow the alarm at 9 turned into another at 9:45 and another at 10:30, and lunch spent with a book* turned into going back to bed with the book and pretty much being worthless until I was done rereading the book and it was time to feed the cats.

I'm not sure if it's a symptom of pathological apathy or of a latent tendency toward the nocturnal. Probably somewhere in between. I know that if I sleep late I'm likely never to get anything of use done, and that I have my most productive days when I get up early and get right to work.

With enough willpower I can repair a late-start day, but it's not pleasant. Since I treated yesterday like the weekend day that it was, enjoying a Rock Band lunch with John and a Dominion dinner date with friends and an afternoon in between full of naps-with-book, I felt obliged to repair today. And it wasn't pleasant, because it involved turning down a friend's invite to hang out and chat and possibly play video games. But I did get today's quota of articles written, and while I didn't quite work on the novel, I thought about the novel.

Tomorrow will be better.

*Book: Sunshine, Robin McKinley. Predates Twilight and presents a more grown-up view than Meyer's book does of Life With Vampire. Doesn't jettison main character's mundane life as unimportant, for instance. Does spend a little too much time in the main character's head, though, to the point of interrupting dialogue every two sentences with a page or two of internal monologue; but still, Rae Seddon is no Bella Swan.

I've been working my way through Julia Cameron's The Artist's Way lately. Today is Week Four, Day Two.

Why am I doing this? Mainly because it's been a long time since I could truthfully say, "I write every day." And that bothers me. At the very least, an honest effort to pursue Cameron's 12-week course will mean doing daily "morning pages" for at least 84 days straight. Morning pages may not be art, they may not be salable, they may not even be writing (Cameron says not; she says writers have the hardest time with her course because they do try to turn their morning pages into "writing"). But they are productive exercise. They're me thinking on the page, which is worthwhile; for having such a nonstop hamster-wheel of a mind, I have a tendency to avoid my own thoughts.

I'm trying to make a good faith effort on the weekly exercises, too. Stuff like "Describe your childhood room. Now describe your current room. Can you add anything to it from your childhood room?" and "Time travel: Imagine yourself at 80. What have you done since you were 50?" I often avoid these because they feel too twee, or because I'm sure I did them last time I went through the book (in, what, 2002?) and nothing's changed since (O RLY?). Or, worse, because I'm certain there's nothing there. I had a good childhood. My parents raised me to pursue my creative bliss. When I showed signs of wanting to be a painter, Mom bought me acrylics and canvas; when I started saying I was going to be a writer, Mom brought home a Fisher-Price typewriter. My teachers were all supportive and taught me how to submit fiction to paying markets. I've got a loving and well-paid husband who is happy to support my writing habit and likes me to read him my stories. Surely I have no "childhood enemies" stifling my craft, no super-ego foe planted by adult disapproval, no current environment devaluing my efforts. Surely?

Except that I haven't written or submitted much since coming home from Viable Paradise back in October 2006. Clearly something's going on. And Cameron's course feels like a method of self-discovery I can have faith in. So I go through it in the spirit of play and, occasionally, surprise myself with an insight. "That voice in my head that wants perfection all the time, that needs to have its expectations met. Why's it there at all?" "Why do I so often say to myself in my morning pages, 'Yesterday I was a good girl; I did X, Y, and Z like I ought.'? Do I feel guilty about something? About having fun, maybe?"

And of course there's positive affirmations. One thing the student is supposed to do is listen for the Censor's "blurts" in the morning pages and come up with "positive affirmations" that counter the blurts. So if the Censor says, "Why do you even bother starting? You know you've got no ideas worth pursuing," I can grab that blurt and devise an affirmation: "I am a prolific writer. I write new stories every day. There is no end to the flow of story ideas." Then I can write it down five times in a row. Does it help? Maybe. It's too soon to tell. But it doesn't hurt, and it gets me closer to the end of my three daily longhand pages. So why not?

Do note that if you're the sort to scoff at exercises and "tricks to get you to write" that, y'know, real writers don't need, don't bother telling me about it. I don't particularly care.

In any case, I'm seeing real, tangible results in my "productive" (read: salable) writing. I'm rewriting and submitting again. Tomorrow evening, "The Impact Of Snowflakes" gets critiqued by my semimonthly writing group in Denver. And a few days ago I took the time to read through every version I have of "The Day The Sidewalks Melted" and began making mental notes toward a revision. I hope to submit both to commercial markets Very Soon. Also, I've been uploading to Constant-Content articles in my "Awaken to Dreams" series--and someone came along and bought the right to publish five of them on their website today. Which is another $50 in my pocket. Which is nice!

Only here's the snag. Week 4 in The Artist's Way is the infamous Reading Deprivation week. No reading. At all. No drowning out your creativity with the soporific effect of other people's words.

Sounds... easy enough. Well, it sounds painful. Reading at night is how I get to sleep. Reading blogs is how I stay in touch with communities I cherish; it's also my primary means of getting news of the world. But it sounds doable, right?

Except... I'm planning a series of pro-vaccination articles to make available for sale at Constant-Content. But if I can't read, I can't research.

Except... I was going to rewrite "Sidewalks," but I can't if I can't have the text-to-date open in front of me.

Except... there's also email! Instant messenger! Physical mail, including utility bills! Volunteer reading for AINC! And so forth! And so on!

So, I compromise. Today I wrote a rough draft of the pro-flu-shot article ("Ten Excuses People Give For Avoiding The Influenza Vaccine"), and it's full of red "[look this up later]" notes. I'll keep writing rough drafts all week, and next week I'll do the research and finish them. And the fiction rewrites can wait; I'll write new fiction this week and do the rewrites next week. And as for the reading that's necessary for daily communication... well, I'm not going to neglect my friends and loved ones by not reading their communications. And I'm not going to stint on the work I've committed to. But I'm learning that there's a lot more reading than I realized that can simply wait.

Truly this is the age of information. Written information. One can't get away from it entirely. But I guess one can take long walks, listen to music, knit more, and meditate.

And play more Puzzle Pirates! Right? Right?

(Seriously. Playing more YPP shortly. I've been a very good girl today. I deserve some fun time.)

It may not look like it from the word count, but I'm in the home stretch. I know where every one of those 4000-ish words left to write goes; it's mainly going to be a matter of writing down the facts already in my head and the citations for where I learned them.

In having finished this project late, I've gotten three days behind on the NaNoWriMo novel. But that's not my biggest regret. My biggest regret is having left myself no time to volunteer in this, an incredibly historic election year for the U.S.A. I didn't campaign for Obama, I didn't make GOTV calls, and I wasn't even able to work as an election judge between this and other obligations that kept me from attending the training sessions. I feel like a total bum.

I'm doing this much: I'm hosting an election results party for some friends. After everyone gets off work, they'll come over here to watch the news and tune their laptops to various liveblogging events. I'll be cooking stuff from our CSA-overloaded fridge - I'm thinking colchannon and stuffed acorn squash. And, if Nate Silver's election predictions are correct, I will finally have occasion to make Schadenfreude Pie.

(Why, yes, that was an unprompted suggestion in the Google search bar.)

All right, back to the grind. See you after the *thunk*. At which point I'm breaking out the Scotch. And yes, if you know me and you're within easy traveling distance of me, you're totally invited. But if you didn't vote, your role tonight will be piņata.

Stupid all-nighters. I hate all-nighters. Tell you what - it's about three hours until dawn. Dawn is when I get my second wind. If I go to sleep now and wake up three hours later, I'll have fast-forwarded to my second wind, and it'll be a heftier wind what with having gotten a couple of REM cycles of sleep. Clever me!

(Grumbles something about the whole Monday morning delivery thing getting less and less morning-like. Kicks self. Zonks.)

I am ashamed that yesterday, despite my 9K intentions, was a 3K day. The first 1K happened well-nigh immediately, and then the next 2K happened from about 8:00 and 10:00 PM.

In my defense, here's some of the things that happened in between:

• Got some necessary paperwork signed
• Load o' laundry washed and hung to dry
• Handed off some NaNoWriMo stickers to the Colorado::Boulder region's unofficial Longmont-area co-ML
• Broke the bolt securing my bike seat
• Got said bolt replaced
• Cooked dinner
• Washed dishes
• Researched industry data points relevant to my current project
• Brought in load o' laundry

The thing that took the most time? The research. Duh.

Obviously I can't talk about this stuff in detail. But let me at least make some notes about the process.

Research in the Imperative. In other words, "Do this, do that, et voila, you're done." A how-to document. These are easy. All I have to do is learn how to do a thing, then describe how to do the thing. I can write a how-to without much trouble. The portions of these freelance projects that are how-to are fairly easy and quick (although this is clearly a relative term when we're talking documents exceeding 15K words). I've also been doing a bunch of how-to at the office as I prepare my co-workers for doing the tasks I did for the past 4 years that I've worked here. They're tedious, they involve constantly cropping screenshots in MS Word, but they don't require hours of research before writing.

And then there's research in the indicative. Research where I have to define terms or process industry statistics, and convert this into informative prose that hangs together and moves towards some sort of point. Defining terms isn't so bad, but statistics? Hoo boy. Not only is it tricky to get the Internet to cough up these data points without my spending money I don't have on professional reports, but then... well, it's just data. Percentages and stuff. It needs to be synthesized into some sort of story before I can begin writing. And, with the very rare exception pertaining to election years, I have this innate response to numeric data which approximates boredom.

So I end up spending hours searching, reading, searching more, reading more, and occasionally making a false start on the writing. Then erasing the writing. Then reading more. And while reading, feeling this helpless and desperate sort of "how the heck am I going to use this data? Can I use this? I can't use this. Ooh! I can use this paragraph--only, how? Crud I have no time to be reading this! Crud I'm sick of reading this! Cruuuuddddd!"

I think I must be doing this wrong.

Certainly it doesn't help to be ALT-Tabbing between the web page and my project every two sentences, viewing every sentence I read through the filter of "Can I use this?" The key, apparently, is to simply allot myself a few unpressured hours during which I have permission to be fascinated with what I'm reading, and the narrative will just sort of create itself in my head during this time. I am sure that given a good two weeks or more 'til deadline, I can relax enough to convince myself that I love statistical data. Yum, Bureau of Labor Statistics! Excellent, the U.S. Census! Feed me trade publications because I am hungry!

Obviously a conclusion I should have come to about two weeks ago. Oh well. However, there is this: the hardest 3K of the project is done. Also, I seem to have underestimated how much time I'd have to work on things today. Which is good, because I've done 15K in a day, but I don't like it much.