Wishing On a Star

Actually, I can save a wish. I’m living out one of my fantasies this week. No, not that one. The other one, the one where I get to have no day job and be a writer full time. It’s a week of vacation with no obligations or commitments or plans, except for the plan I had to really enjoy the time to be a full-time writer.

My plan was to get up around nine, answer correspondence while eating breakfast, do twenty minutes of writing, go to the gym, come home and write for a few hours, take a nap, play some video games or watch something, and then write until two.

So let’s see how I’m doing.

Answering correspondence: Errr, I’m going to have to get back to you on that. I’ve taken care of the important things, but the things I’ve been putting off are still…well, off.

Trips to gym: 0

Word count: 87 (less about 40 words crossed out in notebook)

Naps in excess of two hours: 3 (Is it a nap or going to bed if you go to bed at 5 AM and get up at 8 AM?)

Times I have been victorious at Age of Mythology: 8

On the plus side, my office is the cleanest it’s been since we bought the house.

And to compare that with a week of regular life?

I answer my correspondence during lunch, because all the interesting, time-wasting websites are blocked and it’s really hard to eat yogurt while I write, even longhand.

I go to yoga class and the gym at least two or three times a week.

My average word count for a week is between 5 and 10K.

Now that isn’t to say I haven’t been writing. I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about my new book. The glorious thing about being a writer is we can honestly say we’re working when we’re playing solitaire, staring out the window, or best of all, sleeping. (Though the times when that story I dreamed actually makes sense when I wake up are rare, it still happens). But yeah, I’m not proud of my accomplishments this week.

I keep learning the same lesson: the busier I am, the more I get done. There’s no time to put it off when it has to be done now. When time stretches out on vacation, there’s always tomorrow.

I don’t hate my day job. It keeps me in touch with the world, and it’s rarely boring. But in wishing on that star…could I maybe make enough writing to go part time so that I could get up at nine everyday? I’ll get lots done, I promise.

For those of you more interested in my fiction than my pontificating, pop over to my live journal for an excerpt and information about my next release.