Evening, squiders. Hope all is okay in your neck of the woods. Weird week, right?
I’ve been doing pretty decently since we last talked on Tuesday. I’ve been making progress on my revision planning on RaTs (I’m in the notecard-making phase, where each scene gets its own card. White for now, and color coded later once we know what needs to be changed to what.), I finished the lineart on the June vacation (only six months after the trip this time, but I still need to catch up, yay), I’ve read 5 books for the month of January, I got comments on the query letter, and I’m pondering pitches to be used in Blue Sky pitch events. (As a reminder, this is me: https://bsky.app/profile/kitcampbell.bsky.social )
But I feel like I’m not getting anywhere fast enough.
This is a problem, I think, with a lot of creatives. I want to be further than I am, partly because I want to be doing other parts of the process, and gosh darnit, why is this taking so long?
But also, I’m making steady progress in a part that should not be rushed, and can’t I just appreciate where we are at the moment?
Somewhere in one of Holly Lisle’s writing courses (may she rest in peace), she makes a note about taking breaks. I forget what she says specifically, both because it’s been a while since I went through one of them and because she did periodically update them and change things, but her basic gist was that you can’t sit and work on something for three hours straight. It’s bad for your body, it’s bad for your brain.
Also, annoyingly, I don’t often have three hours straight to do anything anymore.
Take today. I got up and had to take my oldest to school. Then I danced, because my disc in my back is acting up and that helps more than anything else, and then remembered last minute that I had a dentist appointment at 9. The appointment went until 10, and then I had some administrative stuff to do, which I did til 11. At 11 I went to the coffee shop and worked on my revision prep for an hour, after which I went to have lunch with my mother and grandmother (a two-hour-ish affair each time), and then I had a consultation with a contractor for cleaning, and then it was time to get the oldest from school.
Friday is, in theory, an easier day for me, because I don’t work on Fridays and the kids are at school. If I can’t find a 3-hour chunk today, when is it going to happen?
Hold on, I think I’ve gotten sidetracked.
Anyway, my point is that it’s stupid for me to feel like I’m behind when I’m making steady and reasonable progress.
My spouse will say this is a common failing of mine. That I’m always trying to stuff too much into the time I have available to me, and that then I’m disappointed when I only get half or sometimes a third of the things on my list done.
(Also he gets annoyed because he’ll put things on my list that he needs me to do, and I will procrastinate them because invariably they have to do with calling people, but that’s a different problem.)
I worked on my revision prep for an hour. I got through a whole chapter, during which I noted any broken promises to the reader (essentially items, characters, or plot points that seem more important than they are) and did my scene cards (3 scenes in chapter one, with scene sentences, POV, and page numbers).
I think, in my head, I was going to get through the whole book.
Could I have maybe gotten through two chapters? Maybe. I did get a little distracted in the middle by a phone game notification and several texts in a row from various people.
But I made progress. Good progress. At no point did I feel like I was beating my head against the wall or like I was wasting my time.
So why am I upset about that progress?
Maybe it’s because I didn’t make progress Wednesday (worked til 8 pm) or yesterday (back hurt, laid on the ground for a while) and maybe I could be done with the current step if I had.
Maybe it’s because I could have been on the next step or two if I’d spent all my free time over the past week working on the revision, but I’ve been tired and maybe I just needed some rest.
Who knows?
I just wish my brain would get the memo, and keep its expectations more in line with reality at times.
See you next week, squiders!
