ieva melgalve » productivity

freedom and discipline

ieva — Thu, 19 Aug 2010 06:32:50 +0000

Yesterday, I realized that constant, successful writing takes two things: freedom and discipline.
Discipline, not “forcing yourself to write and punishing yourself for not doing so”, but “allotting time to write and sticking to it, sitting down, writing and enjoying the thing, too”. It’s possible. Just yesterday, I re-read the beginning of Flowers, and I found out where are the parts when I really, really enjoyed my writing. Funnily, these are not the parts that I’d expected to enjoy, and some of them were written while stressed-out and hurt. I guess it’s really impossible to tell beforehand, whether you’ll enjoy writing or not.
About the second part. Freedom. This realization came after reading “168 Hours” manifesto: there are many hours every day, every week that I reserve for tasks and people who never really take that time. For example, family wants me to be home and available even when they don’t really need me, “just in case”, but they never say “hey, don’t you want to have an hour by yourself, so you can write or do whatever you wish?”
That’s understandable. That’s how the world works, from tiny things (like five minutes of my time) to world wars: freedom is something you have to fight for. It’s not given to you for being nice and docile, it’s not a thank-you gift for giving yourself away. It’s nobody else’s responsibility that you have your freedom; it’s yours to fight for and yours to take.

The funny thing is that I used to do this for a while, and it worked fine. It worked fine for so long that I got used to it and thought that I don’t have to fight any more. That was when I lost my freedom, and with it, my discipline, and with it, my will to do anything.
Now, I can take it back. Because that’s the other funny thing about time: while people can claim it, nobody can take it away. I still have my 168 hours a week, and, no matter how I’ve wasted my time in the past, nobody is taking away my future.

small (good) changes

ieva — Mon, 16 Aug 2010 12:49:09 +0000

So I’ve had a weekend that really reset my stress-counter to zero (not that I feel obliged to run myself down again). And I’ve added a couple of pages to the Flowers. This is good.
I’ll be going by tram to work again, starting tomorrow–but my son will come with me, so I don’t know how that’ll influence my writing.

The best thing is that I’m slowly backtracking to the feeling I used to have when I was very productive. I don’t know how or why. Probably it’s because this is a spell of good things in my life, even if they’re overwhelming me a bit. Probably it’s one of those pendulum things, swinging in and out of feeling good and at the top of things.
I hope that if I stay in this mood for longer, it will help me to become more productive, not just feel like it. But for now, all I’m interested in is… well, it’s turning Moleskine cashiers into small personalized notebooks. What? Christmas is already round the corner, isn’t it?

back to writing

ieva — Fri, 06 Aug 2010 08:48:11 +0000

It seems that all I need to start writing is:
1. a couple of good, productive days at work to boost my confidence,
2. a morning tram to work,
3. a constant notice in the blog that I am writing, yes, I am.
So here I go.
It’s nothing much, just two pages on that comic, but, considering that I had to jump back on a long-abandoned train, I guess it’s not that bad. When I figure out what I wanted to do plot-wise (I’m so happy right now that I was actually writing down at least some of what I planned to do!), I think I will be fine.

Lessons learned:
1. Writing the plot down, even if it’s very approximate, or very “obvious”, is a good idea.
2. Abandoning writing for a while is not that bad, as long as you try to get back to it from time to time.
3. If you find a writing discipline that works, it’s not necessary to change it to get “more disciplined”. The goal is writing, not perfect discipline, so don’t fix it if it’s not broken.

working in vacation

ieva — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 20:53:42 +0000

Today is the first day of my vacation. Curiously enough, I’ve managed to keep myself fairly busy with stuff, writing, editing and kids.
Anyhow, the bottom line is… well, there are two bottom lines:
1. I seem to be quite unable to Do Nothing, Really Nothing except when I’m totally burned out.
2. I seem to be able to work on my writing ~5 hours a day, if I get an uninterrupted time. Impossible with the kids though.

My plan for tomorrow is to switch writing and editing around, thus getting more time for editing (I can write in a mess and mayhem at home, but not edit). This means carrying the horrendous bundle of Vega to a cafe, but whatever.

Also, I started a brand new project, did 800+ words on top of lots of worldbuilding and am fairly excited about the thing. So yay. Widget comes when I make sure this one’s a keeper.

back on the track

ieva — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 15:56:10 +0000

After the most depressing start of the week, today I finally got my brain back and did a whole lot of good writing. 1000+ words and a beautiful, surprising scene. Seems that sometimes, it is good to take a break. Now only to find a way to recognize these occasions…

public transportation

ieva — Sat, 29 Aug 2009 09:03:33 +0000

On Friday, I finally coerced myself to write not only on the morning tram but to late afternoon tram back from work. So I met my daily goal (700+ words) and had all evening for myself (at least I told myself so, actually kids and husband claimed their share too). I’m still a bit flu-ed but it’ll be fine soon, I think.
For this weekend, I have to write 600 words and do a zillion chores that I will perhaps postpone to next week. Who knows. It’s Saturday.

checking in

ieva — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 20:03:53 +0000

I did 1000+ words today and, combined with yesterday’s 700+, I’ve somehow done more than a half of my weekly goal. It seems that the weekly goal is a good idea, at least for somebody having a family and a day job because it helps to do at least some words every day (instead of thinking “ahh, screw it, I won’t be able to reach my daily goal anyway”). And I finished chapter 9 without even realizing that I had done this much.
Also, I pushed myself to do my weekly critique. “We Crunch” is coming up for crittering tomorrow (if I’m not mistaken). Oh well. I think I’m getting used to critiques. (Haha, who am I kidding?)*

On a side note, you know the feeling when you’re reading a book you love and thinking “I could’ve written that”? Well, I’m reading a book I feel really frustrated about, and I’m thinking “I could’ve written that”, and now *that’s* a scary (and very educating) experience.

*Shouldn’t it be “whom am I kidding”?

Upd.: Checked in the internets. It really should be “whom”…and everybody is still writing “who”. Another chance to be a language nerd. My current obsession is using “hopefully” correctly. Well, there are not many chances to actually do that, but I think I squeezed it in “We Crunch” and felt pretty good about myself.

life w/o internet rulez

ieva — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 14:17:56 +0000

Today, due to lack of internet connection, I managed to:
- lick up the wounds on a rejection and submit my squad 4 to a new market (and this time, I didn’t shoot myself in the foot by misspelling the genre name, of all things!),
- stroll through Project Humanity and queue it up for Critters,
- mark up chapters 6&7 for Vega (I have used slightly more than 100 index tabs for notes!) and color-code my notebook for easier references… someday when I feel like bragging and have a camera at hand I’ll show you how it looks,
- write 500+ words for Vega and probably will write more.

I doubt that I’d be able to do this well if I cut myself off the world regularly though; there seems to be a beneficial constellation for creative nitpickery today.