Yes, it's been a long time. I often
find that, as with journaling, when I have things to write about, I
lack the time to write it.
I have been away from the novel for
about 7 months, and it's driving me nuts, actually. Because that's
what I want to be writing.
But,
as it stands, I am lucky to have a little steady freelance work,
which has been taking up most of my time for
. . . reasons I won't go into other than to say there's a high
learning curve on related things.
And any time that's
leftover has been mostly spent on finding
more freelance work.
My goal is to get a few good clients on a regular basis that I can do
reliably, write well, and that
will provide a consistent
income to cover my bills. As it stands now I have two steady
clients (as
well as a number of others who need things done periodically, but not
on a regular basis), and I
think I'd be fine with three or four. So I've been getting into a
routine where I've been writing a draft for client A on Monday,
updating social networks for client B on Tuesday, and so forth.
My
most recent addition has been some blog articles for here, as well as
another, unrelated blog I do under another nom-de-plume, and I've
been getting those into my
schedule as well.
Annoyingly,
my schedule is subject to change without notice, since the pain from
my injuries is unpredictable and often requires me to just lie down
with my feet up (it's mostly lower-back, but other things as well).
For anyone interested: yes, I've done pain management. I've done
bio-feedback (the specialist said it wasn't helping).
I've done acupuncture (same thing, and I was very disappointed about
that, as I truly believe that thousands
of years of history means it
works . . . just not, it seems, for me). I've had shots and blocks
and all kinds of torturous therapy, and I finally just got sick of it
and now just take the stupid pain pills. Honestly, if I were rich
and could afford massages and pampering and not having to do cleaning
and other things I really shouldn't be doing, I
could aggravate those injuries less and be in pain less of the time.
As things stand, I don't
anticipate feeling much better, and this is it, so I just have to
work around it.
But I haven't lost
sight of the goal: my novel. Everything I'm trying to accomplish is
in service to getting to a place where I can work on and, more
importantly, finish that. In the meantime, for reasons I explained
in a previous article about my issues with going back and forth
between clients' work and my own when the former is unpredictable,
I've decided to at least try to work in some blog time. So I will
shortly be posting the first in a series of articles about why I
think fan-created fiction – ″fanfic″ – is worth your time and
consideration, and what all writers, especially newbies, can learn or
be reminded of from it.
I had
intended to write an article about how reading the third book in The
Hunger Games
series
helped
me change the way I approach the ending to my novel, but I need to
either reread it, or else find a detailed enough recap for me to be
reminded of the details I wanted to point to. But I hope you enjoy
these, and I'll get to that eventually!
Addendum, July 20, 2013:
This post was intended to go up last Thursday or Friday, but I got
disconnected from the 'net by some sort of technical issue that,
apparently, was only fixed by a full reformat. Yes, I edited and
updated it last Sunday, before finally taking that drastic measure
when my inability to connect dragged on and I realized that, since I
could stream from other devices on my Wifi, it was probably my main
PC that was the problem.
For anyone who doesn't already know this, reformatting should be a
roughly once-a-year project for those of us using Windows (I'm sure
it can't hurt Macs, either!), and is the only SURE
way to get rid of whatever ails your PC, specifically viruses and
malware, but it cures a great many other ills as well. It's a great
deal easier to do than it used to be (and because this is a new
computer of only about 2 years old – yes, I've delayed doing it for
year: guilty as charged! I never claimed I was perfect! – I had
never done a reformat this easily! On the former PC (that ran XP), I
had to get down to, “reformat c:/” in a
command prompt, but this Windows 7 PC is a lot less terrifying, so I
recommend setting aside a weekend once a year to avoid all the
trouble.
Recommended reading:
http://writingfreelancer.blogspot.com/
has a series about computer security for normal people; check it out!
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