Getting that Word Count While Traveling - How Do You Do It?

I'm delighted to announce that THE SHIFT OF THE TIDE is up for preorder!! A few others will be coming soon, but - as with many things - Amazon is fast and efficient, making us both love and loathe them. Smashwords wants me to promise to upload the final doc ten days before release and I ... just can't. Ten days is forever in my world, regrettable as that may be. But, hey! The book is coming along really well, and I'm tentatively thrilled with it.

~knocks on wood~

~tosses salt over shoulder~

~pets black cat and gives it extra treats~

Want to see a little snippet? Okay! (It's a teensy bit spoilery of THE EDGE OF THE BLADE, if you haven't read that yet. Fair Warning. Just skip down to the next *** to avoid.)


***

We reached the ship, a rope ladder thrown down for us. Marskal treaded water with apparent ease, helping me grab ahold and steadying it as I climbed. Hands reached down from above, helping me over the rail. Then Jepp had me in a fierce hug, her compact, vital body hard against me. She was laughing and cursing, rocking me from side to side, then pulled back and kissed me hard on the mouth.

A man’s big hand tugged her back. “None of that now.” Kral, fully outfitted in his shining black Dasnarian armor, though with the faceplate up, winked at me. “I have to watch her every second.”

Jepp made a face at him. “You liked the idea well enough when we invited—”

“Shut up, Jepp,” Kral cut her off pleasantly and she grinned at him, then snapped to attention, giving Marskal the Hawks’ salute.

Lieutenant!”

A dripping Marskal shook his head at her with a wry smile. “You don’t report to me any longer, remember?”

Jepp dropped her fist with an abashed grin. “Old habits, don’t you know.” She looked between us. “So that’s how you knew the signal. I recognized your sparkly blue magic globe thingy, but couldn’t figure out the rest.” She eyed Marskal. “You’re going to have to kill her now, you know.”

He returned her sally with a very serious nod. “So I’ve already informed her.”

“Just make me a Hawk already then,” I told them.

Jepp got a speculative expression and Marskal looked me up and down as if guessing my weight. “We don’t have any Tala. A shapeshifter and sorceress could come in handy.”

“She’s a terrible soldier, though,” Jepp pointed out. “Never follows orders. Might as well conscript a cat.”

“True.” Marskal rubbed his chin. “Plus she’d never make it through the initiation.”

“Guess it’s death then,” Jepp agreed cheerfully, making to draw her big bladed knife. She’d tied a scarf to the end of it, crimson ends fluttering in the breeze that matched the rest of her silk and leather outfit. With her short hair, dark skin and the exotic clothing, she looked even more a pirate now than when we found her fleeing the Dasnarians on the stolen Hákyrling.

“Not on the deck,” Kral cautioned. “You’ll stain the wood.”

***

Our topic this week at the SFF Seven is Writing On The Road: How to stay on task while traveling.

And, boy howdy, is this a hard one.

I have to tell you all: when I was traveling for the day job all the time (by "all the time," I mean 1-2 weeks out of every month), it was super hard for me to maintain any kind of writing schedule or productivity. I would have solid goals and determination, planning to get up early and write before we left the hotel, to write in the evenings when we were done for the day, to write on the airplane. Most of those things never happened. Jet lag and time zone differences would nix the getting up early. Having that much-desired cocktail with clients would sabotage the evening writing plans. Plain old being tired and having my brain eaten by the day job took care of the rest.

After a while, I pretty much didn't even try. I figured day job travel meant no word count and I took it out of the equation, figuring I'd write when I was actually at home. Which pretty much worked.

But, my productivity and quality of work absolutely increased tenfold when I stopped having to travel for that project.

Those of you who travel regularly for the day job and still manage to write? I have mad respect for you.

These days, my main challenge is being at conferences. Most of the time, I figure on writing on the plane on the way to the conference. I'm in the groove still, and - if the flights - are long enough, I can often get a regular day's worth of writing in.

(Yes, your seat mate will totally read over your shoulder. I figure they get what they get.)

Once at the conference, on the first day, maybe the second, I can get in *some* words. I get up, exercise, find a latte and something to eat, then bring it back to my room. At that point, any words are good words, just to keep my fingers on the reins.

After that - and, depending on the con, sometimes for the whole time - I get nothing written and I try to be okay with that. I look on it as well refilling. Same with vacations.

We talked about that last week, taking some breaks and time between works. If I can manage it - and I'm getting better at this - I try to figure in conferences and vacations as breaks between projects. Rather than feeling frustrated or anxious about not getting my word count in, I figure those days into my schedule as non-work days. Anything I do get is gravy.

But, I realize this is a luxury on my part, something I can do because I no longer have the day job. Before I wrote full time, I absolutely could not have afforded that time.

So those of you who do write on the road - how do you do it???

When Writing Is Work: Finding the Fun Again

Yesterday I got to take my stand-up paddle board out for a jaunt on Lake Sumner in New Mexico. It was a gorgeous day - warm and still, the water cool but not freezing. To my delighted surprise, I hadn't lost my skill with it since last fall. Rather, I'd improved! My balance and strength are much better. I even discovered what should have been a no-brainer, that the way I distribute my weight on the board contributes to the direction I turn as much as the paddling. There's a joy in both doing the work and in discovering I've improved, as much as in the simpler aspects of the sun, peace, and water.

Our topic this week is along those lines. The Business of Writing: How Do You Separate out the Work of Writing from the Pleasure of Writing?

This is one of those aspects of being a writer that tends to plague established authors more than aspiring ones. Don't get me wrong! The whole query-hell aspect of being an aspiring author, or the initial steps of self-publishing and trying to acquire an audience, those are their own special circles of torment. They're kind of like middle school and high school - full of angst and drama. None of us would go back to it for anything. I had dinner the other night with a lovely writer friend who's self-published some work and is in her fourth year of query hell with other work. It's hard. You just have to get through it.

So, yes, getting to be an established writer is better than being an aspiring one, in the way that being an adult is better than being a teenager - much more self-sufficiency, less drama, your own space where you can watch bad movies, drink wine, and eat junk food all night if you want to.

Not that I ever do that.

But, to extend the analogy, it's also more pressure than being a teenager. There are bills to pay. No one stands between you and the consequences of bad decisions. There's no more summers off or writing whatever takes your fancy, taking as long as you like to do it. You have to adult and treat writing like a, well, A JOB.

Because it is one.

And the thing about jobs is you have to do them even when you don't feel like it. When your art pays the bills, it becomes a business. That doesn't mean it CAN'T be a pleasure, but the two don't necessarily go hand in hand.

There's all those inspirational sayings like this one:

Which, in case you were confused, is not something Confucius said. I also found it attributed to Mark Twain. Also, no. I think it's one of those insipid things thought up by success coaches. I say insipid because it implies that if you love what you do it will never feel like work. This won't be news to any of you smart people, but *everything* feels like work sometimes. Anything worth doing takes effort. I love my stand-up paddle board, but sometimes it's a hell of a lot of work, especially paddling into the wind. I love my husband, but sometimes a relationship is work. There's nothing wrong with that.

Let me set that out on its own: THERE IS NOTHING WRONG with work.

There's nothing wrong with business. It's not drinking margaritas by the pool, but neither is writing. In fact, where most arts are concerned, this motivational poster has it spot on.

I know, I know. But really I don't mean that in a depressing way. Think of this: if we all wrote only the fun bits, we'd have 57,000 scraps of fabulous plot-bunnies and one-liners and zero novels or completed stories. Because at some point we have to do the parts we don't love. Sometimes we have to paddle into the wind.

Recently I've been working up a new series for my new agent. (Yes! Totally burying that quasi-secret lead. I'll be able to announce all the details on March 29, because reasons. Anyway, I'm working up a new idea for her. She wanted ~20,000 words of the first book, and I can write 5,000 words/day when I'm cruising, so I figured I could do this in a week.

HA HA HA HA HA HA!

Turns out not so much. All that *WORLD-BUILDING* doncha know. So there I was, flailing away, with only 3K when I'd hoped to have 10K, beating myself up about it. And it occurred to me that I spent an entire year on the first draft of THE MARK OF THE TALA. I went and looked it up. An entire year on 80K. Which works out to a little over 200 words/day, for those of you who prefer not to think about math. Sure, I was working full time then, and traveling for the day job A LOT,

But I also had that day job income. I had no agent, no publisher, no contract. I played with that book for a year because I could. That was still high school for me. Maybe Freshman year of college, when I could still take whatever courses looked interesting because I didn't have to think seriously about my future yet.

Yes, it was fun.

The thing is, writing this new book can be fun, too. IF I can keep from flogging myself with unrealistic timelines and schedules. And if I can keep from fretting about paying the bills. And from worrying about what that scathing review said, or what the market is looking for, or... or... or!

All of this means that, as with all things adulting, it's up to us to find the fun in what we do. It can be a lot like reaching back to our carefree youth and rediscovering those aspects that felt like PLAY instead of work. When I wrote THE MARK OF THE TALA, I called it The Middle Princess and I just followed the story wherever it led, indulging myself in *my* favorite stuff.

You know what? There is absolutely no reason I can't do that with this book, too. Yes, this is my job, but it's a job I chose out of love. It's hard work at times, sure. It's also a joy.

Finding the fun in effort is a conscious choice.

Instead of thinking about the wind I'm paddling into, I need to focus on the joy of balance, of cool water splashing my feet and the sun warm on my skin. And of the pleasure in finding that I've improved, of discovering a cool new trick.

It's all fun, if we let it be.