Not Off To A Good Start

Many writers who blog or keep livejournals seem to think that the world can't get enough of hearing about writers' lives. In the unlikely event that that's true, here is what happened to me yesterday.

I was going to start another draft of the second Hannah and Brandon book. Keep in mind that I received the manuscript back from my editor sometime around Christmas, so I wasn't exactly fast out of the gate to work on this. Since I was beginning something new, I was in the mood for trying to improve myself. I don't care about New Year's Resolutions, but any time something changes in my world I feel the need to try, once again, to become a better human being. (A new season, new furniture, coming back from vacation--anything like that.) So I decided, once again, to try doing morning pages. They're supposed to improve your creativity, which, God knows, I can always use more of. Or, some would say, any at all.

So I did my morning page (I rarely do more than one, though you're supposed to do three. Hmmm. Perhaps that's what I'm doing wrong.) Then I thought I'd finally read the manuscript with my editor's comments before working out because that might trigger a break-out experience, which is also supposed to improve your creativity. This meant I was working out way into the middle of the morning. I got a call from a family member, which broke up the workout, which probably explains why I didn't have a break-out experience. I ended up taking my morning shower somewhere around noon. And then I had to run some errands.

I think you're probably getting my drift.

This is what I ended up doing on the next book: I read the manuscript, I sent my editor an e-mail, and I created a new file for the new draft.

I'm hoping that maybe I can squeeze in a couple of hours of work on Thursday.

I think morning pages just cut into my day too much. What with the working out, and checking my e-mail and webstats, and brushing my teeth I just have too much to do in the morning. So I'm going to try to do something like morning pages but sometime in the evening. Since a lot of my morning pages end up being to-do lists, anyway, it hardly seems as if it matters when I do it.

Though last night I did do a few paragraphs on how new books are like debutantes.