Up for Air

I have a blog? Oh that's right, I do! And here I am posting to it. Let me tell you, it's a sign of how much I love you that I'm spending my precious few minutes of free time to say hello.

Hello!

All my December titles have already turned over. What's that? It's April? Yes, yes it is. Welcome to publishing.

I've been cranking it out lately. Ten-hour days plus four-hour commutes. Not the worst I've had in my career. I've done 15+ before, but still, 14 hours out of a 24-hour day doesn't leave a lot of leisure time.

Thankfully, this sort of thing will only last a few more weeks and then things settle back down. What distresses me most is not the amount of time spent working, but the drain it puts on me. Yesterday, trudging my way to the train station, I had to make a choice, write on the way home or watch Stargate SG-1 on my phone. Stargate won out. And it's been winning out a lot lately. Today is the first day I can remember in the last week where I had the energy to write both in the morning and the evening train ride home.

I'm not losing the rhythm of the story, which is great, but the word count is going up sooo slowly. I chopped out 20,000 words (a kick to the nuts but much needed). Then I rewrote the 20,000 words. I've only managed another 8,000 since then. Not bad, certainly, but normally I hit that number in four days.

I have no plans on being a full-time writer (in that full-time denotes having no other job). My benefits at my company are top notch, and I wouldn't want to give those up to be on my own. But there are times, times like this when I'm burning the candle on all ends, that I wish I had more time to devote to writing and less time to publish something in four weeks that would otherwise have eight.