the daily grind

I've been pondering a lot lately about finding the right pace.

I know writers who can churn out 3,000 words in an hour. I know other writers who take hours to produce that much — and yet they'll still have that, or a similarly high figure, as their daily target. I'm presuming that's partly a function of available time, and yet I do know writers quite capable of burning the candle at both ends, working long hours at the dayjob and putting in equally long hours at the writing in any one day. This I find awesome. My own body rebels if ever I try that, and I find myself sleeping at the desk. It probably doesn't help that coffee makes me sick; there's not that many caffeine-free stimulants, you know?

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4 November 2006 @ 5:29 | 2 Comments

today i wrote yesterday's words. only different.

So it looks like the possum is not sick or injured. She's just decided the corner is a neato place and thanks very much. She seems to wander away for food and whatnot during the night and just wants to spend the days sleeping there. H'm. Better there than trying to get into the roofspace, I suppose.

In inane slightly boggling news, yesterday I met a Parisian who informed me, with all the dignity that only a French accent can bestow, that he would call me Deborah rather than Deb. I didn't quite follow the reasoning, although it had something to do Australians being lazy with names and therefore you should never give them an already-shortened version of your name because then they'll shorten it again. But seriously? How're you going to shorten Deb? I suppose you could get all minimalistic on me and shorten it to D.

In other news, the short story? Well, let's not talk about the short story. Last night I tried to use a nifty little program called Dark Room, to help shut out the internets and help me concentrate. And all went well, until I came to the end. I copied the text from the Dark Room program, pasted it into the manuscript. Deleted it from Dark Room. Put it in order in the manuscript. Then pressed close.

And when the little alert flashed up asking Do you want to save the changes?

I clicked No.

Lost! Losst! The precious, my precious!

Ah well. They were probably crap words anyway. Let's hope so, eh? Because they ain't coming back.

14 October 2006 @ 8:56 |

brooding

The ever-so-clever Rju has a post up about the momentum behind not writing:

The hardest thing isn't to write – it's to keep writing.

I'd quote more, but there isn't anything snippetable without stealing the entire passage. Suffice to say, that final Brood. Brood. Brood. made me want to both grind my teeth and laugh, it was so right.

13 August 2006 @ 9:20 | 2 Comments
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