Wasted Day - not today!

I got a bit stuck with writing over the weekend and seemed to lose my momentum. I sat at the computer for hours and just stared at the words I'd written, picking here and there but never really making any progress. With a deadline (already extended by a week) looming, I really need to get this story finished. But it just wasn't working. So, yesterday I decided I'd try something different and put the story aside for a day to do an illustration due in a few weeks for a forthcoming anthology.

I spend all day working on the illustration and wasn't happy for a second with anything I produced. By 5pm I was so  frustrated with myself - no words written, no illustration completed - that I switched the computer off and went to cook dinner. Afterwards, I was so drained and despondent that I didn't bother going back to either. What a wasted day! And now the deadline is another day closer.

But not today! I woke up, had a shower, and then went for a very long walk around the creek and up into the state forest. Now I'm settled. The washing is in the machine, the dishwasher has been through its cycles, emails have been answered, and I'm all set to write... And WRITE I WILL!

Tellin' ya, I should be doing this 'go for a walk in the bush' thing every morning. I'm going to try, especially now as the weather is warming up. It wakes me up, and helps put my mind in gear.

Today, I'm going to write 2,000 words easily - I can feel it - and yesterday's despondence and total waste of productivity will be nowhere in sight. Yahoo!

Half way there...

Ha! One thousand words down, one thousand still to go to meet my goal for today... and, I think I might even make those extra thousand before I have to stop and cook dinner, put the garbage out, get the boys in the shower, etc etc, etc.

Tell ya what, I'll be extra happy if I do get the words down and then have time to come back after everyone's settled for the night and do another thousand. That will get me well and truly past the half way point for this story and into the final stretch.

BTW: The story is "The Desert Song", a 'Post-apocalyptic Australian Western Horror' for Morrigan Books' forthcoming 'Scenes from the Second Storey' anthology, with all the stories being inspired by songs from The God Machine album of the same name.