On a typical day in the writing life, I might stumble into my home office, where several motivational NaNoWriMo posters and offbeat art cheerlead my efforts from the walls. There, I set up my laptop on the cluttered desk. \u00a0I notice it’s cluttered, mutter something about fixing that at some point in the future, and attempt to carry on. \u00a0I turn on some appropriate music (something that vaguely promises a revolution now, or a pleasant female vocalist). \u00a0Then I realize that I’m thirsty and go put the tea kettle on for hot water. \u00a0I open up a new document, type an opening sentence and delete it a dozen times, then hear the tea kettle\u00a0screeching\u00a0at me.<\/p>\n
After I brew a perfect cup of tea, I change up the music. \u00a0Adjust my desk chair. \u00a0Contemplate de-cluttering. \u00a0Survey other projects that are not getting done. \u00a0Set an alarm. Realize that the fragrant tea is not engraving a brilliant novel on the computer screen–I have to do some chiseling.<\/p>\n
But who do I fool? \u00a0I try to set up routines, carve out space each day for writing; but it simply does not work. \u00a0Wave a deadline in front of my face, though, and the words wend their way to the page. There are some drawbacks to this reality:\u00a0 the less sleep I’ve had, and the closer the deadline, the longer my sentences become, labyrinthine monuments to unfolding thoughts that gleamed with the spark of fools’ gold in the early morning light.<\/p>\n
For good or for ill, though, deadlines are the magic that make me write. \u00a0This is why I like NaNoWriMo so much; it is no respecter of routines, effective or otherwise. \u00a0It breaks into my life, forces me to write at gunpoint, burgles some of my time back for a novel. \u00a0I also appreciated semester’s end at school for similar reason.<\/p>\n
The other part of routine that I do find effective is changing locales. \u00a0My home office is great, but deciding to go out to a coffee shop to write makes it seem more like a scheduled activity. \u00a0Alas, even with specific cafes I find myself slipping into routine activities and standard beverages that help me avoid writing. \u00a0 So I must be promiscuous in my routine, changing place and\u00a0caffeine\u00a0catalyst\u00a0constantly lest the anti-muse of distraction catch me. \u00a0The anti-muse and I are old lovers; only in hiding, shape-shifting, teleporting can I hope to evade her!<\/p>\n
Fortunately, there are a lot of coffee shops in Lawrence, and she seems to forget them quickly. \u00a0Hopefully she won’t notice that I’m cheating with a deadline now!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
On a typical day in the writing life, I might stumble into my home office, where several motivational NaNoWriMo posters and offbeat art cheerlead my efforts from the walls. There, I set up my laptop on the cluttered desk. \u00a0I notice it’s cluttered, mutter something about fixing that at some point in the future, and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[261,733,959,1116],"class_list":["post-685","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mechanics","tag-deadline","tag-nanowrimo","tag-routine","tag-tea"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/685","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=685"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/685\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=685"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=685"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=685"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}