Working for the weekend

[aadler]

Because of the schedule I’m currently following, I don’t so much have a ‘work week’ as two blocks of ‘work days’ with breaks. As in, Tuesday-Wednesday on, Thursday off, Friday-Saturday on, then my Sunday-Monday weekend. I never have to work more than two days in a row, and two of my days off are weekdays, which helps me get things done that regular working hours would impede.

Right now, I’m hoping to use my time off for immediate effect. Oh, there are other things I’ll have to do — Susan saves up tasks for my days off — but Wednesday I turned out 2,500 words on my most recent fic, and then went three days without having any spare time to continue that. Even assuming a 15,000 word total, I’d be one-sixth done now, and I doubt the story will run longer than that (and probably shorter). I just want to get it done, and get it right.

It’s been a while since I really focused on fanfic production. Last year, because of the rush to get the house ready, then move stuff out of it so it could be shown, then getting everything else out of it once it did sell, then living in a hotel room while waiting for an apartment to come available … I only turned out three stories all of last year, “the Song Remains the Same” and “Down the Ringing Grooves of Change” and “Hell for Leather”. That wasn’t a bad year — average, actually — but I know I can do better and I always want to, so I’m giving it another try this year.

It helps, at least in my own mind, that I’m finally focusing seriously on those stories I always planned to finish ‘one of these years’. (One of them, I really wanted to try and get done by the end of 2005; that didn’t quite work out, and I’ve meant to get around to it eventually ever since.) My absolute minimum? five stories, six if I enter this year’s Summer of Giles and have to come up with something original for that (and I probably will). It really would be nice, though, if I could finally manage to average out to the one-story-per-month — twelve in a year’s time — that has been my ambition for longer than I can remember.

I could do that easily, by the way. Even if I set a 1,000-word minimum, it would be no problem at all for me to bang out a 1,000-word story per month. Problem is, I want to write the stories I want to write, and they keep being longer than will neatly fit a predetermined timeframe. Still doable with the right amount of self-discipline, but then that’s always been a weak area for me.

We’ll see. I’ve made a decent start, and I have some ideas, and this is working out to be a pretty good year, and we’ll see.

Comments

[slaymesoftly.livejournal.com]

Discovered you (years/decades? ago) when judging and went "Oh, what original ideas! And gen fic! Yay!" I admit to being MIA on LJ for years, and moving on to other things, but good to know you are still writing and posting. I'll try to watch for things. "Summer of Giles" sounds like a good place to begin. :)

[aadler]

I might be able to manage something a little sooner than that. Actually, with the BtVS/NCIS drabble, I already have.