Tuesday, July 21, 2009

As a shield against the chaos, confusion, consternation, and uproar of my house being dismantled and put into boxes around me, I started Otters In Space 2 last week. I needed to withdraw to a world where the animals talked, and I've been outlining it in the back of my mind for a while. So, I figured it was about ready.

I'm not usually much of a sit-down-and-write-every-day type of writer. Generally, I can go distressingly long periods of time before the guilt fully kicks in, forcing me to sit down and pound through a story in a week. This strategy has worked just well enough for me in the past that I haven't had much success replacing it with a strategy involving less guilt. Thus, I was very pleasantly surprised last week to find that the good habits I developed while writing Otters In Space 1 actually stuck.

About six months before Elaine was born, I decided that I didn't want to have a baby before writing a complete novel. So, I became very disciplined; I wrote every day; and I finished my first novel. Then I lapsed back into my old ways. So, I was taken completely by surprise last week to find that, while the habits I learned for Otters In Space 1 don't seem to apply to short stories or the other novel I'm working on, they do apply to further works of Otters In Space. As soon as I set those characters free again, the old training took over.

So, now, before I can go to bed, I need to make some progress on Otters In Space...

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