Punking Out Defined

Punking out is what happens when you look at something you thought you wanted to do, and a whiny little voice inside of you says, “but that’s too hard!” …and you listen.

There are more formal definitions for the word “punk.” I found several in my Webster’s dictionary. It means “someone worthless or unimportant,” “an inexperienced youth,” “poor in quality or condition,” or “ill; sick; feeling punk.” I take these meanings together to define “punking out” as giving up on an endeavor due to worthlessness, inexperience, youth, poor condition, and/or sickness of spirit, any of which make understandable (albeit lousy) excuses for giving up on a writing career.

Contrarily, a punk is also a smoldering stick used to light fireworks or fuses.

Date Night!

Muse-calling was a short experiment, but a successful one. I’m going out on a date tonight, and I don’t have another thought in my head. It’s pleasant. See you Friday!

Muse-calling Concluded

Saturday

Log in: 8:35 AM
Log out: 9:59 AM
FWC: 278

Sunday

Log in: 9:35 AM
Log out: 10:25 AM
FWC: 1568

Monday

Log in: 8:31 AM
Log out: 9:01 AM
FWC: 1785

…and another “fail” on the 1500 words per day goal. I was significantly late at least three times and early on one day. I cut my time short once, but ran over the half hour several times. Most importantly, I sat down in front of my computer as close to 8:30 AM as I could manage every day for 21 days in a row. Now it feels comfortable. I wake up thinking about Writing Time, and plan my early morning around it. I haven’t quite gotten used to how grouchy I can be for the first ten minutes, but I’m starting to love how happy I am after that.

Happiness is what my change in direction from freelance commercial writitng to fiction was all about, so it might be safe to say that my decision has begun to pay off.

It’s been twelve months since I launched this blog with an announcement of my intention to leave my accounting career and become a writer. Now I can say that I write every day and have kept up a blog for a year (except that I took February off…). Posts here have been regular, three per week, since April. I am certainly a blogger, if not any other kind of writer. There are six months left in this experiment. What should I do with that time? I can probably get something published by the end of the year, even if it’s nothing more than a letter to the editor of my local paper.

Any other ideas, anyone?

Muse-calling, Week Three

Thursday

Log in: 8:37 AM
Log out: 9:08 AM
FWC: 1847

Friday

Log in: 8:28 AM
Log out: 9:05 AM
FWC: 2314

Pass/fail on my goal of 1500 words per day this week: fail.

According to Lanny Bassham (I’ve mentioned him), I have three days to go. So I’ll have one more update for you on Monday, and a stronger feeling of certainty that I have, indeed, established a new habit. If nothing else, I’ve found a pattern in the way I work. It takes me about ten minutes to settle into “fiction mode”. Maybe that time will decrease with practice, but for now I’m happy to sit down knowing that there’s a limit to how much time I’m going to spend staring at an empty screen.

Monday is also the one year anniversary of Linnea Writes; I’m excited.

Belated Wednesday Update

Sorry about that. I’ll post today’s time log with Friday’s as usual.

Tuesday

Log in: 8:29 AM
Log out: 9:00 AM
FWC: 1347

Wednesday

Log in: 8:34 AM
Log out: 9:10 AM
FWC: 1847

Vewy Vewy Quiet

My fiance asked me if I noticed my Google settings switching to “Elmer Fudd” a few months back. Of course I did! That was awesome! I giggled every time I opened my web browser. He told me he had done it, and then switched it back after a couple weeks when I didn’t say anything. Oh. I just figured Google had a sense of humor.

That story doesn’t connect to anything, except my current philosophy of stalking my fiction on exaggerated tiptoes. That, and there are moments when I think I’m about as competent at this as Fudd was at catching that wily wabbit.

Saturday

Log in: 7:01 AM
Log out: 7:37 AM
FWC: 468

Sunday

Log in: 8:59
Log out: 9:42
FWC: 694

Monday

Log in: 8:29
Log out: 8:59
FWC: 1012

This, however, isn’t one of those moments. Sometimes I look at my slow-growing Fiction Word Count and shake my head, but, on the other hand, I’m getting used to writing every morning. I wake up and check the clock: do I have time for a shower? Breakfast? Am I awake enough to start right now? Even on mornings when the answer has been “No, no, and defintely not,” I’ve stuck with it. I usually spend about ten minutes staring at my screen, but I’ve learned that something will come eventually.

Thus far, I have not been tempted to shoot it with a blunderbuss.

Muse-calling, Week Two

So far, so good. One more week to set the habit.

Thursday

Log in: 8:45
Log out: 9:15
FWC: 2413

Friday

Log in: 8:30
Log out: 9:00
FWC: 3027

Pass/fail on my goal of 1,500 words per day this week: fail, but improving.

A Good and Bad Morning

Tuesday

Log in: 8:30
Log out: 9:01
FWC: 1113

Wednesday

Log in: 10:35
Log out: 12:15
FWC: 2121

I woke up late this morning. I slept right past my start time… either of them. And I had done so well on Tuesday! I stomped around being grumpy for a while, then realized it was only getting later, and so I sat down and called my Muse. I hope she was ignoring me right then, because I spent the next fifteen minutes glaring to the left of my monitor. Hmph.

As my attitude straightened out (slowly), I started opening my fiction files, hoping that something that’s been going well would suck me in. No such luck. Fine then! I thought. I’ll write something new! Something… cranky.

And so I wrote a short story. One complete draft. Wow! Yay! I haven’t done that in … an embarrassingly long time.

But I did it this morning.

Novelling Slowly

My fiance follows a handful of personal finance blogs, and one of them is Get Rich Slowly. The guy who runs it started a companion blog not too long ago: Get Fit Slowly. What an awesome set of ideas. Aim for a difficult goal, and then get there slowly.

I would like to have a sweeping victory immediately, but it doesn’t look like I’m going to get that. What I can do is try five or ten different methods for getting a novel written, drop the ones that don’t work, tweak those that might work, and stick with the ones that work really well. Thus far I have had one success, tweaked it anyway, failed, and now I’m on Experiment #2. I’m hoping my methods will improve as much as my writing.

The one-year anniversary of this blog is coming up in two weeks. It’s been an eventful year–lots of changes. As I was paging throught the archives, I realized that I set 8:00 AM as my official start time… and I was aiming for 8:30 all last week. Ah well; I’ll stick with 8:30 now. A word about the Fiction Word Count: I like seeing it build over the course of a week, but I feel like I’d be padding it if I kept adding to it after my writing week ends. I’m going to reset the meter on Friday nights.

Saturday

Log in: 8:39
Log out: 9:03
FWC: 316

Sunday

Log in: 8:29
Log out: 8:43
Log in: 9:08
Log out: 9:34
FWC: 757

Monday

Log in: 8:32
Log out: 9:04
FWC: 779

Notice that my weekend off disappeared. Lanny Bassham is responsible for this. I’m hoping 21 days without a break really will be enough.

Muse-calling, Week One

I am beginning to train myself to focus on fiction writing (and only fiction writing) for thirty minutes every day. I would like to start at 8:30 AM, but, as you can see, I’m not quite hitting that mark.

Thursday

Log in: 8:35 AM
Log out: 9:25 AM
FWC: 1805

Friday

Log in: 9:04
Log out: 9:35
FWC: 2261

Pass/fail on my goal of 1,500 words per day this week: fail.

Muse-calling is the first goal I have set that is not focused on output. Rather, the point is to force me to designate a certain time slot each day for fiction, and use that slot only for its intended purpose. I have noticed that I am not at all eager to stay in my chair. I want to jump up and grab a snack. I think of something that needs to be done, or I get distracted by a problem, and I want to get up and move around the house. But the conditions I have placed on this experiment require me to sit and think about fiction. Since this is easiest if I’m writing fiction, I tend to write more under these rules.

It’s only half an hour, so my word count is low. I’m going to be okay with that for two more weeks while I cement the habit (and nudge myself into starting at 8:30 on the dot). Maybe my output per minute will increase; maybe it won’t. What will happen is that I will get used to giving that time to fiction, and only fiction.

I got the idea for this approach from Jerry Cleaver’s book Immediate Fiction. Mostly. Plenty of authors and teachers advise writing on a fixed schedule. Most of my favorite bloggers recommend baby steps when tackling a big dream. Cleaver, however, ran The Writer’s Loft in Chicago, and he may be the best writing instructor out there. He has certainly made a persuasive and motivating case for developing good writing habits.