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39 days ago my laptop broke. One side of the screen came completely off it’s hinge. Since then I’ve felt as if I’m missing a vital part of me. An arm, or an eye or perhaps my pinkie finger which is beneficial for punching those hard to reach keys on the keyboard.
It’s been hardest on my creativity. I use my computer for near everything so writing my novel was no exception and now that my novel is stuck on my gimp machine I’ve been having cravings. Writing cravings.
I dream of scenes in my sleep. Ideas come to me at work, in the shower. It’s been interesting when I get ideas while I’m driving. I scramble to pull out my sketchbook/notebook to jot them down so I don’t forget.
Not that my novel couldn’t wait another year to be finished. It’s only been 10 years now in the making. A whole decade of writing and all I’ve to show for it is 200 pages that have been rewritten more times than I’d care to count.
I suppose it’s to be expected. I started the novel with two friends in highschool and since then we’ve separated during various years of our youth, graduated highschool, graduated college and had various jobs all the while. Excuses they might sound, but being verbally creative was hard at times and my writing took off again once I was in a stable job.
Until my laptop died and I’ve been without my novel (I’m trying to use that poor machine as little as possible just in case) I didn’t realize what a blessing it was to have it at my fingertips whenever I had the writing itch. I sound selfish, calling my novel that was always so close to me a blessing when I’ve got a whole world of things in my life to feel blessed about but the simple fact that it was there whenever I wanted I feel like I took for granted.
That being said I’ve come to a writing decision. I plan to write at LEAST 10 pages a week along with attending writing meetings. It’ll be hard to find the time between work, meetup groups for my industry (which relates back to work and the personal enjoyment I get out of attending), and whatever else additionally I’ve got going on besides sleeping and eating. This is where it comes to making the time, not just finding it.
Handy enough, Google calendar now allows for tasks, so as much as it pains me to call writing 10 pages a week a task, it’s what I’ll do. If I don’t complete my task though I can’t punish myself or I’ll resent writing and that would be bad to say the least. No, I’ll evaluate at the end of the month and reflect upon how much I was able to write knowing that if I didn’t complete my goal of 10 pages a week that I can always do better next month. I’ll plan out my writing agenda for the next month and make allowances for my schedule.
In the meantime I’ll be planning an outline and scheduling while perusing stores for the gloriousness that is a netbook. I’ll try to stay faithful to writing my adventures here and look forward to my next great writing adventure: National Writing Month in November where I have dedicated myself to writing 50K words in a MONTH. I hope that my writing here and my near 50 pages a month will help me prepare for that endeavor.
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