First, a public service announcement, especially for avid readers: if you’re going to be in or near Green Valley on December 6, I hope you’ll stop by to see me and a lot of other local and regional authors at the annual Meet the Authors Book Fair. That’s next Saturday, December 6, from 1 to 4 p.m. at the Desert Hills Lutheran Church at 2150 South Camino Del Sol in Green Valley.
I’ll have my new novel, Leaving Amarillo, as well as thirteen collections of short fiction and my two popular nonfiction books on writing. Stop by!
Some points about the Meet the Authors Book Fair:
- Admission is free
- WiFi is available
- There will be author readings in a small adjacent room
Again, the venue is located at 2150 South Camino Del Sol in Green Valley.
Here’s a Google Map of the location.
Hope to see you there!
Okay, last time up I talked about goals.
When I first set my goal to write a short story per week for a year (back in mid-April) I was about half-terrified. I didn’t realize yet that the world wouldn’t end if I missed, and I hadn’t even considered yet that the goal would merely re-set, meaning even if I missed a week, so what? I still had to write a new story for the current week.
Once I learned to trust my subconscious to tell the story (what Dean Wesley Smith calls writing into the dark) and once I realized nothing bad would happen if I missed a week, the goal gently shifted from a severe, “whaddayou, nuts?” kind of challenge all the way down to FUN.
That’s right, fun.
I no longer doubt that I’ll write a short story per week for a year. Once I let go of the fear, I was free to just run outside and play with all my little fictional friends. And that is SO much better than all the crap I occasionally hear about writing being “drudgery” and all that. 🙂
So I still have the ongoing “challenge” of writing a short story every week for a year, but I also have set a goal of writing at least four hours per day (fiction… not counting any nonfiction, not counting emails or blog posts) at least five days per week. Can I do that? Yep. Easily. As I’ve said many times in this series and elsewhere, it’s all a matter of priorities. Now that I’m not editing and formatting and creating (beautiful) covers for Other People’s Stuff, my days are my own.
For those of you who automatically think writing four hours per day is a monstrous and probably un-doable goal, tell me: if you have a day job (or if you’re retired, back when you had a day job), are (or were) you able to go to your job and do it at least four hours per day, five days per week? Of course. In fact, you probably spent 8 or 9 or 12 hours per day at least five days per week.
Writing fiction is my job now. (Yeah, that’s right. My “job” is sitting at a computer, making up stories. Score!) If I call myself a writer, shouldn’t I be able t0 “work” at my job four lousy hours per day? Kind’a puts things in a whole new perspective, doesn’t it? 🙂
So is writing your job too? If you answered yes, maybe you should set a goal or two. 🙂 If you need help in that regard, I’m more than happy to respond to emails or to comments left in the comments section at the bottom of this post.
Back next time.
Harvey