My Tuesday as a Writer

 

                                                                  Photo by Fern M. Lomibao on Unsplash

For this week's blog, I want to continue writing about the writing process.

Much of writing is about discipline.  I know that is often said-- but it really is.  Whatever big idea a person has-- building a house, building a city, solving a world problem, writing a book-- requires vision and discipline.

Writing a book-- in my case, a novel, can take years.  My novels tend to be 60,000 to 80,000 words requiring multiple drafts. Some authors are able to write a book in one year or even just a few months.  There are many factors that impact that.  One of the major ones is time.  

I do not have a spouse that brings in a pay check large enough for me to not have a traditional job and focus on my writing.  I am not married at all at this point-- but even if I were, would prefer to keep a traditional job and write.  Why?  That is a topic for another blog.

Now in my forties, I have had the past twenty years to experiment with a routine-- and discipline-- for writing.  I began publishing when I was twenty-one.  Around that time, my father died and I moved from Indiana to Los Angeles where I took a fiction writing class with author and former editor of the Paris Review.  It is there that I switched my focus from non-fiction to fiction and published my first short story called, "Silver Boxes" which is one of the stories in my short story collection, Peter's Moonlight Photography and Other Stories

First out of college, I worked in advertising for a stint.  But that required long hours-- and I had no energy to write before or after work.  

I then worked for Short Cinema Journal in Los Angeles.  I was part of a film acquisition team for our DVD magazine.  That was a much better fit.  I loved my job and that enabled me to write after work or on weekends.  I also had the support of my boss and my co-workers who were all creative types as well.  I would have kept working there but I decided to move to Prague to get to know my Czech grandmother.

Moving on to now... now I work for a public school as a special ed assistant meaning I am assigned to a child who has special needs.  I love my work there as well but the commute is long.  We have a wonderful public transportation system here in Chicago which is what I utilize.  However, the down side is it takes much longer to get places.  

My current school is on the north side and I live on the south side.  I get up at 5 am and rush to pack lunch and breakfast, shower and change and take care of my cat.  My bus comes at 6 am (the bus driver, knows me well and sometimes even waits for me!) and I get downtown at 6:45 am.  

I whip out my laptop right when I get on the bus and set my coffee thermos next to me.  My current novel is in draft three-- meaning I wrote the main ideas in draft one, flushed out plot in draft two and now going chapter by chapter to fully add in details and correct any errors in plot, character development etc.

I have to use those forty five minutes well since I can't write at work-- not even at lunch.  I then walk to a train line, take that downtown, then catch a Metra to a stop close to my house and then another short bus ride home.  That part takes me one hour and forty-five minutes.  I can't read or write on most of the legs home except for thirty minutes or so on the Metra.  By then, I have used up my creative energy when I had written so furiously in the morning, so I use that thirty minutes to read.

I am transitioning to a new state and a new job as a classroom teacher.  I do not know what my schedule will be like and thus what time and circumstances I will have to write.  And as I write this, I continue to emphasize the importance of discipline.  I write on that bus every single morning!  I read on that Metra back every single day.  Looking at the behavior chain, before dedication and before discipline must come desire.  A massive, burning, unavoidable feeling that one must write.  I must write,  I must get these stories that come out of my head and head and spirit and oftentimes some other dimension that I can further explain in a future blog.