Ch-ch-ch-changes

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Time to change the oil. Because as a wise man said, “Don’t want to be an oily man.”

Okay, if you clicked through that, you probably need to listen to the original:

I mentioned in my June Goals post that I had to change my writing routine. That goal isn’t just there for a whim. It’s also the reason the blog has been a little more silent than usual. I’ve started a new day job (just finished my first month, in fact), which means I’ll be changing pretty much all of my routines. I have to get ready earlier as my short walk to work has been replaced with a moderately long bus ride.

So, my new plan is to not turn on the internet when I wake up. Social media has to wait for the bus. Fortunately, I’ve retrained myself to be able to read in a moving vehicle (There was some epic moments of nausea those first weeks) which used to be such a pleasure. I’ve also decided to write on my lunch break and on my bus rides home. I’ve made some progress, averaging five to ten handwritten pages a day. Given what I’ve been transcribing in my mornings, that averages to about 100 words per page. Not much, but it’s a start. More importantly, I feel pretty good about the words. And feel momentum building on the third Thunder Road novel because I’m immersed in it every day.

As fun as it was to have an (all-too-brief) flirtation with being a full time writer, I was not at my most productive. Structure and routine have always been an ally to my writing in the past. It has been weird working somewhere new after spending twelve years in one place. But weird is good. Weird is different. New. New things to do, a new location, new people to meet. Weird is good. Inertia had always led me to believe that this kind of transition would be draining, rather than energizing. So far that has not been the case at all.

Which is why I’m going to end this post with a song I’ve been listening to a lot in the past couple of months:

Move Away and Shine, and above all:

Write on!

5 thoughts on “Ch-ch-ch-changes”

  1. I’m a BIG proponent of the writing-on-the-bus practice. Amazing how much you can get done when a leisurely bus ride is converted into a writing sprint.
    Also… I have never been able to be as productive on an 8-hour block of a “writing day” as I am over eight broken-up hours writing over various days. Don’t know why, but the page count (and the quality of the writing) at the end of the week don’t lie.

    • I don’t think I could type on the bus (and certainly not when school is back in session) but the desperation in only having 30 minutes at a time is putting words on the page, that’s for sure.

      • I only moved to the laptop on the bus because I had less and less time at home to type everything I’d written longhand 😛 Otherwise I would probably still be using pen and paper! I’m lucky, though, on my commutes I can usually get to sit at the back, where I can prop the laptop up and type. Doesn’t work at all in the regular bus seats.

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