I’m bedding in some new routines at the moment, trying to figure out ways to work smarter rather than harder. This is a response to the way current life-events are affecting my perspective around my projects, asking me to redefine what can be construed as a success outcome for a project or “a good day’s progress” when I’m writing. This is always a danger when part of your income is predicated on freelance, contract, or irregular income: as you look to the future and see lean weeks on the horizon, it’s tempting to start thinking bigger, doing more, and figuring you can work faster. I can often tell when I’m tipping into outright anxiety because I start planning huge projects that are designed to fit around my already packed-out schedule. I’ve felt myself doing it over the last couple of weeks. Little whispers like it’s time to start blogging daily again and hey, lets try and write a six-part novella series in the space of two months. There are definite advantages to embracing both those projects, but they’re also a response to the fact that my partner is leaving her job and dealing with a pinched nerve, while I’m finishing

Warning: word-count neepery associated with the 600k challenge follows. You can skip today’s post if that’s not your thing. Right. So yesterday, at Write Club, I did this Which means I’ve now written nine of the ten chapters I had planned for the novel I’m working on and there’s just one more to go. Probably about 65,000 to 72,000 words, depending on how accurate my words-per-page assumptions are, with another eight to ten thousand words left to chase down before I hit the end. It…may not be done by GenreCon. Which hurts to admit, since I was confident I’d get able to do so until about Monday, but we’re starting to hit the point where the conference stops having things that need to be done and starts to have minor disasters that will eat hours of your time as you fix them. Since I’m the only person whose disappointed if this book doesn’t get done in time, and there’s about 180 writers counting on me to get GenreCon right at present, it’s becomes one of those needs of the many situations. SOME STATS ON MY FAILURES Since my deadline for the 600k year dare coincides with the GenreCon banquet, I think it’s safe

My desk is a disaster zone at the moment. A jagged landscape of poorly stacked notebooks, contracts, and opened mail, with the detritus of my BWF office placed over the top. I love working at my desktop, but I can’t fathom the notion of sitting down and writing there. Our kitchen is a disaster zone at the moment, too. So is our bathroom, our living room, and my car. Our bedroom is relatively well-composed, although I’m behind on cleaning the CPAP machine and that’s taking a toll on my sleep.  Other disasters: my writing process, my publishing timeline, my PhD deadlines, my planning systems. Invisible chaos that’s largely unnoticeable unless you’re inside my head and trying to wade through the detritus in order to get things done. The great temptation of chaos is this: nothing is fixable unless everything is flexible, and if you let things slide long enough, the very notion of getting ‘caught up’ is the stuff of nightmares and wry laughter. So you sink into the chaos, doing nothing. There’s a logic to it: if I don’t wash the dishes, I don’t have to solve the problems with my PhD thesis. I don’t have to email the