Edged in Blue

My plans to quickly write my hit man novel fell apart in September when I realized I had other priorities competing for that time.  For starters, if you’re a parent and your child is in sports/band/drama, you need to go see them perform.  This is not optional, at least for me.  It’s a requirement, even when I’m told “You don’t have to come,”  Being a good parent comes first.  Period.  End of discussion.

But I’m also a student, and that requires time, especially programming classes.  Yes, twice in three weeks, I stayed up until the wee hours on a Sunday night trying to get a project done.  A two-week final project in .Net has been compressed to one week because….

Bouchercon and BigHugeCo.  Yes, enormous time sucks that I not only cannot blow off, I’m not willing to either.  So guess where the novel fits in.

“Well, gee, Jim, guess you’re just not dedicated enough.”

Every time I hear that, the person saying it is either a workaholic with a miserable home life or is still sweating over the same line at the beginning of Chapter 3 of a draft started on a computer that was not Y2K compliant when he bought it.  Look, how long does it take to get past “The night was dry, yet it was raining” anyway?  I’ve finished three manuscripts and five drafts.  Sold one, but let’s not discuss that clusterbuck, shall we?

Still, I did not adjust properly for life changes since I last finished a manuscript (which, incidentally, I’m stripping for parts).  I still gotta work.  I’m still a student.  I still have a family without whom everything else would be pointless.

So I emailed a friend of mine who, when her first novel came out, was working full time (and did so for many years afterward), was married, and even held a second job.  What did she do?

“If you’re not a morning person, I can’t help you,” she started.  Shortly after moving in together, Nita pointed out the awful truth about me:  Despite struggling with the alarm clock daily, I am a morning person.  With that in mind, my friend then  explained about getting up early to get the draft done.  That way, she could go about her day guilt free.

This is a hard change for me.  When I used to write for the helluvit, I wrote coming home from a first or second job.  I needed to blow off stress.  Who cared if I had to go to work at 8 the next morning? Dammit, the words will not be denied!

I was also in my early-to-mid thirties, not going to school, and childless.  Regular sleep hours were a polite suggestion.  I also seem to remember not being all that happy with my life then, so making stuff up was a terrific stress reliever.

So now the plan is to get up at 5 AM, work an hour, and hit the bus by 6:45, guilt free.  I started today.  How’d that work?

Er…  Another late Sunday/early Monday project.  Wrote that day on my lunch break.  Thanks to being completely exhausted from lack of sleep, I got to bed at 9:30 the next night and managed 7 1/2 hours.  Perfect for that 5 AM wakeup call.

Baby steps.  Gotta take baby steps.