Posted 20 Sep 2016 editing
At some point over the summer, I decided that I wanted to be done with book one of my space opera series at the end of September. I plan to publish the first three books once the third is done, so of course the door is open to go back into book one if necessary for the health of the trilogy, but the idea being that book one could step back and make way for me to write book two. Specifically to write book two during NaNoWriMo this November. October would be spent crafting the outline and building any necessary backstory, and then I would hit the ground running on NaNo day 1 and see how far Asimov Hour and being my region's ML could carry me through what I expect will be another 100k word story. Upon deciding this, and announcing it to my editor so he could tell me I'm crazy (he didn't), the time left until my self-imposed deadline evaporated like ethanol. It led to more than one anxiety attack. But I knew I could do it, and would do it. I stepped up my efforts, reinstating the third-person view of my Asimov sessions and writing on my lunch break. There were at least three times last week when I expected to be done with the latest revision of my draft. And each time, I had to admit it wasn't happening. At least it wasn't because I failed to make the time to write. Saturday on my way back from a local write-in, I saw a tweet from my editor that his schedule had been sabotaged by a large project. I braced myself for an anxiety attack, right there in line at Whole Foods where I waited with three pounds of pork belly and three bottles of heavy cream. But the attack didn't come. I actually felt a sense of peace come over me. Okay, so my hopes that my editor could read my MS in a crunch and be ready for our coaching session on Thursday were crushed. But in a good way. The way you crush the empty ziploc box so it doesn't fill the whole kitchen garbage bag that you just changed out. I hadn't managed to finish my revision during the write-in, when I had been so sure that I could. I had almost a quarter of the book (in terms of chapters) still to cover. No way I was going to send it off to my editor after Sunday breakfast, as I thought I might. But now it wasn't on me. It wasn't my failing, it was just a domino line of circumstance. And now, anyway, I had a chance to spend more time on the story to get it done right. I didn't back off. Well, I did sleep in an extra hour and a half on Sunday morning, but I got to writing (with minimal procrastination issues, I think pent up from a week of ignoring such urges). Then I went down for breakfast and my husband was playing videos from Primitive Technology. He'd told me about the videos before but I'd yet to see them. We watched two. Just quiet peace as a simple person used found objects in nature to construct a shed. No tools but what he was born with and what he found on the ground. The sheer scale of what he was accomplishing was humbling. What was more humbling was the patience he showed. He picked rocks out of mud, turned it to clay, and made batch after batch of ceramic roof tiles in the kiln he also just made from dirt. Anything worth doing, is worth doing mindfully, and no faster than the pace at which such things can be accomplished. There was such purity in the videos that I was really just in awe, and saw the application of this in my writing. Take your time. Perform an act of creation with the patience to do it right. The delay in finishing my revision seemed to have more purpose. Patience. Acceptance can bring about strange miracles. As it happens, I finished that revision this morning. Signed online, and found my editor had completed the project that derailed him, well ahead of schedule. He'll have already started reading my revision by the time this post goes live. The plan will go on as intended. The difference is, there was no anxiety to get it done. When given the choice, I definitely recommend the less stressful route. Let it happen at its own pace, and just be there do to what is necessary to support it.Next Snippet: Space Ruins