I'm forty today and still learning. 'Yay!' for both. One of the recent things I've learned is that I cannot split up my day in too many activities. I guess that's sound advice for any length of time, but I'll stick with a working day for now. I've never been very good at multitasking or switching quickly between tasks, probably because I've been a designer for so long and a perfectionist at that. You see, for me every activity needs a certain start-up time before I get into the 'Zone'. Maybe this is true for everyone, but having been a precise and technical oriented worker for many years of my life it takes me that much longer to reach that special place where the magic occurs. So you understand that working in a cubicle in an office or at a convention/fair/street corner is like torture to my inner Muse.
These last two weeks I've tried my hand at writing a couple of hours early in the morning after I put my son on his school bus and I commit to finding an IT job. This doesn't work. I ended up spending way too much time setting up my computer and notes, finding the right mood, backtracking what I had written before, etc. So maybe dedicating every day of the week to one task in and by itself will save me from all the 'overhead'. Whether its writing Aelemental or looking for IT work or developing any other one of thousands of great ideas that run through my head (for which I need meditation and exercise to bring them down a notch or two). It doesn't matter. I can still squeeze in those last two activities and some chores around the house of course - I do need to get away from the computer now and then after all - but no longer will I split up my time trying to do it all. So starting this week (and my newest decade in life) I will do one thing at a time and do it well.
So what did I write? I've wrapped up the first few chapters of Aelemental, balancing out emotional character development and action (nicely reflecting my new 'one thing at a time' philosophy) and I'm no longer counting words or pages. I am now master of my own online publishing after all. As I'm very visual I'll share some of my visual notes with you, the first relating to the major scene in the prologue, where 70 years ago Simon's grandfather Mick is a young boy who struggles to escape from a deathtrap ruin in the Amazon rain forest. His uncle, an archaeologist from Australia, inadvertently set off a chain reaction within a mysterious old temple. This was something I had to draw out to be able to describe. Below are the 'plans'. Enjoy and I'll be back next week with more.
These last two weeks I've tried my hand at writing a couple of hours early in the morning after I put my son on his school bus and I commit to finding an IT job. This doesn't work. I ended up spending way too much time setting up my computer and notes, finding the right mood, backtracking what I had written before, etc. So maybe dedicating every day of the week to one task in and by itself will save me from all the 'overhead'. Whether its writing Aelemental or looking for IT work or developing any other one of thousands of great ideas that run through my head (for which I need meditation and exercise to bring them down a notch or two). It doesn't matter. I can still squeeze in those last two activities and some chores around the house of course - I do need to get away from the computer now and then after all - but no longer will I split up my time trying to do it all. So starting this week (and my newest decade in life) I will do one thing at a time and do it well.
SPOILER ALERT
So what did I write? I've wrapped up the first few chapters of Aelemental, balancing out emotional character development and action (nicely reflecting my new 'one thing at a time' philosophy) and I'm no longer counting words or pages. I am now master of my own online publishing after all. As I'm very visual I'll share some of my visual notes with you, the first relating to the major scene in the prologue, where 70 years ago Simon's grandfather Mick is a young boy who struggles to escape from a deathtrap ruin in the Amazon rain forest. His uncle, an archaeologist from Australia, inadvertently set off a chain reaction within a mysterious old temple. This was something I had to draw out to be able to describe. Below are the 'plans'. Enjoy and I'll be back next week with more.
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