Writing Hell or: Why I hate Tuesdays

I hate Tuesdays. I hated them when I worked in an office. I hate Tuesdays now.

Day 6 - Stacking Tables
My Quest to Draw (Day 6): The topic is “Stacking Tables.” Check out the scary box monster down there…just don’t look too closely at his right leg!

Writing Hell: Or Why I hate Tuesdays

It’s Day 13 of my “open novel” experiment for Ice Storm, aka my “Development Hell” book. I edited 3,000 words yesterday, bringing my redraft to 39,000 words. That means I’ve got about 51,000 words still to go.

This is always a hard spot for me. I’ve been at this redraft for almost two weeks and yet I’ve still got three weeks to go. In other words, this is like Tuesday to me. And I hate Tuesdays. Let me explain. These days, I work from home so the days of the week tend to run into each other. But when I used to work out of an office, I hated Tuesdays. I usually felt recharged after a weekend so I didn’t really mind Mondays. Wednesday wasn’t too bad either since that was the halfway point. Thursday was always good. I could practically feel the weekend rushing at me. And of course, Friday was my favorite work day for obvious reasons. That left Tuesday, which became my least favorite day of the week. I’m hoping to reach the halfway point of Ice Storm by Thursday. But in the meantime, everyday feels like a “writing Tuesday” to me. And like I said, I hate Tuesdays.

As for other contributing factors, I’d have to point to the whole development hell thing. I’ve been working on this book for so long, it feels like I’ve written it ten times over. I’m not sick of it. But I’m definitely not going to mind moving onto the next story. Plus, I caught a cold from my wife so I’m dealing with that right now too.

On the bright side, I spent some time at a nearby pool yesterday. It wasn’t the ocean but I still enjoyed it. I laid out for a bit and mulled over some story ideas. I’m thinking I’d like to write one more Cy Reed novel after Ice Storm and then branch off to start a parallel series.

Drawing: Day 6 – Stacking Tables

I completed my 6th lesson from You Can Draw in 30 Days by Mark Kistler last night. The topic was stacking tables and as you can see from my sketch book, it was mostly about drawing column-like objects. He suggested readers time themselves as they complete the exercises. It took me about twice as long as he suggested, which probably means I’m being too exacting with my work. I’m going to try to take a more sweeping approach the next time I pick up my pencil.

Other Stuff

No news to report here. Just the same old stuff. Namely, I’m still thinking about making adjustments to my sidebar (that one on the right with Chaos in it). I might expand it to include international bookstores. And yes, the link to buy Chaos at Diesel (see sidebar) is STILL broken. Diesel has a revised version of Chaos but doesn’t seem to have posted it yet. I may have to double check with Smashwords to make sure there isn’t another problem. Finally, the Chaos paperback continues to be on sale for $13.25 at Amazon. Get it and review it!

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