*tap tap* Anyone still there?
Hey! Sorry for the recent silence, but I’ve been busy moving to a new city, unpacking a new apartment, and starting a new job. As you can imagine, life has kind of taken over my life. Did you miss me?
Art by James Silvani & Sabrina Alberghetti, Darkwing Duck Annual #1, Boom! Studios
My new day job, though wonderful so far, requires a lot of energy and brain power. I guess that’s what real jobs are like? Let’s face it, my last position gave me a lot more free time and wasn’t too demanding once they started laying people off, so this really takes some getting used to. I can’t complain because at least I’m writing full-time, sort of, but I’m paying much less attention to the internet (not necessarily a bad thing), and consequently blogging and tweeting less. Not that I was blogging all that often before. My daily commute is shorter too (I know, boo hoo!), so I don’t have as much time to read. And at home there are still boxes to unpack, furniture to build, a wedding to plan, and oh yes–books to write and revise.
I’m most concerned about figuring out a good writing schedule; I used to write in the mornings before going to the office, but I work earlier hours now, and time has been hard to carve out in the evenings, except for the weekly Star Trek Re-Watch reviews. I was really happy with my old routine, and it takes a while to settle into a new one that works for me.
I’ve made slow progress though. I reread QUANTUM COIN for the first time since I drafted it a couple of years ago. I was mildly anxious about that, but it turns out a lot of it is in good shape, though it’s pretty rough and naturally will need significant work. Once I finish up my revisions on FAIR COIN, pretty soon now, I’ll focus on rewriting and revising the sequel. I’m tempted to try the PC version of Scrivener for this project. Has anyone had a good experience with the Windows beta? My early experiments were not encouraging.
I’d like to say I have more free time on the horizon, but… I don’t. There’s another Clarion West newsletter to put out soon, and a few other commitments that aren’t going away, so I’m just going to have to buckle down and get it done. That’s never been a problem before, once I became serious about writing, but I’m trying to tackle things one at a time. Possibly it’s as simple as sleeping less–it’s a nasty habit anyway.
Oh yeah, and I joined SFWA! This was a big milestone for me, since it’s been my goal since I started writing short fiction ten years ago.
Since I’m so behind on everything, what’s been going on with you? I heard something about a YA Mafia?
Karlos
Dude, you are already missed! Sounds like you’re busy and settling in which is a great thing. You’ll get back into the rhythm of your own writing once you’ve got the job down and I’m sure you’ll have that wired before you know it. If you need to tap into another medical/pharma writer outside of CHOP just drop me a line, I’m always open to talk about that stuff. As for the Windows Scrivener, I’d like to know how that works for you. i use it on Mac and love it (most of the time). I’m very interested in adding a PC to the quiver and would love to be able to keep manuscripts in the cloud and pull them down into Scrivener from any of my machines. Keep up the great work. Let’s chat soon.