Catching Up

My blogging pace has become so glacial I feel I ought to begin each post with an apology. Sorry! Still, no matter how I plan and organise, life keeps intruding—the last few months, intruding with a vengeance.

Writing

My writing experienced a burst of activity a couple of months ago when I completed a rough novel outline for a fantasy novel. The outline has been sitting in a Dropbox folder, largely ignored, while I juggled other things.

As my writing time evaporated, I turned to micro-activities that supported writing but could be fit into tiny temporal cracks: freewriting and other exercises, and reading/watching how-to articles/videos. Lately, I’ve been re-reading fiction favourites and analysing writing techniques. Small, doable stuff.

Study

Of necessity, study has received the lion’s share of my non-chaos-juggling hours. I’m working towards a sociology PhD on the topic of violence. I’m at the literature review stage, which means lots of reading–some of it, given my topic–not entirely pleasant. Briefly, I had some trouble working out quite how I wanted the literature review to be structured, but I believe I’m past that, now.

It says something about how hard I’m finding it to fit writing into my schedule that I’m looking forward to really knuckling down and writing the literature review, as I fully intend to count it as writing.

Late to Bullet Journals

I gather bullet journals are old news among both productive and creative types. They’re entirely new to me, however. If you are like me, they’re a productivity tool designed to help plan and execute the millions of things we all have to do more or less constantly these days. The basics are here if you need them.

I started one because the aforementioned life-of-chaos had smashed all my other planning strategies and left me with a mess of things I had to get done fairly quickly. Desperate research turned up bullet journals, and I’ve given it a try.

Sort of given it a try. I’ve violated what seem to be two cherished standards for the genre. Firstly, I’ve eschewed a paper journal and ink for a Scrivener project. It’s just what I prefer; sorry purists. Secondly… well, an awful lot of madly creative people keep bullet journals, and most of the examples I’ve seen online look like the Book of Kells. Mine doesn’t. Adding beauty to my bullet journal is a rabbit hole I can’t afford to fall down, so I’m not even trying. But that’s OK. Ugly but functional is more or less my brand.

That said, bullet journaling has worked for me. It’s helped me organise, get a few things on track that were derailed-adjacent, and got me thinking about reaching for more (and more ambitious) goals. I’ll continue to trial it for a few months to get a proper feel, but I’m optimistic.

I’m well-overdue to touch base with my blogging. It feels like days to me, it must be said, and yet it’s getting on for fourth months. I’ve lost a blogging season! So, back when the year was young, I banged on about embracing organisation. How’d that go?

Middling. What I gained on the swings I lost on the roundabouts. My uni work—researching and writing up a thesis for my honours year in sociology, which completes at the end of this semester—stayed organised and has gone according to plan. It’s taken some hard work, with more yet to come. This semester, most of the assessment happens close to the end, right when the thesis itself is due, so it’s been a lot like sprinting towards the mountain to be sure you’re there when the avalanche hits.

But the positive side is that I’m currently ten thousand or so words into the thesis and on schedule.

My fiction writing did less well. At first, I observed the writing schedule and managed to write one short story of 8,000ish words and was glad to have done so. After that, I needed to borrow time for uni deadlines, mostly, and the odd life crisis, and as things proceeded, it became easier to give up the blocked out writing time. (Which, as an explanatory note, included time put aside to update this blog.)

I don’t entirely hold it against myself. I do have obligations to meet and the time has to come from somewhere. I’m the only one who suffers when I don’t write and that makes writing the natural target when time is short. But I do feel… I want to say a wistful pang, but it feels more like that time I tried to pass a gallstone the size of a golf ball.

Still, it’s not all red ink in the writing ledger. It’s important to remind yourself of that, I think. I’ve written 10,000 words of the thesis. That constitutes a substantial chunk of an entirely unfamiliar genre of non-fiction writing. That’s also included taking feedback from my thesis supervisor and rewriting. The aforementioned 8,000ish SF story may only be partway to my original fiction writing goal, but it’s not nothing. There’s still another 5,000 words of the thesis to be written, and 6,000 words of additional assessment split between an essay and script for a presentation summarising my research. Research itself is a transferable skill for writers, as is the discipline of sitting in the chair and producing words to a deadline.

I’ve also been nibbling around the edges of writing. Reading articles and blog posts on the craft and business side of things, and listening to my favourite podcasts, such as Writing Excuses. I’ve jotted down a few notes and ideas. It’s not enough to quiet the bellowing of my “wistful pang”, but it’s something.

The lesson, I suppose, is to organise, and do your best, yet recognise that there will always be trade-offs. And I can still hope to do better.