The writer's routine. Many of us have one. Some of us don't (and work better without one). As is evidenced by the irregularity of my recent writing weeks, I am not one of the latter group of people.
Having a regular, anticipated writing time and practice is one of the tools that helps me complete my projects. For example, The Writing Week used to be (read: should again be) a weekly Monday post. Summer travels and - who's going to lie? - laziness threw me off. Even today, on a Tuesday, I'm the closest to posting on time that I've been in months, but I'm still not on time. That will change. Starting next week.
The frequency and timeliness of a blog post is nothing, however, compared to my actual writing. One hour a day after work, or before work, if I know I am going to be home very late one night. How hard is that? On paper, no very. In practice, though, I slacked off on that a lot in the past month, too. Chalk some - or most - of that up to travel if you (I) want, too, but it still has resulted in a net zero pages. I need to get back into the routine.
I'm coming up on the one year anniversary next month of when I signed with UTA (well, no actual paperwork, but you get the idea). At the time, my manager promised my agent two scripts a year. Ambitious, but doable. The sad truth, though, is that I've produced an outline and two drafts of a different script, but nothing worth reading yet. And that two draft script? Needs a major third (and probably fourth) draft. That's what I'm going to start on soon. When I get back to my routine. When I feel that I can conjure up something good again. Only, I can't wait for the mood to strike. I have to get working again. I simply must. Time is ticking. I might not be able to hit the two script benchmark - hell, I know I can't at this point - but I surely can do one, can't I?
