Lessons in how to be dumb

There are seven days in a week. 


Not earth shattering news for most, but it still rocks my world. My weeks are now bookmarked with work, study, coursework, daily commutes and washing my hair*. Free time is fleeting and fought for.

It's been a painful adjustment after almost a year of traveling, when my time was wholly and luxuriously my own. Nap time was mandatory, as was listless daydreaming. I felt a heady sense of accomplishment if I backed up my photos or got a load of laundry done.

Needless to say I have a bit more to pad out my day. I need to push and prod responsibilities around to fit my writing in. I had originally anticipated I would have a first draft of my novel completed by May/June. After all I wrote reams whilst on the road, all I had to do was retype it and add a bit of flowery language, right? I can safely say I think that this sweetly naive and almost laughably so. That's not to say I haven't been working hard to make it happen, but I fear that it will not be enough, so my revised deadline is August.

You can see with my self-imposed deadlines that I'm trying to create goals to ensure I keep writing a priority. Without goals I fall into a slurry of whimsical distractions.  

My current dilemma is how to set goals that set action in motion. I know I need time pressured goals but at the same time I falter if set too firm. My recent attempts of establishing writing goals has left me floundering & overwhelmed.

Just in the past month alone I have oscillated between wild and varied word counts goals - then I abruptly realized I don't really count words. In fact word counts added a sense pressure, not the ra-ra motivating kind, the straggling kind.

I decided to focus on a country/region per week. This worked somewhat well for Tibet and Iran. But found that this approach had me nit picking sections I had already written and didn't propel me into creating new material. It also had me hopping between chapters and leaving some ideas unfleshed. I know if I skip on and leave these ideas half formed, they will become rotten and unworkable by the time I return to them.

I've toyed with fixed durations - two hours per day. Or even setting times of the day - write whilst commuting, but as drool drips onto my iPad and my head lolls towards the shoulder of a stranger most nights I am just too tired.

Basically I have set many goals. Many dumb goals. I need SMART goals. Yup, this is starting to sound like every work related professional-development course ever run - except without the cheap instant coffee and stale biscuits. I offer no biscuits.

So I need to set goals that are Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and Time-bound.

It hasn't been all miserable failures. I am keeping my goal of completing one writing exercise per week. My inner critic berates me that I should do one a day, but I am firmly ignoring that bitchy whine. I'll review and increase the number of exercises based on what's achievable in the upcoming weeks.

I just need to figure out a series of SMART goals to achieve my August deadline. As that deadline is just like a floating pie in the sky at the moment. For more info on goal setting check out this and this.



* yup, since getting back to Sudney I can safely reassure everyone that I do wash my hair on a regular basis.  Thanks to irregular shower access, irate plumbing and corrosive water, a gnarly matted nest was starting to take hold of my scalp.

How do you do?

I've tentatively dipped my toe into the world of writing with some success, however I want to submerge myself.

Ballpoint Arcade is my office. My desk space. This is a place where I will sharpen my pencils, rifle through my tatty, torn notebooks, surreptitiously sniff crisp new paper before rigorously wrestle with words. It currently looks shiny and somewhat sparse. But fear not, there will be reams sheets of scribbles, piles of dog-eared books, rainbows of post-its, stacks of yellowing newspapers and inky ballpoint pens rattling about. But unlike my real world desk you needn't worry about the sweet smell of decay from the occasionally forgotten banana skin, wedged beneath a raft of papers.

The intention of the blog is to pull up my socks and step up my game. Move past half finished stories and create a new system of filing ideas that doesn't involve napkins or cereal boxes, so budding ideas may bloom. I'm getting professional. Not just aiming to get published but also to hone my writing and editing skills.

I have drawn up a calendar of writing competitions to act as deadlines. They include a range of genres from fiction, essay, creative nonfiction, poetry - as I want to push myself. I'll be taking direction from those who know best - writers. By reading and reviewing books of all sorts from writing how-to guides, cozy murder mysteries, sic-fi, chick lit, classics, nonfiction, fantasy to speculative fiction.

Whilst I plan to write daily, I'll only be posting here three times a week. I'm currently balancing a couple of other writing projects including a travelogue about my recent 9month overland journey from London to Sydney.

Please stop by, nibble on an iced vovo, sip on a cuppa and stay for a chat. Book recommendations are warmly welcomed as well as opinions on the weather and writing.