Monday, April 11, 2011

Decision 2011

Since I finished the latest draft of my would be novel and submitted to a lottery publisher for consideration and a recent novelette I wrote was also submitted for a contest I took some time to relax a bit. I read several books, watched a ton of TV, a few movies... and now I'm getting antsy. I'm gonna have to write something.

My choices?

  1. Finish draft of a novel that I've written and loved, then realized three quarters of the way through that I'm not good enough to actually do justice to my story. It's been sitting on the backburner for several years and is a stand alone sequel (is that possible) to the book I just submitted to the publishing house.
  2. Write another original short story - again, probably longish. 10 - 20 thousand words.
  3. Try to develop novella out of a disastrously bad novel I wrote a few years ago. Had some moments of greatness that I really want to return to. That novel is a real mess though.
  4. Blog more.
  5. Finish last years Nano novel. I have fond memories of that thing. Is it a masterpiece? In my head it is. I think I only need another few thousand words to wrap up the draft. I'm nervous about this one though, I can't really gauge how good it is based on my memories. I'm afraid I'l reread it and realize it's also a disaster.
  6. Do some more artsy things. I think I'm about to order a wireless Wacom tablet and I might be spending the next month or two exploring it by trying some digital artwork. It could be time consuming
Something to consider. My laptop is not working properly. It's under warranty and the fine folks at Dell are all set to fix it. But to do so means I'll be laptopless for a week or so. It would disrupt my calm to be in the middle of something when I have to send it back. I've been putting it off for nearly a year now. I'm almost out of time.

It's where the magic happens - and by magic I mean dump my trash
If that were to come to pass - behold what I would have to work from:

Sigh. I can't work under those conditions. I won't work under those conditions. It started as a cute little place to keep unwanted items. It ended up becoming piles of marked up manuscripts, junk mail and discarded electronics.

And chapstick.

So when the time comes to send the laptop off I won't be doing any work that requires typing. I'm the kind of obsessive personality that will spend 30 hours straight doing something and ignore everything else in the world until I've completed my task. So writing can bring out a part of me that annoys everyone I know. When I write longer pieces it can be weeks, or even months, of me using up all my vacation days at work, skipping family time, yelling at loved ones for disturbing my delicate genius, and more or less making everyone hate me.

I don't know what would happen if I just stopped in the middle of something and shipped off my computer. I might freak out.

Much to consider. Thoughts?

5 comments:

Alex J. Cavanaugh said...

Don't freak out.
Go for the Wacom tablet. Don't bother cordless unless you really want some distance between you and where the magic happens.

PT Dilloway said...

I wouldn't like using a tablet for typing; it'd be too hard to do the home row way I learned. My netbook works well enough.

Rusty Carl said...

Alex - I won't freak out. The missus wants a cordless pretty bad though. I'm not sure why. I know they're more expensive, maybe we'll talk more about before I pull the trigger.

Rogue - I probably should have mentioned that the Wacom Tablet is not like a tablet computer, it's an interface for your computer that allows you the freedom of drawing freehand instead of using a mouse when creating digital art.

Andrew Leon said...

Bite the bullet. Send in the laptop. You'll feel better after, not having that hanging over your head anymore. Also, if you don't, and your warranty expires, you'll never stop kicking yourself. In the long term, the week of missing the laptop is nothing.

Rusty Carl said...

Andrew - I won't let the warranty expire. I've had enough laptop disasters in my past that I'll not forgo maintenance again.