IWSG – Summer Plans

It may be a foolish plan in more ways than one, but I’ve tentatively made up a plan for trying to renew my writer’s spirit after I finally get my final paper in this semester (due a week from tomorrow, ack!).

As far as I know — we haven’t discussed post-semester schedules yet — I’m still going to be working on the weekends, and probably on Fridays as well, if not even more days than that.  (I am at a part-time standing, though, so probably not more than three or four days a week, I’d think?)  But the museum is closed Mondays, so there’s obviously no way I’d be working then.  (Even the director and assistant director don’t go in on Mondays.)

So my plan is that on Mondays I’m going to take my laptop to some fairly laid-back location that sells lunch, and after having my lunch, I’m going to get out my laptop and write for an hour.  I don’t know if I’ll work on my experimental story involving super-powered people, or if I’ll finally get around to the re-writes on my semi-YA series.

Both projects have advantages and disadvantages, so I think I’m going to leave it open as “whatever I feel like at the time.”

In fact, I think I’ll be so open that I’ll be okay with writing something else, too.

The important thing is to get writing again.

A lot of my April A-to-Z posts this year ended up going into full story-telling mode, and I think that’s probably because I was feeling an itch to write fiction again, one I haven’t been able to scratch lately for one reason or another.  (A super-demanding class had something to do with it, for sure!  I have to spend more time on the work for this one class than I’d have to spend on two or even three normal classes.  Even at the graduate level, it’s ridiculous.)

Obviously, there are a lot of flaws to this plan…one of the biggest being the expense of going out to lunch every single Monday.  I’m trying to think of places around here that give a discount to frequent customers, or have loyalty cards or something…I can only think of one, off-hand, that has a loyalty card and has the kind of atmosphere I need.  Maybe instead of going out to lunch, I should just take my laptop to the local library and write there.  (Getting out of here, I think, is important, as there’s too much here to distract me.)  But the nearest library hasn’t got any place to sit, and if I recall correctly about the next nearest one, they set the air conditioning on “arctic ice storm,” which would be too distracting.

Hmm…yeah, the location is something I’ll have to keep working on.

But I think the basic plan of setting aside one hour every week in which I must write seems like a good plan.  Hopefully once I get going, I’ll find myself better able to write the rest of the time as well.

Y’know, reflecting on the “which story to work on” angle — yes, I’m adding this about eight hours after writing the rest of the post, why do you ask? — I think I’ll start the first week by drawing up a set of questions to ask all my major characters, and then write out their answers.  That’ll give me a jump start on deciding which set I want to work with, right?