Godspeed, Crazy Mike Journal (Week 5)

8/15/21 – Sunday

Took a slack day and did nothing creative. Combined with taking it easy yesterday, it’s the first time in a while that I took a weekend off writing and podcasts. (Well, I did record an episode of Men in Gorilla Suits in the evening.)

8/16/21 – Monday

Creative time for the day went toward editing the latest Men in Gorilla Suits episode.

Because we shoot for an every-other-week schedule for Men in Gorilla Suits, every couple weeks—for at least a day or two—it gets more attention than writing and Not About Lumberjacks.

8/17/21 – Tuesday

A very busy day, combined with tending to bills and other things during lunch, meant no creative work for the day.

There was a time I wrote daily no matter what, but along the way I valued sleep and not stressing about things so much. The goal then became, “Did I write more days than not?” With working full time, having a life, and other things that happen during any given week, four out of seven days seems like a good target.

I still do more than many people I see who claim you must write daily, even if it’s just 10 words. That seems like a recipe for stress.

Even people who write fiction full time take breaks (often for months…even years), so cut yourself some slack!

8/18/21 – Wednesday

Got the latest episode of Men in Gorilla Suits online. (Since reorganizing much of the office, I really need to treat the space for recording. Lot of echo. You can see how I handle that for Not About Lumberjacks at the end of the first post of this series.)

Lunch break writing was a return to “Godspeed, Crazy Mike.” It felt nice getting back to writing.

Yesterday, I wrote about how I once wrote every day no matter what. For years, I had a hand-written note above my computer monitor. It was a slogan I thought of one day when I didn’t feel like writing after an extremely hot day working in a warehouse.

The note:

“Every day I don’t write is another day I have to go to work!”

At the time, I believed that I’d be writing fiction full time at some point. I still don’t rule it out, but I know most people who write fiction don’t do it full time.

Still…I loved the saying so much that I made an image that’s been my computer desktop for years using the slogan.

In recent years, I don’t view my job as a thing that gets in the way of writing fiction, but rather, a thing that allows me to write what I want with no care if it sells or not. Many of my favorite stories exist because I have a day job.

It’s one thing to use a job you don’t like when you’re younger to motivate you to write regularly, but I’ve been fortunate to move on to jobs I’ve liked — with coworkers who support the things I do.

It feels like it’s time for a new desktop.

8/19/21 – Thursday

So…about that new desktop…

As far as writing, I continue finalizing sections of “Godspeed, Crazy Mike.”

8/20/21 – Friday

Up early, and got some good writing done. I hit a point where I needed a little map of the scene where Crazy Mike’s body is found, so I roughed out a diagram on one of the main notecards I’m using to track story details.

The map is based on Volo Bog, a place a little north of where I grew up in northern Illinois. I still wanted a bit more room in case I had notes, so I figured I’d use a satellite view of the bog at the size to shuffle into my note cards. (I could keep it all together that way and write on the back.)

So, I did what I do when I make notecards for Dungeons and Dragons and cropped an area from a screenshot at size.

In the end, I left the image on a full page because it was even easier making notes where I could see everything and not have to flip things over and write on the back.

Also, I will never tire of how much the World Wide Web helps with research. (To think, I started writing on a typewriter and had to go to libraries for research…and hope they had what I needed).

8/21/21 – Saturday

More good writing and other snazzy things.

I mentioned on Wednesday, that to some degree, I used to write in opposition of day jobs. But how, along the way, I got better jobs I didn’t mind…and eventually good jobs with great people — making it easy to write what I want with no concern beyond creating (and sharing) stories.

For the past couple years, I’ve been working as a contractor at a company I like. I did one contract from May of 2019 until January of 2020. At that time, they wanted to bring me on full time, but…COVID-19 put a hiring freeze on the position.

I was brought on for a second contract in July of 2020.

Yesterday, I was offered a full-time position working with a group that’s very close to the first group I worked with. I loved the people in that first group (and the people I met in the group I’ll now work with on a full-time basis).

It would be easy to say, “Well, starting something new means more time learning about the job and less time writing stories,” but technical writers are always learning (and working on) new things. In fact, I started a novel on the first day of that first contract.

It’s not lost on me as I hope to get back to the book that it will be as an actual employee at the place where I started it.