I’m back from my little trip. How’d I do? I had a pretty fun time and met some of my wife’s family, i.e. new family members for me. And that was great and that’s what’s important. I got to see some of the city as well and eat some good food— I must emphasize it was only two full days. The outer ones were dedicated to traveling.
Now that I’m home I remembered that Dean Wesley Smith has a nonfiction book (really a compilation of blog posts I think) called Writing a Novel in Five Days While Traveling. So I read it. In it, he goes to Las Vegas to hang out at a hotel, go to poker tournaments, and see old friends. He drives a long way to get there and brings his computer with him so he can set up in his hotel room and he doesn’t do any planning about what the novel is going to be. It was pretty amusing— every day this dude wakes up at noon and goes to the buffet at 1 p.m.; his whole schedule is moved over from normal by several hours. I don’t know if that’s a Vegas thing or a DWS thing or both. He ultimately writes a little over 90% what he wanted to, so a ~37,000-word book. Some of the stuff that he mentioned was pretty relevant to me.
He said he wouldn’t have bothered challenging himself to achieve this feat if his wife were with him, and on related notes, he made sure to set aside time to do fun things he wanted to do, hang out with important people, etc. If you’re going to take a trip, take a trip and enjoy quality time with your friends and family and the unique offerings of your destination. A writer definitely doesn’t need to prove that they can write a whole novel in X days while traveling to be successful or anything. It was just a fun challenge. Enjoying life is more important.
Also, he’s very experienced at shutting up the critical voice. He had all his needed equipment with him and set his story basically right where he was. If he felt a little blocked, he could go for a walk right around where the story was happening and feel inspired again. And he knows that it takes some time to develop the strength to just blast out thousands of nearly uninhibited words.
I think I needed to hear all that. This could be an important test for me as far as quieting my mental negativity and enjoying rather than lamenting restarting or juggling projects. I’m glad I went to D.C. because it gave me a few story ideas and I think I am about to go work on one.
Until next time.