Packing Heat 004: Fifteen Minutes
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Last Episode's Assignment
The assignment was to observe a space and write down you noticed, and think about how they would play into a sex scene. I did the exercise during the podcast using an indoor pool as my example. How about you? Did you find a cool place where your characters can have sex? (Feel free to leave a comment!)
I plan on going to Chicago soon. I’m bringing my camera! And a notebook.
Writing and Privacy
First, the key command:
- On a PC, Windows + M minimizes all.
- On Mac, Command + H hides the program in which you're currently working.
Then, the speech:
"Right now I'm writing, and I'm not ready to show it to anyone. Can we talk about this while I'm not in the middle of writing?" And then if they continue to bug you, poke them in the eye with a sharpened stick.
Fifteen Minutes to Write
- Print a page to take with you
- Start anywhere
- Access to paper – do you carry a purse? Can you put a notebook in it? How about your glove compartment?
- Email Yourself
- Call your voice mail
- Play a movie in your head
- Leave your story up on your desktop all the time so you can sneak in a line or two
- Leave notes about what happens next at the end of the story(or, handwriting, in the margin)
Your Assignment:
OK, so i hit 379 words in 15 minutes. But I couldn't stop at the 15 minute mark, and in two hours while at work i ended up with 2985 words.
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379 sounds just about right. Imagine if you did only that every day--you'd have 2800 words per week, which is a good size for a short story in the erotica market, or a chapter of a novel if you're writing novel-length.
I'm totally jealous of you building up steam and getting up to 3k. That's a fantasy writing day for me! (I'm at 700 so far today and I'm hoping for 3k. My guy's going out to catch a band later, so who knows, maybe I can hit my goal if I work into the night.)
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I am lucky in that my job allows me to schedule my work each day, and as long as I keep up with my clients and turn everything in on time, the rest of the time is my own. Many of my co-workers play online games, but I am taking the time to write. I have a flash drive with Open Office installed on it, so nothing is ever saved on the work computer -- I run the app from the drive and save all of my documents to the flash drive. When i get home I have all my work waiting for me. At home I run a Mac Powerbook, and the office is Windows XP, but Open Office runs nicely on both platforms.
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I've heard of running Open Office from a flash drive but I've never done it. That sounds like an excellent way of keeping your writing separate from your job stuff.
I think it's pretty common for writers to have day jobs that don't require continual, undivided attention. It leaves them fresh to work on their writing, or to at least think about their writing during the day--I'm thinking of Harvey Pekar and Charles Bukowski. I'm sure there are many more.
I have a high-intensity day job but I cut my hours down to half time to prevent burnout. I'm glad I had the flexibility to choose the number of hours I want to work. I'd rather live as cheaply as possible and have less of my time go to someone else.
A question about Open Office: do you run it from your flash drive on both Windows and Mac, or is it running from Windows on your flash drive, and then you have it installed for Mac at home and you run it off your computer? Sorry if that's a ridiculous question. Cross-platform performance makes my brain hurt. (Also, when my mom calls me and asks me what's wrong with her PC when 1. I can't see it and 2. I know next to nothing about PCs.)
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I run Open Office from the flash drive when I use a PC, and I run an installed version of Open Office at home. And by the way, it is NOT a ridiculous question!
In regards to the flash drive, I am also backing up my work on a regular basis. What I do is this: First, I've named my working folder to today's date, like "Writing 2008-07-02" or whatever. Then next I copy into my "Documents" folder on my Mac. In my Documents folder I now have several copies of my writing, backed up at different intervals on different dates. I bought my current flash drive from Target (of all places) for $17. My recommendation would be to keep it at 2 GB, because I've noticed that my work machine won't recognize any drive above 4 GB.
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I like your backup method! I also save multiple copies of my stories, but the way I do it is to open the document and "save as" before I start writing on a given day, and append the date in the file name. So I'd have greatstory0628.doc and greatstory0702.doc which would mean I worked on it June 28 and July 2. Just in case a weirdness sneaks in and I want to go back and look at a prior copy.
I just got a new Asus eee computer running Linux, and Open Office looks really great on it. I haven't done more than a test page but it ran really smooth, looks good, works quickly. The keyboard will take some getting used to, but even after just having it a day and dinking around with it intermittently, I can see that I will adjust.
Thanks for the tip on keeping the flash drive small. (Which I do anyway just because I'm cheap. Quill.com has a 1GB for about $6 right now on clearance. I get one every time I order office supplies for the day job.)
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