Baby Steps

In the spirit of No-Resolutions - but establishing better habits - I've been trying to take each day at the keyboard as they come. For the last few years, I've adhered to a strict daily word count: I must write at least 2,000 words on one project every day. Inspired or not, distracted by the idea of other projects or not, I have to get those 2,000 words in before I work on anything else. The result is that I've finished a number of books that way, but some days are tougher than others. Some days, the words will not come, and each one is fought and scrapped for, clawed out into the open and then sneered at, because I know they'll need changing later. 

Productivity is important...but I'm trying to give myself permission to opt out of that word count goal when I don't feel like meeting it. And, really, I haven't felt like meeting it since Christmas. It feels like Golden Eagle is already done and dusted; behind me; in the past - from a writing-as-a-business standpoint. Yesterday's news; time for new content.

But the truth is, it's been out in the world for less than a month, and I don't even have the paperback up for sale yet. So... There's a slight chance I'm being too hard on myself. Again. 

Every time I release a new book, I have a short period of mental/emotional/creative fatigue afterward. Though I jump into new projects, I also tend to flit between them; a hundred words here, a hundred words there. I think it's time I accept that's just part of the process. 

Right now, even though I'm working on Lionheart and Lone Star, the project I feel the most inspiration for is my little fluff piece about the NY pack in Buffalo. Those scenes wouldn't have fit at the end of Golden Eagle - they would have been anticlimactic had they been tacked on after the wedding. But it feels like I need to write them. For my own satisfaction, yes, but also because I think they might prove usable in the next book or so; and because working through all these characters' emotions on the page hones my focus in a way brainstorming can't. I need to see it; need to be able to revisit it and reference it. Know the exact dialogue, and walk through the small realizations with them. My backstories have backstories; my fluff has fluff. Yet another part of the process. 

It can be so easy to get caught up in the internal pressure to write more, better, faster. To be quicker, to stay "relevant." A part of me panics a little when I think about everything I want to try to accomplish this year. But. Sometimes you have to press pause and invest in something that seems, perhaps, frivolous. There's no wrong way to do this thing. It'll all get done, even if the journey is nothing but baby steps for long stretches. 

And because it's not even a month old, don't forget to check out Golden Eagle for all your high-angst, bloody, triumphant found family vampire and werewolf action!