2014 is Going to Hurt

I saw my flatmate in the kitchen this morning.

For many people, this isn’t really notable. They probably see their flatmates every morning. For me, it’s a rarity. My flatmate gets up early. Seriously early. He’s usually on his way to work by the time I roll out of bed at 7:30 AM and start thinking about having a shower. Usually, if we cross paths in the morning, it’s ’cause I’m catching a flight scheduled to leave before rush hour.

So he wasn’t entirely out of line when he looked at me, making coffee, around 7 in the morning, and asked: “who are you and what have you done with Peter?”

“This is nothing,” I said. “I’ve been up since 5:30.”

It’s a work day. It’s a writing day. It’s the year of the novellapocalypse. When these things meet, I have to get up early.

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2014 is going to hurt.

Not in a bad way, necessarily, but in the way that running a marathon when you’re not completely prepared will hurt. The kind of hurt where you’ll ache and you’ll moan, but ultimately there’s a sense of satisfaction behind it. Only, instead of running, I’ll be writing a few things. I’ve got a list somewhere, broken down month by month. I know what I need to have achieved by end of January in order to keep pace with deadlines and expectations. I know how many words I need to write every day, just to keep my head above water.

It works out at 1602.739.

My average daily wordcount for 2013 was closer to 98.2.

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I hate getting up early, but I know it’s necessary.When my alarm went off at 5:30 AM, my first instinct was to mute the damn thing and make up the writing time later tonight. I didn’t, because that’s a bad precedent to start. Once work is done at five o’clock, there’s a multitude of things that compete for my time. At five-thirty in the morning, the only thing writing competes with is the dire need for a cup of coffee.

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I’m going to fail at some point this year. For six days now, I’ve kept the forward momentum, hit my word-count and gone a little over. I’m ahead of the curve when it comes to the timeline for my current project. I clocked up a thousand words before I had to go to work, which is about two hundred more than I wanted to achieve this morning.

Right now things are looking good, but a year is a long time. I’ve got shit going on that isn’t writing. I’m going to Adelaide for a week, to hang out at the Fringe. I’m looking for apartment so I can be one of those home-owner types. I’m going to have to move, eventually, once I find a place to own. Work will get crazy. Life will get crazy. It’s just going to happen.

The system is going to fall over at some point. That’s going to be okay.

The important part is setting it up again, and making sure all the things get done.