I stopped writing fiction around the 10th of November, switching my focus to the workshop I’m delivering at the Romance Writers convention on the Gold Coast next week. I’m inching up on the final stages of that project, but it’s immediately followed by PhD deadlines (which involves fiction, but operates from the same obligation-oriented part of my brain as the workshop).
Obligation-based writing is rocky on my mental health, because it comes with the weight of expectations and triggers social anxiety. I much prefer doing my thing, showing it to the world, and letting any discussion of value kick in after the work is done so I don’t have to think about it.
Right now it’ll be April 2022 before I get a chance to even think about doing long stretches of obligation-free fiction writing again, and probably June before I can really get traction on a project. And I’m already feeling a little batty about the lack of such writing, just after the crush of November, so failing to fit any in is a short-cut to depression and resentment towards my job.
Obviously, not sustainable, but as I mentioned in yesterday’s post, I’ve solved this problem before. The trick is accepting the things that are outside my control and find moments to reconnect with the writer-self I need.
Reworking my schedule for a morning writing stint is helping, but the bulk of that time is still workshop and Patreon/Newsletter oriented for a few months. So I’m looking to fit some fiction into the one consistent window of time available to me: the six to eight minutes I spend on a train, twice a day, commuting to work and back.
I’ve discovered I can generally fill one side of an index card on that commute, and I can tuck a small pile of index cards into my pocket alongside a small Moleskin notebook (which is both raw idea repository and a stable writing surface while standing).
Couple that with a theory I’ve been tooling with around four-beat flash fiction of 300 to 500 words, it seems like a useful escape valve (and, roughly, the writerly equivalent of running scales).
Long term it might be a surprisingly useful way of getting little bits of work done on larger projects, but for now I’m working on a four-card system: one card for the intro, two beats for the body, and a final beat for the story ending. One finished morsel of fiction drafted every week, ready to be tinkered with when I’ve got a free moment.