Friday 8 February 2013

Writing update, and the joys of the morning commute

I've been working so hard on my writing lately that I have very little else to talk about. My poor husband must be so sick of me right now: "Writing this, writing that, blah blah blah." Apparently I even mumble about my characters at 2 am when I'm 98.7% asleep.

On the plus side, I've been kicking arse with my writing resolutions. My first three writing projects for the year were going to be three novelettes between books 1 and 2 of my current trilogy. I wrote novelette 1 early in January. Novelette 2 became a novella, and yet I've still nearly finished the first draft, days ahead of schedule. When I tried to plan novelette 3, I discovered that it actually wanted to be a part of book 2, which is fine by me. I've moved the brainstorming notes over to my book 2 project file accordingly.

I'll tell you what: the "bus ride + iPad + iPad keyboard + Index Card app that synchs to Scrivener at home" workflow is frikken amazing. Depending on how busy my first leg of the morning commute is (i.e. whether I have a seat) I can write somewhere between 250 and 600 words by the time I get to work. My daily word goal is only 700 words. That means I usually finish my writing for the day in my lunch break. Then on the bus home, I can either work on revisions of book 1 (if I have a replacement or new scene to work on) or I can brainstorm and outline my next project. Brilliant.

Do you use public transport to go to work or school? Are you able to make productive use of the time, or do you find the people and/or movement too distracting?