An Automaton on Autopilot

Here’s my ROW80 (Round 3) weekend update.  As I’ve mentioned in my last post, I’ve been trying to maximize the productivity of my story-crafting time during the work-week, as I work forty-hours a week at a “regular job” and only have a few hours to spend on it each evening.  Often times at work, I find myself daydreaming about my story-world; my mind drifting into those fantastical realms of my imagination while my body does the monotonous work before me as if it were an automaton on autopilot.  My employer and coworkers see only my quiet dedication to the task at hand, praising my strong work-ethic and high production output.  Little do they know that I’m just “going through the motions” while my mind is off in another world.  Ironically, I do my best imagining while at work and wish I were home writing during those times.  It would seem that my creativity is most active in the mornings, especially after the first cup of coffee has kicked in.  I find myself planning and plotting and sneaking notes into my mobile app, eagerly awaiting those few hours I have planned for myself that evening.  Some days, this anticipation is the only thing that gets me through the workday.  Yet, despite my best intentions, my evening writing sessions haven’t been going as planned lately.  Over the past few weeks, my writing output has decreased significantly.  This is somewhat due to work fatigue, but mostly it’s just me wasting a lot of valuable writing-time doing “story-research” on the Internet.  Being that I only have about ten hours of quality writing time each work-week and about eight hours during the weekend, I’ve decided to do most of my “story-researching” on the Internet on the weekends, after my creative-wells have run dry.  That way, I can get the most out of my limited writing-time while also allocating the necessary research-time needed for my story-world.  To do this, I’ve create a new “sacred space” for my writing sessions.  During this work-week, I’ve been doing all of my writing away from my desktop computer (with its Internet temptation) and onto my new laptop (which I don’t use for web-surfing), which is now situated on its own dedicated workstation table.  This change in routine has been working pretty good so far this week as I have written a few random practice-scenes and have worked on the back-story of one of my heroines.  This change has been good.  I’ve also started doing a lot more outlining on graph-paper and have compiled a few more character sheets in the process.  I enjoy writing with pencil and paper sometimes, especially as I’m lying in bed, scratching out ideas before the clock tells me its bedtime again.  After all, its a workday tomorrow, and I need to get plenty of rest so I can “go through the motions” again while daydreaming at work.

Conan had entered the part of the city reserved for the temples.  On all sides of him they glittered white in the starlight — snowy marble pillars and golden domes and silver arches, shrines of Zamora’s myriad strange gods.  He did not trouble his head about them; he knew that Zamora’s religion, like all things of civilized, long-settled people, was intricate and complex, and had lost most of the pristine essence in a maze of formulas and rituals.  He had squatted for hours in the courtyards of the philosophers, listening to the arguments of theologians and teachers, and come away in a haze of bewilderment, sure of only one thing; that they were all touched in the head.  His gods were simple and understandable; Crom was their chief, and he lived on a great mountain, whence he sent forth doom and death.  It was useless to call on Crom, because he was a gloomy, savage god, and he hated weaklings.  But he gave a man courage at birth, and the will and might to kill his enemies, which, in the Cimmerian’s mind, was all any god should be expected to do.
— (Excerpt from The Tower of the Elephant, by Robert E. Howard)

That’s all for now.  Keep the Fire Burning!
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