So, I’ve gotten out of the habit every day of posting my word count progress, but just so you know, I’ve been doing it very regularly. After I decided to keep working on my novel and not put it on the back burner, I’ve been doing between 500 to 700 words a day.
It’s really great that my friend Steve is also a writer, because when I want to go write, I’ll get out of my apartment and go over to his house to write in his basement, where he usually writes. For some reason, I don’t really like writing in my apartment very much. My roommate usually plays Arabic and Circassian music (he is Circassian and VERY nationalistic, which is great because it’s given me some good ideas for some of my characters), and after dinner there are usually people coming in and out, or watching TV, or something else. Or maybe it’s too messy. I don’t know exactly what it is, but I prefer to get out of the apartment to write.
It’s really great at Steve’s house, because it’s this old house with a dimly lit basement and all kinds of weird stuff all over the place. Slightly mildewy (except not so much anymore), isolated down in the basement from everyone else who usually hangs out doing stuff in the TV room upstairs, and if I need a break I can hang out with my old roommates, which is ALWAYS fun! So it’s just a great place to get away to to write.
I’ve been reading a lot of major sci fi books recently, as a part of my self-education on the genre. I just finished The Forever War by Joe Haldeman just an hour ago–and holy cow! It was good! I’ll review it and Citizen of the Galaxy here in a little bit, after doing some homework. If I’m going to write Science Fiction, I want to become well informed on the genre, know what has been done before, what’s been done well, where it’s going right now, wha the cliches are, what the successful techniques are, etc. Plus, I want to just be a better writer in general, which means that I’ll be going outside of Science Fiction / Fantasy every once and a while. One of the books on my list is The Kite Runner, which I hear is really good. I’ll probably review that one here, too.
And where am I finding this time to read all these books? It’s pretty easy, actually. I started exercising recently, and I found that it’s really easy to read while you’re pedaling on one of those machine bikes. So using only an hour each day, I can hit two birds with one stone: get in some exercise and give myself some reading time. Plus, I walk around campus a lot now with my head buried in a book, and even though I probably look a little weird, I’m getting the hang of it. After a while, you even stop bumping into people.
😉
