What do you do when work gets in the way of your writing progress? I am currently towards the end of my second draft which feels very much like a rewrite and working has me writing shorter amounts every session. I wanted to start sending it to agents this year but that darn hobbled sway! *Sarcophagi reffrence.. I would just like to know; how many of you are being pushed back because of work? And what do you do when it happens?
Take a notebook to work and write ideas in it. Think through what you wrote the day prior and play it out in your head. If you come up with edits of the scene, dialog, descriptions, or get inspired, annotate it in then notebook. Think through the theme of your writing, and compare it with how you portray that theme. Imagine how the characters look and try to think of better ways to describe them. Have conversations between your characters in your head, and then write the best dialog you come up with. Write your outline in the notebook so you can review it, and hone your outline. When you sit down to write that night you'll have a whole outline of corrections, edits, and ideas for your writing that night.
@zoupskim got it write (Punny puns pun) I personally write memos in my phone or tablet with upcoming ideas for a chapter or character arc.
What they said up there ^^^ But a lot depends on what writer in question does for a living. I don't want my brain surgeon thinking up plots and dialogue while he's working on me. (Assuming I have a brain surgeon, and I hope I haven't jinxed myself into needing one after this, but let's go with the scene.) So you do what you can, under the circumstances. Reading back my previous scenes on my phone and doing minor edits is one I do on the go a lot, (ETA) because my day gig has a lot of travel time, and sometimes a lot of "hurry up and wait." Having my WIP open on another screen during phone calls is another, but--and this is a huge one--I'm an independent contractor, so I don't have a corporate IT department tracking my every move, and it's my laptop equipment, so they can't claim ownership of my stuff like some companies can with any document produced on the office computers. I've also known plenty of people who write in their car at lunch or find a Starbucks or a park or something. ETA: Or a library. My city has a lot of them that are really quiet and not busy at all during lunch time.
"GRRAWWA, MY STORY MUST LIIIVE!!!" "Sir, are you all right?" "THE VOICES *nasally inha-a-a-ale* THEY PINE TO BE PICTURES OF THE MIINDE!!!
Yes. I think if you're not making a living off of writing fiction, it's totally viable to have days, even weeks, where you won't get any much if any writing done. Let's be realistic, though. Right now people expect to die, which means you have a limited amount of time to get a novel done and hopefully published. So, even if the work is hard, if you want to publish, you're gonna have to find a way to make time. Maybe it's lunch break, maybe it's weekends. Maybe it's playing catch up on quiet periods. But ideally there is some measurable progress over the course of a week or at least a month, which is substantially different than zero progress. I get that a lot of people, myself included, believe in "write every day" and having a consistent schedule. This is particularly important for those of us who have the time to write, and just not the will/discipline. But I think once you know you have the discipline, you have to be able to accept that there may be days or even weeks you won't write.
