Tessa McDermid

Everyone is home today, which means my regular routine has been shifted.  Instead of seeing the family off to school and work, then settling down to write, one person is still sleeping, one is up and fixing parts of the house, and the other is wanting to go finish his Christmas shopping.

My plan was to complete a chapter for my new proposal.  I can shut the door and get busy, which is what I usually would do on these days. But it’s hard to ignore a shopper who’s using his own money to buy gifts for his brother and the cousin whose name he drew.  So I closed the study door and we went shopping, checking off several names on both of our lists.

My writing brain never takes a holiday, really.  Even if I go to dinner or a movie, part of my mind is thinking about my characters, my plot, the next scene in the book.  When we drive off to see relatives or friends, I’m cataloguing scenery, wondering about locations, trying to determine which character needs to be the focus one for the next chapter.

So, I have to force myself to walk away from the book every now and then.  Not to ignore my writing time but to recognize that sometimes, I need a physical holiday away from my computer and study.  I’ll take my Alphasmart with me on our drive to relatives but I will put it away so we can visit and play games.  Christmas Day, I’ll keep it locked up all day and enjoy the time together.

How about you?  How do you take a holiday from your writing?  Or do you?

I’m starting my resolutions early this year (or possibly late, depending on how we look at things). I’m part of a writing blog at another loop and we’ve had a lot of discussion regarding when and how we keep up with the group blog. In the midst of the discussion, I realized I hadn’t done my own blog for a couple weeks.

My resolution? To write something every other day. My son and I listen to a radio show on the way to his school each morning that showcases different comedians. One of the comedians refers to his ‘secret public journal,‘ which tickles my fancy and completely illustrates what I feel a blog is. Your thoughts going out to others. For this blog, I’ll stick to my writing life as much as possible. But that will include books I’ve read, discussions from other loops. . . all sorts of topics that fit into that writing life.

For now, I am resolved to use this as a regular warmup for my writing. Right now, I’m taking a quck breather from finishing what may be the last revisions on my current book. Once I send those pages off, I’ll finish the proposal. My Christmas gift to myself is having that in the mail and off my desk before the holidays start.

Any resolutions on your end? I keep my simple, so that I have a better chance of following through. I also find that I do better with specific goals, aims that I want to accomplish. How do you keep yourself organized?