{"id":4820,"date":"2013-01-29T07:51:11","date_gmt":"2013-01-29T13:51:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.christophergronlund.com\/blog\/tjw\/?p=4820"},"modified":"2013-01-29T07:51:11","modified_gmt":"2013-01-29T13:51:11","slug":"oh-yeah-i-have-a-blog","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.christophergronlund.com\/blog\/tjw\/2013\/01\/29\/oh-yeah-i-have-a-blog\/","title":{"rendered":"Oh Yeah, I Have a Blog&#8230;"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure style=\"width: 250px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" title=\"A stream cutting through snowy woods.\" src=\"http:\/\/www.christophergronlund.com\/blog\/tjw\/images\/snowstream.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"250\" height=\"373\" \/><figcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">This is NOT Texas. Trust me!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>I got email asking why I haven&#8217;t posted in 2013. It&#8217;s not that I&#8217;ve been too busy to post &#8212; although I <em>have <\/em>been busy at the day job and with writing. After I finish the day&#8217;s writing quota and wrap up a day&#8217;s work, I just haven&#8217;t had too much to say that pertains to <em>The Juggling Writer<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve never wanted to blog for the sake of blogging and be that guy who&#8217;s like, &#8220;Uhm&#8230;what do I write about today? Hmmm&#8230; I know: Ten Writing Lessons We Can Learn from&#8230;Yarn!&#8221;<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Yarn is made up of many fibers; think of your story as many fibers&#8230;<\/li>\n<li>Yarn comes in many colors; think about what color your story is compared to others&#8230;<\/li>\n<li>You can strangle a person with enough yarn; I am going to spare you all another blog post like this and do myself in&#8230;<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>I don&#8217;t hate much in the world, but I hate entries like that, and vowed at the beginning of all this that I would write when I had time and motivation to dedicate to <em>The Juggling Writer<\/em> and produce stuff that works for me in the hope it helps others.<\/p>\n<p>So I guess I finally have something to say.<\/p>\n<h2><strong>A Simple Plan for 2013<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>A new(ish) year doesn&#8217;t necessarily call for a new plan, but I <em>am <\/em>doing a couple things different (and new) this year.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve hit a stride with the new(ish) day job that allows a better balance of work and life. The first six months of a new job, I typically spend a little more time on the day job, even if it&#8217;s not necessarily time <em>at<\/em> work. In my head, I roll things around, seeing what I feel I know&#8230;and what I still need to work on. I&#8217;m fortunate enough to have a good day job that allows a good mix of busy and autonomy, so it&#8217;s not like, &#8220;Oh, six months are up &#8212; time to jettison work thoughts!&#8221; But work is no longer the dominant thing on my mind; work thoughts are more project based instead of learning-the-new-gig based.<\/p>\n<p>Sometimes the projects at work may require me to carry things in my head more than usual, and I&#8217;m fine with that because it&#8217;s the best job I&#8217;ve ever had. But since I&#8217;m more willing to let the day job occupy more space in my head, it&#8217;s meant really looking at ways to keep moving on other things.<\/p>\n<h2><strong>The Writing Plan<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>Before the great blog reader purge of 2012, when I dropped most of the blogs I followed in an effort to save some time, the hardest thing to drop was Boing Boing. I dropped quite a few blogs that updated many times a day because &#8212; like social media before taking long breaks and seeing how much time it sucked up &#8212; it&#8217;s so easy for me to lose focus checking things to see something new&#8230;instead of sitting with my thoughts and being forced to think about the things I&#8217;m working on.<\/p>\n<p>Back to Boing Boing. In addition to updating Boing Boing, teaching, speaking, and raising a small child, one of the editors at Boing Boing (Cory Doctorow) writes novels. He&#8217;s probably more busy on a slow day for him than most of us are on a busy day for us. And yet there he is, dropping novels at a regular click.<\/p>\n<p>He does it drop by drop.<\/p>\n<p>Doctorow, at least when I was still checking out Boing Boing regularly, writes 250 words a day on new novels. That&#8217;s probably 5 &#8211; 15 minutes of writing. Even with research, maybe 30 minutes. That&#8217;s an easy daily goal!<\/p>\n<p>So far in 2013, with a couple weekend days when I decided to do other things early in the morning and never got back to my computer all day, I&#8217;ve been going with Doctorow&#8217;s method&#8230;and bit by bit, I&#8217;ve probably written more words in 2013 than I would have had I stuck to my old plan of writing when I could &#8212; as much as I could.<\/p>\n<p>I have no excuse to not finish a novel in 2013.<\/p>\n<h2><strong>The Podcast<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>With knocking out the day&#8217;s writing quota before even getting my morning cup of coffee, I&#8217;ve hit that place where the big task for the day is done before the day&#8217;s really even begun. After getting in my 250-500 words, the day is split between the day job and other things I want to do. One of the things I&#8217;ve wanted to do for a long time is a regular podcast.<\/p>\n<p>In a week or two, <a title=\"Men in Gorilla Suits\" href=\"http:\/\/www.meningorillasuits.com\">Men in Gorilla Suits<\/a> will go live. <a title=\"Shawn Kupfer's blog.\" href=\"http:\/\/47echo.wordpress.com\/\">Shawn Kupfer<\/a> and I have recorded a handful of episodes already, and after the next recording session, we plan to put out new episodes each week. So far, we&#8217;ve talked about the Acceptability of Being an Adult Geek, Building Your Own Realities, and an episode dedicated to Conspiracy Theories (and how they can help one&#8217;s writing). Here&#8217;s a sneak peek (listen) from the first episode:<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"475\" height=\"267\" src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/WQRlGdIxtho?rel=0\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>I also hope to podcast <a title=\"Old Man Peek.\" href=\"http:\/\/www.christophergronlund.com\/oldmanpeek.pdf\">Old Man<\/a> this year.<\/p>\n<h2><strong>That&#8217;s It!<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>I&#8217;m sure I&#8217;ll do a lot more in 2013, but I&#8217;ve found in years that I focus on 2-3 things that I actually do the things I set out to do. So the biggies are progress on <a title=\"A Magic Life\" href=\"http:\/\/www.christophergronlund.com\/amagiclifepeek.pdf\">A Magic Life<\/a> and Men in Gorilla Suits. Once those things are tended to, I can do whatever other things I want, but those things <em>must <\/em>come first; they are the things that will make 2013 feel like a productive year when I look back in December.<\/p>\n<p>So&#8230;what things do you all hope to accomplish in 2013?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I got email asking why I haven&#8217;t posted in 2013. It&#8217;s not that I&#8217;ve been too busy to post &#8212; although I have been busy at the day job and with writing. After I finish the day&#8217;s writing quota and wrap up a day&#8217;s work, I just haven&#8217;t had too much to say that pertains [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":""},"categories":[24,30],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.christophergronlund.com\/blog\/tjw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4820"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.christophergronlund.com\/blog\/tjw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.christophergronlund.com\/blog\/tjw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.christophergronlund.com\/blog\/tjw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.christophergronlund.com\/blog\/tjw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4820"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.christophergronlund.com\/blog\/tjw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4820\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4822,"href":"http:\/\/www.christophergronlund.com\/blog\/tjw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4820\/revisions\/4822"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.christophergronlund.com\/blog\/tjw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4820"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.christophergronlund.com\/blog\/tjw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4820"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.christophergronlund.com\/blog\/tjw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4820"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}