Last week was… well, calling it unproductive isn’t quite fair, because I had kind of given up on productivity, so there was more goofing around and randomness. So, umm, last week is as unproductive as I had planned. There, that sounds better.

I kind of just decided that today would be the day where things got back on track. Tonight, I tackled the beast and took a way-to–academic approach to this chapter. I basically raked through what is currently chapter 4 and chapter 5, which will become the new chapter 4 in the near future. So, I wrote down all of the image systems, incidents, riffs, choruses, etc.

Once I had all of the building blocks sorted out, I then put each into categories by number. If something needs to be referred to in all four sections, it was coded 1-4, if stuff only appears in sections 2 and 3, it got coded 2-3, etc. Then I flowcharted all of the stuff on a one page piece of paper, and then made a pretty version in Word.

I think the mountain of text was just overwhelming and it shut me down, so I needed a way to make it all manageable. After i did this, I went and took the mountainout word document, and saved it with document names like “chapter4-1.doc” and then deleted the second through fourth sections of the chapter that was broken down in that manner.

After I had whittled these down, then I printed out the other chapter, and that is where we stand. Tomorrow, I will go through the “old chapter four” and chop it up using the flowchart and toss text into the various Word documents. After that, it is just playing with the words to make it into something cohesive.

I finally just have the sense that this chapter isn’t a mountain of text that needs to be tamed, because I have broken it down into manageable chunks. I was going to finish up the chapter four thing and just jump into the writing/reworking thing tomorrow, but I think I want to not force myself into jumping off the cliff tomorrow and jump right into words. So, a little management and monkeying around first, and then we can get to the good stuff. Saves me from dwelling on having to write all day, but since what i need to do is reading and parsing text, I will be in the mood by the time I need to.

So, I think I’m on the right path now.

Other new thing this week is a gym routine. Now, I’ve always had one, as I basically go six times a week, Sunday through Thursday. The issue has also been one of energy, as I was staying up later, going to the gym in the morning on less sleep, which made me tired of course for writing the novel in the evenings. But the post-gym buzz helped me at work, which of course is where I don’t care if my energy level is up.

I like working out in the morning, though, because it helps with weight loss, as you spike your metabolism early and that keeps it peaking longer throughout the day. But yet, a lot of my better writing days are when i go to the gym after work, which doesn’t play into my health, but helps the energy levels.

The solution is, of course, is that starting today, I go to the gym twice a day. All day yesterday, I knew i couldn’t write because I was tired out of my head, because I set my alarm for 7:30 a.m. on a Sunday, with the pure intention of just making sure that I would be tired by 9:30ish and in bed by 10. I dragged my tired self to bed at 9:55 p.m., and barely remember anything after that.

Monday morning, up at 6:15 a.m., and at the gym by 7:20 a.m. Did an hour of weight training, and 45 minutes of cardio (I decided to up my post weight training cardios to 45 from 30, too). In work shortly after 9, did all that nonsense until 5. Then another 45 minutes of cardio, and I was home by 6:30p.

So, I am giving myself an additional day off from the gym, only doing Mondays through Fridays, but I will do 10 45-minute cardio workouts a week, as well as three hours of weight training.

Hard to predict long-term results from day one, but I did feel really good when I got home to write. Energy was up, dove right in, etc.

We’ll see what happens.

As for now, I’m going to do some boring e-mails, web surfing, and unwind a bit, as I will be in bed in less than an hour.

So, that will be my new cardio-monk mode life for the time being.

Jeff

This entry was posted on Monday, April 14th, 2003 at 9:15 pm and is filed under diary. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.