I have stories in my head. I am to the dreaded middle of my kayak/divorce/Alaska memoir and still in the dreaming phase of my novel. Yet it’s been hard to stay focused. Why? Well, it’s summer. Here it is short and sweet, and I don’t want to be inside. I do enough of that for work, and at the end of a ten hour workday, the last thing I want to do is sit and type. Yet the clock is ticking. I want to write more; at the very least these books want to come out. It’s a familiar battle.
I’d probably do better to live again in a desolate and rainy climate, though my fitness would suffer. All I can do is try to balance it all. If I write one word today, then it’s one word more on the way to 80,000. I admire those dedicated people who make it a goal to write a certain number of pages a day. I’ll never be one of them. I want my life less structured, and I suspect they don’t spend their days on conference calls and writing government documents. Maybe it would be good to go back to trail work. Trail work is both good for the body and soul, letting your mind wander to all sorts of creative places. However, you can’t do it too long or your body begins to fail you.
It’s like everything else–there has to be room for it all. Exercise, wilderness, work, writing. How do you find your balance?