Shifting my writing schedule and priorities ...

I finished Chapter 3 of Vengeance last night. It's not as pretty as the first two chapters, but it's done. Everything that needed to happen in it happened, and a motive for why Hernando wants Craig alive just dropped out of the sky while I was writing it. In short, Jessica's task can no longer be completed by any vampire, and here comes a non-vampire who could possibly do it. Just because he's a mortal enemy is only a minor problem. ;)

So in Chapter 4, Craig will be visiting the bookstore, and I'll be introducing Aaron to the non-game audience for the first time. Should be fun. While Craig was talking to Hernando, Aaron's love interest Alice was getting kidnapped by Hernando's rival, so Aaron isn't having a very good day...

That's what's happening with the front half of Vengeance. The back half, meanwhile, is now the opposite side of Tragedy of the Hand - which, right on schedule, I've still not gotten Round Tuit and it'll be what I tackle for Labor Day Novel 2008 coming up in a few weeks.

In general, I realized last night that at the rate I keep pushing fiction to the bottom of the priority list, I was never going to get anything done. Meanwhile the not-having-written pressure mounts while I'm at work or trying to sleep. So I need to prioritize better. I have four workdays and three free days per week. I have four categories of writing things to fit into those three free days - fiction writing, roleplay writing (RPoL), free nonfiction (my blog), and mercenary nonfiction (eHow and whatever I expand to for writing for pay).

Mercenary writing has to be at the top, just because I will be needing that money in a few more months when it (hopefully) starts paying off, assuming I invest enough time-capital into it at the beginning (i.e. now). Ideally I'd like to be making at least as much with it as I was getting from the takeout on weekends - around $200 per month. It wasn't a lot, but it took the edge off on rising gas prices and such. At the moment I no longer have that padding there, and while I'm not in trouble, it's still alarming to see how close I come to running down my checking account to the no-fees minimum.

RPoL writing I really can't seem to get away from. I'm in five slow but stable games, and I run mine slowly as well. None of them are at all likely to end anytime soon. I have no plans to join any more of them, like, ever. As a general rule, I pretty much have to devote one full day out of those three free days to RPoL to keep up.

Blog writing, on the other hand, I can draw back a bit. Daily posts took a lot out of me, and I'm down to 1-2 times per week nowadays, but the community I'm in doesn't at all mind. There's about 20 of us who read and comment each other's blogs, and I can just comment on theirs without posting much on mine.

So that leaves fiction. As with roleplay writing, to really do a good job it's better to give it big chunks of uninterrupted time. Last night I squeezed it in after I got home from work and before bed, but that meant going to bed at dawn, so I don't know if that's such a good idea every time. Certainly not if I have something scheduled in the morning/early afternoon.

So... merc writing gets one day, RPoL gets one day, and fiction gets one day. Blog now goes to the bottom, basically to squeeze in whenever I'm taking a break from the other three (instead of having fiction in that capacity and therefore never doing any).

One thing I've noticed is that the nonfiction writing can be done basically anywhere, and I can be interrupted without too much impact. Fiction can really only be done from home; with roleplay, I often have to look up stuff in my books, and with the writing I need to avoid distractions. So, I just need to do more nonfiction writing while I'm waiting around on errands (in lines and waiting rooms, etc.) to make better use of that offline time, and therefore give me more time for the fiction.