No days off | 969
My Author Journey, Monday, July 24, 2017
# 969 (countdown)
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That I don’t have time to edit the first draft of my second book (that I haven’t edited a single word since July 14) has to do with the fact that I’m spending summer holidays with my family.
I decided that I will maintain my daily writing routine even if I’m on vacation. No days off. No exceptions.
Editing is not writing. Sometimes when you edit you’ll add a paragraph here and there but editing means you work on the material that already exists.
You don’t start with a blank page when you edit. You start with a blank page when you write, create something from scratch. When you write this first draft of your next book. Or when you write a new entry in your diary or a blog post. Or when you answer a question for the first time (on Quora for example).
All great writers stress the importance of writing daily.
I think it’s a good advice for those who can not do it. Those who can’t (not do it) will do it anyway — they will write daily even if no one told them that they should write daily. Those who can’t not do it are people who developed a passion for writing.
Basically it’s the same argument I already shared many times in my Quora answers. If you have a passion for it (anything) you don’t need anyone to tell you that you should follow it (or that you should do it every single day for that matter). You will do it anyway. You can’t not do it.
As Morgan Freeman once said “You do it because you have to do it.”
At this point I doubt I could make a decision that I will not write daily and follow through on it. On days when I couldn’t make it to my daily appointment with myself (when outside circumstances forced me to reschedule my morning writing session) I don’t feel well. I feel like I failed myself.
I’m worried because I know myself and I know that my best writing happens in the morning and that, if rescheduled, my morning writing session (which became afternoon or evening writing session) will not be as pleasurable, largely due to the fact that in the afternoon and evening both my energy and focus are at their lowest and my productivity plummets. At times I prefer to wait until night hours when all life shuts down. I drink another coffee and write without all this outside noise. I can focus again. But this has a downside as I will start my next day morning session at least two hours later which means two best (most productive) hours of my day have been wasted and I’ll never be able to get them back.
That’s why I get up at 4:00 or 4:30 am each day on my vacation. By 9am I’ve clocked five hours of working. But this means that my body will want this extra sleep time. During the day I use every 5- or 10-minute window to get this sleep but there are days it’s hard for me to find even those 5 minutes and in the evening I’m really (and I mean really) tired. While my wife and son and our friends (acquaintances) want to go places or play I want to rest.
That’s why typical days off (I mean days when other people want to rest or socialize) are my worst nightmare. Not because I don’t enjoy their company or don’t want to be involved in those activities, but because it’s freaking hard to maintain my writing routine on those days.
It’s like trying to match two incompatible parts. My daily routine with other people’s (mostly my family’s or friends’) entirely different idea of what a day off should look like.
It’s because I don’t have days off. It’s because I don’t need them. It’s because I wouldn’t be happy having them. It’s because the comfort of not doing it (not having to do it) would be my greatest discomfort.
Movies.
Accidental Courtesy (on Netflix).
Meditating: 20 minutes (on Headspace app)
Progress on my second book. Zero editing.
My today’s answer on Quora:
Answer to What are the most true maxims about life?
Answer to Do parents really love their child unconditionally?
Music for this writing session: RonakBear (on soundcloud). Then Beautiful Emotional Music — Binary Birth by thesecession (on YouTube). Then Wonderdrome by Secession Studios (on spotify).

