I finished up at my old job on Saturday, so Sunday was my first day of my first full week at full time at my new job. I'm excited! I'll still have less free time now that I'm working 40hrs, but I don't need to be at work until 9:30 most days, and so I have a little bit more time in the morning; assuming I don't just allow myself to sleep in....
Since I've noticed that I tend to be most creative first thing in the morning, I'm hoping this little extra time before work will mean I can change my writing hour to right after waking up. Right now it's at the start of my evening; transitioning between work, and catching up on Facebook, and spending time with Hubby, all before our evening get-togethers or shows. More often than not, I ignore the alarm in order to steal a few more minutes in this "unwinding" time. If I set it up to write as soon as I wake up, I'll be more likely to actually do it. In theory. We'll see.
I'll also have a lot of down-time at work. It's either Feast or Famine there; Drought or Flood. While I'll still be using a lot of that time to learn my new job, I am probably going to steal some of that time for reading or writing. We'll see how this job change affects my overall writing productivity.
In the meantime, I did actually steal some time to write throughout the day yesterday. It's not much, and I'm not terribly happy with it, but it's something. Not everything is going to be gold and diamonds, but it's still keeping me practicing. So, that's something, right?
I worked on another Phfylburt challenge, one that I once again forgot about. This is a bit of a sad theme, but I'm hoping that now that I'm settling in to my new job I'll be a bit more focused. My memory will return with any luck. Anyway, after a poke from Phfyl that I was again late, I spent yesterday's down time focusing on how to complete the challenge. It would also mean that I would have SOMETHING to read at Writer's Group tonight. I have something else sort of mentally planned since I want it for Sunday's D&D session as well, but in case I run out of time tonight, I at least have this.
Phfyl's challenge was to imagine an extravagant backstory for a random person I saw throughout the course of the week. Yesterday a woman came into the store to finish paying off her purchase. I've seen her a few times at my old job, and I was around for her sale earlier in the week. She always intrigued me a bit, and so I figured "who better for this challenge?"
Sad to say, it seemed a bit disjointed when I was done. There are two things about this woman that intrigue me, and I couldn't seem to either focus on one or tie them neatly together. I think I have a semi-good base, though. Maybe if I get stumped in the future I can come back to this and try to develop it more.
That's what's really killing me, I think. Phfyl put a cap on how long this character backstory can be, and I can't get as in depth with it as I normally do. I couldn't really make her as complex as I like to build my characters. I couldn't psychologically develop her to sort of explain her contradictions. I couldn't even develop her enough to think of a decent title, so I just went with her name.
"Contessa Germaine"
I get every third Sunday off - for the foreseeable future, at least - and so I decided that these Sundays will be D&D Day. Makes it easier than trying to struggle through prepping every week, and then squeeze a game in between when I get off at 4 and when Quarthix's fiance starts work at 10. Thing is, it's been about a month since we last played, and I still don't really know what I'll be doing. I've been struggling so much with transitioning out of my old job that I just didn't have time, as evidenced by my April blog posts. Well, this Sunday is D&D Day, so I need to really crack down on what I'm doing.
I've got an idea, as I mentioned a few paragraphs up, and I'm hoping to be able to develop it a bit over the week. I'm not sure if Phfyl will give me a new challenge now that I sent him my answer to his last one. I also don't know if Writer's Group is going to give me a prompt to work with. Either way, along with the broad strokes I'm painting in order to get prepped for D&D Day, I have one or two "behind the scenes"...er.... scenes that I have in mind. I kind of want to write them out, in part to have more writing practice, in part so that I have more of the world around the player characters developed. With any discipline I should have at least one of those scenes ready for next Tuesday's update.
Alright, so everybody send me some good juju or something, I'm hoping this job switch will help me out with stress relief, better income, and more writing opportunities.
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