Subdivided time

[rowyn]

The trouble with the half-hour lunch breaks I take now is that the time is parcelled up into such small units it's hard for me to motivate myself to use them effectively. I spend about twelve minutes eating lunch, another few minutes logging into LiveJournal and looking at comments I've received, or reading an entry or two from my friends list -- and then I only have ten minutes left.

I am not, thank goodness, one of those writers who needs absolute silence and several hours of uninterrupted concentration in order to get anything useful written. But I find that, unless I'm really inspired, I won't just launch into writing a story in an available ten-minute interval. I want to be able to sit down and see some time stretching out before me, and unhurriedly start writing. Half an hour is usually enough time for me to feel mildly producive. Ten minutes isn't enough time for me to even psyche myself up to doing some writing. I look at the clock and think, "By the time I'm mentally prepared for this, I'll have to go back to work."

I don't know if that's really true or not, though. When I was inspired by Silver Scales, I used to jot down three or four paragraphs in that ten or fifteen minute interval. It's almost like there's some Can't-Do force standing between me and my muse, telling me "Don't bother, don't try, don't even think about it." Hmph.

Back to work.

Comments

[jordangreywolf.livejournal.com]

Ack! I was too slow! I just missed your lunch break! Ah well.

[rowyn]

Now I'll have to wait 'til tonight to read your latest Bitz! Or I could cheat and do it now. :D

I'm a bit behind on my journal-reading overall, though, so I expect I'll wait until I get home.

[jordangreywolf.livejournal.com]

Well, I don't want you to get in trouble. And as it was, speedy you and TuftEars read my last entry before I could sneak in to clean up some wording that I had second thoughts about. ;)

[shockwave77598.livejournal.com]

I find 45 minutes to be my minimum writing window. I just cannot get things flowing well in the first 15 minutes and after that I'm in a groove and get really nasty if I can't make some use of it. I can't write every lunch hour since I have things to do quite often. But today is such a writing lunch (yay!)

Look at getting a cheap laptop for writing - a P133 Thinkpad 760EL can be had for ~120$ and is just fine for wordprocessing.

[jordangreywolf.livejournal.com]

Well, I managed to get some stuff written over lunch hour, but I suppose in a way that might be misleading. I basically have the whole thing bouncing around in my head already. It's just a matter of finding the time to write it all down, bit by bit.

[rowyn]

That probably qualifies as "inspired", yup. :) Though, funny thing is, "inspired" doesn't necessarily correlate with "knowing what's next" to me. I know what comes next in Scales, for example -- but I still haven't been inspired to write it down.

[jordangreywolf.livejournal.com]

Well, I suppose, no, it's not the same thing ... but knowing what comes next certainly helps, at least in my case. =)

[rowyn]

I'd thought about that for a while, but opted not to for two reasons. One, it's not much of an issue normally: I sit at my desk for lunch, and there isn't any better place for me to try writing, so I may as well write on my work computer. Two, I tried the keyboard on an old laptop my mother has, and realized that I'm very fussy about having a decent keyboard.

On the other hand, Thinkpads *do* have good keyboards, so maybe I should look into it again. Are there reputable stores online to order old laptops from, or would I be better off scouring ebay or local computer shops?

[shockwave77598.livejournal.com]

They'll cost more at a computer shop, if you can find one that sells old computers. I've bought them cheap on Ebay before with no trouble. There used to be a flood of them in OffLease business stores but nowdays they are filled with thinkpad 600 machines.

I've bought one from Ebay though. Make sure it has a CD, 2 gig drive, battery, charger, no cracks on display and 64Meg of Ram. You can get any of these components on Ebay if you want to build a box though. 760EL/ED is a P133 machine with 800x600 display. 760XD/XL is a P166 machine with 1024x768 display. All the components in all the 760 family are interchangible with the exception of the screens. XD and ED have optional video out for using large screen tvs as displays, though I've never used it.

for example, I run a thinkpad 760XD running win98se, winamp and Word2000. Plenty of processor power for that and my starmaps besides.

[rowyn]

I've never actually used Ebay. Guess I could give it a shot -- something to think about. :)

[tuftears.livejournal.com]

I'm one of those who wants a good solid chunk of time-- half an hour is about the minimum. Aren't you usually permitted an hour for lunch?

[rowyn]

I can take anywhere between 30 and 60 minutes for lunch. However, every extra minute I spend at lunch is an extra minute before I can go home. (I'm a non-salaried employee, on a time clock.) All things considered, I'd rather have a half hour at home to write than another half hour of lunch.