It's Really Not That Easy

  Recently I retired form my day job.  That's another story all in itself, so more later.  But, now having joined the ranks of the unemployed, I have a lot more time at my disposal.  Only natural, right?  Forty hours a week plus commute time and over time gone - puff!  Before you actually retire, everyone asks, "So, what are you going to do when you retire?  Travel?"  I developed a standard response - fairly generic - stating that I'd garden, bike, prospect, and write more.  Travel is nice, but expensive and I just took a huge income hit, so the former four are much more budget-friendly.

  So, within reason, I can work a lot on my novels, short stories, and soon-to-come nonfiction.  Great, right?  Well, it turns out it's hard work.  Having written four full novels, sure, I knew bring a good author wasn't easy - by no means so in fact.  But now, I can spend hours composing a theme or tweaking a character.  I have, in fact, made good head-way.  But, like with so many other things I suppose, when I look back at the volume of work I've accomplished, well, I'm underwhelmed.

  Yesterday I hammered a really rough first draft of an important scene in The Corporate Virus.  Actually, when I read the first draft - which I did a few months back - I was surprised I'd written some of it.  I mean, I had a few lines which didn't even make sense to me!  Writing a book is a lot like rafting down a mountain stream.  There are easy patches and white water sections.  I don't know why, but each novel of mine has at least one section where I felt like I was pulling off my own toe nails without anesthesia in slow motion.  The sections turn out fine, in the end, but some are definitely more work than others.

  Anyway, so now I have a lot of time and many fewer excuses, but it is "challenging" to work for hours and only produce maybe ten good pages.  This, of course, does nothing to abate the natural procrastination I am so fondly prone to.  Oh well, if it was easy, everybody'd be doing it, right?

So, enough blogging.  As soon as I feed the dogs and make a decaf and check-in with my wife who's outside gardening and re-check the closed stock market, well, I need to get back to The Corporate Virus - or Candy Crush.  Hey, I just made level 400, which is no mean feat!