Tag Archives: day job

I’m not one to scan the skies for mystical planetary alignments or scour my daily horoscope for helpful hints or seek out signs and portents in my everyday life; however, I think the cosmos wants me to resume my long-neglected yoga practice. Yes, the bathroom scale has been mercilessly mocking me for a while now, and I’ve noted how ascending the three flights of stairs to my office always makes me out of breath these days. But I normally just put from mind such human suit issues, because that’s really not where my priorities lay.

But, due to an odd confluence of events, I’ve had yoga at the forefront of my consciousness:

• At my dentist appointment, my dental hygienist strikes up a (mostly one-sided) conversation about his daughter starting a yoga class and wanting him to join in, with him being dubious about it being a beneficial form of exercise and not some flaky new age pastime. I felt compelled (after rinsing) to chime in my endorsement of it which dovetails into a discussion of stress, teeth grinding, and relaxation techniques. It seems I’ve begun grinding my teeth. Minor now, but not healthy, and indicative of possible underlying stress issues.
• While I habitually gate out superfluous auditory stimuli, a radio ad espousing the virtues of exercise, particularly yoga, in combating various and sundry health issues, including stress, catches and keeps my attention during my morning commute.
• And the clincher, as I’m musing on stress and teeth grinding—and that I’ve written less than 1,000 words since the legislative session ended—I get an email at work about a weekly yoga class for state employees starting up right here at the capitol in June. After a bit of waffling, I email a “sign me up” confirmation. I mean, it simply can’t get any more convenient than yoga at my workplace. I won’t even have to set foot outside the building to attend.

  Then, after three weeks of unproductive writerly floundering, the words, they come, as I’m galvanized to write a training scene for Dragon Queller.

Okay, I get it already. The cosmos has spoken. Yoga good. Ohhhmmmm.

So we’re one month into the 2011 legislative session, and we’re only at Day 13.  I’m a little scared of what that may portend. 

On the writing front, I’ve managed 16.4K words on Dragon Queller, 11.5K of those since session began.  Not quite at the “novella” marker but well into “novelette.” From past experience with my novel efforts, I tend to hit my “oh-my-god-this-is-too-long-must-stop-now” wall somewhere into the novella range. My short story writer’s instinct kicking in or something. But since this is my first actual, bona fide sequel, I’m thinking maybe I won’t be smacking into that particular obstacle. I hope.

Also, as Matthew observed, that’s a better month’s word count than a lot of my non-session writing months. Been suffering from more insomnia, too.  There’s a formula somewhere in there. If I can figure out the proper ratios of time crunch pressure, generalized stress, and sleep deprivation to maximize writing productivity, I’ll have the ultimate Eugie-writing-machine.

Yeah, I’ll let everyone know as soon as I figure that out…