Writing Journal: Unreality Bites #6

I'm planning to participate in Fully Booked's Graphic/Fiction Contest and this is a peek at my writing process.

You know what's my greatest nemesis? Procrastination. It's a simple and basic dilemma yet it's one that's so effective. With a personal deadline of October 15 however, I can't slacken off the writing load. I tell myself I have a whole day to myself on October 12 (it's a government-declared holiday) but that's me rationalizing not producing as much output as I want.

Anyway, no matter whether you're rich or poor, talented or not, we're all equal when it comes to hours in a day. Everyone has 24 hours and while I could arguably skip on sleep, I find that I write my best when I've managed to catch some shut-eye (it also helps me catch errors too). Years ago, I was a nocturnal creature, doing my best writing in the evening. These days however, I find that the best time for me to write is early in the morning. Why? Maybe it's because I just woke up and so I don't feel the temptation to sleep. On the other hand, my day job can be exhausting, and when you get home, you simply want to relax. But that's my formula and I don't expect my writing hours will match up to everyone. So how about you, when is the "optimal" hours for you to do your writing? Since I know mine is in the morning, I make that extra effort to sleep early on the weekdays so that I can wake up early in the morning (alas, it doesn't always work that way). Still, so far, I've been consistent, and that for me is what's important. And then when I get home in the evening, that's when I do some edits or even some major writing if need be, but it's not as consistent as my morning writing.

Also, another effect of writing is that I have to set my priorities. These days, I find that I have little time to read books. Between writing the short story, surfing the Internet for my regular blog entries, and writing my actual blog entries (which is overwhelmingly long, either in content or in quantity), it seems there's little time for me to do anything else. I still have my daily comic stash which I manage to read however. However there's a couple of things I needed to give up in the past few weeks. For example, I used to GM a tabletop RPG and I wish I could run a D&D game but that's out of the question. The preparation time involved eats up my writing time. And one reason I've declined playing MMORPGs isn't just the fact that it costs money and I have a lousy Internet connection at home, but video game addiction again will dip into much-needed writing time. It's choices like that which reveal to me that I'm a writer first and a gamer second.