Ah, the best laid plans…last week I blithely decided to do 2000 words a day and knock my first draft off by the end of July. This week, an unexpected technical writing contract popped up. Normally I am well able to fit the paying work into my day along with the fiction writing (which does pay, just not in still-able-to-eat amounts), but 1) it had an urgent deadline so required almost full-time attention, and 2) I had already made other commitments for the week. Therefore, the writing was sacrificed.

This is when my recent blatherings about how you can’t expect lots of money from writing fiction and anyway I don’t really want that for myself personally become a little thin. I’d love to be able to pick and choose my writing contracts, turn down these kind of high-stress but extremely boring jobs (it was more or less copy-and-paste work that had to be done for hours at a stretch to get it done on time) and accept only the ones which challenge me and bring me into researching a new area.

And if I’m dreaming along these lines, then why not say, I’d love to be able to stop the technical writing work altogther and concentrate solely on fiction (though, actually, I like doing technical writing and it gives me a break from fiction when fiction isn’t going well; it’s just these weeks, when the fiction writing gets completely shoved aside, that I dislike)? That’s not the way it works when you’re not an A-list writer – I don’t think it even works if you’re just a mid-list writer – and, hah, I’m not even on the list!

So anyway, I’ll try again next week, 2000 words a day. If something else unexpected pops up, I’ll still try for 500 words a day. I will get this bloody first draft (first! It’s freaking June and I haven’t finished the first!) done.