Discount Double-Check

The advent of a new year has also brought new blessings--including a cluster of "lead-off" acceptances and a thicket of small paychecks for various essays and poems.  In most cases, if I decide to subscribe to the magazines that gave me the nod, I get a discount as one of their contributing authors.  Discount double-check?  I guess so!

I've also had some nice correspondence with editors of late who have, while rejecting my work, also made a personal plea for me to write other work for them, or to submit additional material.  Okay, that's a nice beginning, too.

The new year has also brought new questions from a number of folks around a common theme.  Most notably:  Where do you find the time to write so much?

January is always a good month for explanation, so let me try to elucidate.  Here's my prescription (which I have, essentially, followed for the past 40 years).

1. I rise early.  Some days, very early.  Like the Marines, I can write more before 7 a.m. than many folks do in an entire day.

2. I write most evenings also.  Sometimes this writing doesn't begin until eight or nine o-clock; it depends.  On a good night, I can put in another five hours or so.

3. I try to take Fridays off.  On my day off, I might write ALL DAY.  Again, depends.  Or I might do re-writes or mailings or submissions.  But generally, I might put in a full day, or even a double-helping of writing for a full sixteen hours.

4. I write in my sleep.  I keep a notepad next to the bed, and I often wake in the middle of the night (see my Manopause blog on why I must rise three times in the night!) or first thing of a morning, and I write down phrases, ideas, and (yes!) sometimes fully-developed paragraphs or poems or sermons. Don't ask me to explain this, I just know that it happens and it drives my wife nuts.  

So . . . this is my life and welcome to it. 

Going to keep reading?  THope so.  Just double-checking.