Writing. University. Buses. time.

[mmerriam]

I have not written any new fiction since finishing the novel. I'm starting to feel twitchy. I think tomorrow and Friday I will ignore the entire world while careswen is at work and find something to work on. I have five short stories in various stages of disarray, so I might well pick one of them up and run with.

I might go ahead and start the next novel. I had not planned to start writing on it until Old Blood's Fate was past it's final rewrite and ready to start collecting rejections, but...

I failed to pass a CLEP test yesterday, despite my score being considerably above what is required by most Universities. The U of M has extremely high standards. I initially thought I would be, well, bummed about it, but actually I'm just kind of, "meh," about the whole thing.

After studying how the buses run, I have come to the conclusion that I will need to engage in some creative time management if I'm ever going to get any writing done. I'm going to end up spending anywhere from two to three and half hours on the bus getting to and from the U, Monday through Thursday. I may be forced to try writing on the bus by talking into my micro-cassette recorder, or some other type of silliness. Writing in the evenings does not work for me for a variety of reasons, and I rarely write on the weekends because that is when we are social, and even Caveman Ook needs human contact from time to time. And I know when I'm home on Friday, I will be too tempted to do all the housework that needs attention. Somewhere in there I have to wedge in assignments from class. Yeah. I'll figure something out.

To make my schedule tighter, I'm seriously considering going back to work, at least part-time. I've given it two years for the writing to try and make up the (not terribly large) difference between my disability benefit and what I made working. I'm not even close. And we really want to buy a house.

One thing that will help me is my new sleep schedule. I discovered that the reason I was having trouble sleeping was that I was trying to make myself sleep too much. Eight hours is more than I need. For the last two weeks I've been getting up at six in the morning and going to bed at midnight. I feel great. I may see if I can creep it up another half-hour and get up at five thirty. If I can learn to use that time in the morning to write, that would rock. I also expect that I may be forced to cut back non-writing related online time. Unfortunately, that will probably include Live Journal, though maybe not, as I get a lot of contact with other writers, as well as bits and pieces of market/industry news, from LJ.

We will see how it all plays out.

In Peace
Michael

Comments

[one-undone.livejournal.com]

Though it IS possible to get too much sleep, it's more likely that whatever amount you were trying to get was just interrupting a sleep cycle that left you feeling irritable and tired. Some people can get by on 6 hours and are okay; however, the vast majority who make do with 6 hours or fewer are setting themselves up for health problems in the future because they're living with a sleep debt they don't realize, and the fewer hours of sleep you get per night, the greater your chances of developing heart disease and diabetes. This is because sleeping less tends to make you produce more cortisol, which causes the body to pack away fat into your belly, around your major organs, which causes metabolic syndrome, which causes the diseases mentioned. So be productive, by all means, but be safe, too. Maybe you can try adjusting your sleep in quarter- or half-hour increments? That's what professionals usually suggest. Oddly enough, because it would put you in a different sleep cycle, 15 minutes may make all the difference in the world in the way you feel in the morning.

Good luck on your quest; it sounds like you're working it out :)

[mmerriam.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the advice; I will keep that in mind. I feel pretty good about the six hours of sleep a night, simply because once I shifted the schedule, I was sleeping and resting better, which makes me more awake and alert during the day, and more likely to do things like exercise regularly, as opposed to being a big old slug. I think the getting up thirty minutes earlier is probably not going to happen, in truth. I tried it a couple of times this week, and it felt too early and too little in the sleep department. It seems six hours is about right for me, at least for now.

[polymathematic.livejournal.com]

I don't the link, but during sleep the body tends to operate in roughly 90min cycles. The body is deeper at rest in the middle, and less so at the beginning and end. People who's alarm wakes them up in the middle of a cycle have a more abrupt wake up than the people who wake up earlier but at the end of a cycle. Hence they're more tired through-out the day.

There's even an alarm clock (I believe) that is specifically designed to wake at the the end of a cycle.

Of course, I tend to get by on 6hours myself, so maybe I'm not the one to talk.

[mreauow.livejournal.com]

I also get only about 6 hours of sleep per night. I simply cannot sleep longer than that - my body won't let me. My doctor was concerned enough about it a few years ago that she sent me to the sleep lab. The docs there said that I was one of those people who really only need 6 hours of sleep per night. They told me that human sleep need ranges from a low of 6 hour to a high of 10 hours with most people needing something closer to 8 hours. They said that fighting your sleep need will make you lethargic and can cause metabolic disturbances. They also said that stress levels can change your sleep need temporarily (usually the more stress you have the more sleep you need), but when the stress is dealt with you will return to your natural sleep need level.

Just my $.02