Pat, your life situation is really different now than when you wrote Name of the Wind . Has your changing life status made a difference in how you write?
The most recent change for me has been coming to grips with the whole working dad thing. And I’ve been having trouble with it. With all the deadlines these last four months, there have been some days where I only see Oot and Sarah for a half an hour.
Needless to say, when that happens three times in a week, it makes me feel like a total ass. Like that stereotypical neglectful work-obsessed absentee father. But the truth of the matter is, I’d already missed too many deadlines. I couldn’t miss this one. So for about two and a half months I had to pick being a writer over being a dad. I’m trying to make up for that now, but I still regret it.
For me though, the biggest change between writing book one and writing book two, is that I got a workspace that’s outside the house I live in. That really helped to improve my writing output. I work best with quiet, distraction-free writing space. Making sure there was no internet in the office was pivotal, too.
Even when I’m on a tight deadline, I make sure I have an hour after I get up and an hour in the evening to play with my son. And I take Sundays off from writing. It’s important for me to have some time to recharge, to keep some perspective. I love writing and my idea of a vacation from writing is to write something else, but any one book will come and go. I can’t afford to miss being there for my family.
I think I need to institute some sort of policy like that too.
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