I looked to see when I last posted on here before starting this, and did a double-take when I saw it was the 19th. What even is time, I wondered. Then I remembered while it’s dated the 19th, or Sunday, I started it late Saturday and posted it after midnight. So it’s technically not two days ago, but it was. Or something.

Anyway.

Time has been weirder than usual these last few days, thanks to Snowmageddon 2020, which continued last night and into today. We finally managed to carve a snowy path (see picture) down to our cars and cleared them out, and we both got to leave our property for the first time since Thursday evening. I also cleared out our dryer vent, and we’re doing our first load of laundry now as I type. Exciting times.

I read somewhere that snow days are a great time to catch up on your writing, and that is excellent advice. Advice I did not heed, granted, but excellent nonetheless. I’d like to say I didn’t get much done because I was shovelling all the time, or because we had no power, but neither are true (thankfully in the latter instance). The reason was when I wasn’t shovelling (I did do some, after all), I was either relaxing / recovering or playing video games, which I suppose counts as relaxing.

So was it a relaxing weekend? Hell no. Even though we only went approximately 17.5 hours without power (Friday 3:30pm to Saturday 9:00am) it was still stressful, especially as our pipes seemingly froze yesterday, though they’re fine now. Phew. We weren’t able to shovel ourselves out straight away because I am not in shape and there was a lot, so having that hanging over our heads until this morning sucked. I’m grateful that I had a snow day today so that I could carve out our vent and finish the driveway, not to mention making a grocery run in the afternoon.

The topic of writing did come up, however, and I imposed a new deadline on myself. I did have one in mind, but I’ve said it outloud (or in chat, shh), and now I’m posting it here, so I have to stick to it. That’s how these things work, right? It’s for a secret project and I’ve said I’d get it done by the end of the month, and now it’s out and into the universe so it’ll take care of itself. Yes.

I’m kidding. Mostly.

I do work better with a deadline, however. It may be a little short to say I’ll complete it by  January 31st, but for me the closer I am to said deadline to harder I work. It’s a problem, yes, but at least I’m self-aware enough to address it. Or attempt to, at any rate. It’s how I shovel out my own snowy path, only replace ‘snow’ with ‘word.’ Word-y path.

How do you write best? Do you need a deadline looming in the near-distance to drive you onward, or do you need a regimented schedule to write X amount of words per day to keep on track? Is it something else entirely? Feel free to discuss if you’d like.

Either way, here’s hoping we both can start writing in some way, shape, or form, and that it’ll snowball from there.