For the record, and you can quote me on this:
Winter above the 43rd parallel is pretty miserable. Not because the weather’s bad–even this year, which I’m told is the worst winter my little town has seen in a century, the weather was tolerable (I’ve seen East Coast winters, we’ve got it easy out west, even in our bad years).
No, winters this far north are miserable because the days are very, very short.
When you’ve been a night owl your whole life (and I have, since age 4), the last thing you need is fewer hours of light during the day. It’s one of the things that drove me out of the Northwest the first time I tried living here.

However, winter is officially over, and spring is here, and I’ve been settling into a new rhythm that the longer days make possible.

The new rhythm is four shifts long:
Shift 1: Audio post
Cleaning up and editing audio I recorded the previous night. This morning, it was some narration for ep10 of the Free Will podcast.

Shift 2: Podcast stuff
Anything related to the podcasts, except recording. Today it was uploading and queuing a bunch of NanoWriMo Every Month episodes, then working on the first book in a new nonfiction series called The Everyday Novelist.

Shift 3: Booth Time
Laying down fresh tracks for clients and for AWP. Today I missed this one, because I crashed hard after my afternoon walk–the body is still healing from where I sliced open my hand. I can’t afford to miss this one more than two days in a row, because this is where the cashflow comes from, so if I have to sacrifice a shift tomorrow, I’ll sacrifice the podcasting shift.

Shift 4: Wrting Fiction
Antithesis baby! This is where the action is!

Anyway, each shift runs 3-4 hours. In between shifts, I cook meals, walk the dog, take some photos, go agate hunting, walk with other writers, and do all the other stuff that makes life, life.

I’m liking the new rhythm. We’ll see if it works long term 🙂

So, here’s the Antithesis word count tallies for the day:
Starting word count for writing: 11,195
Final word count for the day: 13,922

13922 / 120000 words
 

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