A New Routine
I’ve been back in Bolivia for two weeks and am trying to develop a routine. That was easier to do when I got up for school early every morning. I won’t be doing that for at least six months, so I have to do something so my life won’t be so chaotic.
I have been using my iPad as an alarm clock
for about a year now. I generally have
set it to go off three times in the morning.
5:30 says, “time to get up.” 6:00
says, “are you awake yet?” And the third
was for 6:45, about the time my taxi would pick me up to take me to
school. I’ve kept the 6:00 and 6:45
alarms. If I don’t, I’ll wake up around
11:00.
I don’t rush to get started, because I don’t
have to go anywhere, but I do try. An
interesting tidbit about being on the 7th floor of a high-rise
apartment building is the wind. Santa
Cruz is a windy city and it is even windier on the 7th floor. I can open the window and the wind acts as a
blow dryer for my hair.
I’ve decided for Lent that I will read the
entire New Testament. I am at the place
in my life that I have no one to account to, which means it is harder to stay
on track. Reading 5 to 7 chapters a day
helps put the word in my heart. I need
that because I stumble so easily.
The rest of my morning is composed of
business I need to do. If I need to shop
or pay bills, it will be done in the morning.
I try to do a little cleaning every day.
Many people hire a maid to clean house, but I have decided to forgo
that. I hate house cleaning, but hate my
house being dirty. I don’t mind washing
clothes; put them in the dryer, then hang them in the window, and voila they
are dry!
I write my blogs in the mornings too. For those of you who follow my blog, you will notice that I am reposting some from the fall. I still have enough for a month that I haven’t reposted. I have about that same number that I have begun researching. Hopefully I will have enough adventures in Santa Cruz and other places to get a few more good blogs to make it to 365. I was thinking of doing a series on the Ten Commandments.
If I truly want to make a career in writing, I need to write. I’m not worried about money, at the moment. I have my monthly retirement check and the cost of living in Santa Cruz is about half of what it is in Texas. So, I’m good for a while. In three or four years, if I am not adding significantly to my retirement to cover my living expenses, then I’ll probably return to Texas and look for a teaching job. For now, I am going to write.
After a lunch, usually of leftovers, I try to dedicate my time to writing my novels. There are days I have lots of ideas. Sometimes they are on a completely different tangent than where I am supposed to be, my current novel, Onesimus. For example, the other day, I had the idea of a novel of the life of Saint John. I imagined him telling his story in a series of essays about Jesus. “That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and our hands have touched.” He comes later.
Sometimes my afternoon is taken up with
research. What did the city of Ephesus
look like? How long was a voyage from
Corinth to Italy? Who was with Paul in
Rome? What is the time line of Timothy’s
life? Sometimes the research I intended
to answer a little question adds pages to my manuscript.
I am trying to make part of my routine an hour
or two that I turn off Facebook and Instagram.
I turn on classical music, like Smetana, Tchaikovsky, Rimsky-Korsakov,
or Ravel. WRR in Dallas is a good station
to listen to. Then I open up Onesimus
and just write. I don’t edit. I don’t stop and research. I just write.
In an hour, I can usually turn out 4 or 5 pages. When I go back to edit a day or two later,
more ideas come and that will turn into 6 or 7 pages. Sometimes, you just have to write.
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