I’m on vacation. According to Merriam-Webster that means:

1. a respite or a time of respite from something : intermission
2. a : a scheduled period during which activity (as of a court or school) is suspended b : a period of exemption from work granted to an employee
3. : a period spent away from home or business in travel or recreation

For many of us today, it seems to mean working as usual in a different location without the comfort and convenience of our usual workspaces. So, I’m typing this on a laptop balanced on my crossed legs instead of my usual desktop with two 23-inch monitors and and a wireless keyboard. While the couch I’m sitting on may be more comfortable than my office chair, it also exposes me to more distractions. Overall, I still need to get my work done and the environment makes it more difficult.

Still, I only need to work a few hours a day and the remainder of my time is spent in a new location with family members I rarely get to see. So, I pay for my vacation time with the slightly less comfortable worktime. Trade offs are the order of our society. For every prize we must give up something, be it time, money or our comfort zone. To be safe, we must sacrifice a level of freedom. To have “stuff” we must pay with cash or with effort. To have friends, we must be a friend. Everything in life has a price of some sort.

To take a vacation, we must have the ability to pay for food, shelter, etc. for a period of time without actually earning money during that time. That means working at a job that will give us vacation pay, saving money to pay for our time off, finding a generous third party to pay for our travels, or having a way to earn money even on vacation.

Over the years, I’ve tried several methods but, currently, I am combining saving money with working while on vacation. As a writer, I can do my “job” where ever I happen to be. Of course, I’m not getting paid much for doing it, but every dollar counts.

Most of my writing, at present, is geared toward building a platform…a reputation, so to speak…to create a portfolio of articles or posts that can be used to demonstrate my writing ability. This is practice time. A period of honing my skills before submitting proposals to publishers. I expect to spend a year or so practicing my writing every day both publicly and privately before attempting to sell anything.

This will mean posting to each of our four blogs each week, engaging in guest posting, participating in flash fiction exercises (the public part) and working on the various aspects of two novels for at least an hour each day (the private part). When most people, myself included until lately, think of writing a book, they envision simply sitting at the computer and typing for hours on end, day after day, for a year or more. There is much more to it than that. To write convincingly about anything, you must experience it yourself or do lots of research to find out the details. To keep from doing months of major revisions, you need to have a basic plan and keep going back to it as you write.

I am currently working on the research and planning part. The writing is happening, but only in sections. So far, it has no coherence. I know the overall goal and sort of how it begins, but the middle part (the most important part) is still in flux. As I work on the plan, some of it will be tried out on my writing blog. Come on over and sample the results.

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