About Mario

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Born and raised in Los Angeles, Mario Piumetti is a freelance writer of science fiction, horror, screenplays, and nonfiction. He has a bachelor's degree in English from California Lutheran University and an MFA in creative writing from Antioch University. An avid music lover, his work is heavily influenced by rock, punk, and metal. You can contact him at mario.piumetti.writer@gmail.com.

Sunday, October 18, 2015

Writing vs. Research: An Epic Battle to the Death!

For the last two or three weeks, I've set aside time almost daily to do some additional research, mostly in preparation for an ambitious writing project I've got in mind.  I've also gotten a whopping nothing done on the writing project I'm doing now.

Part of the problem, I know, is time management.  I wake up a little too late most mornings to get an hour of writing in before I have to go to my day job, and in the evenings, I feel too exhausted to commit to another two hours.  When I began planning out this week, I allocated my two-hour evening sessions towards research.  Surely, I thought, that's still time used productively, right?

Wrong.  Well, sort of.

On the one hand, this future project does need the research.  I can't deny that I can already tell it's too ambitious to go in blindly.  But I also can't deny that the primary job of a writer is to be a storyteller, not a researcher.  And given, that I have an end of the year deadline on the first draft of this current project, the research, productive though it may be, is also a potential procrastinator.  That's got to stop.

Today, I adjusted my schedule to fill my evening sessions with active writing time come hell or high water, and consolidated my research into a several-hour block on one of my days off.  It's easy to sit down to a documentary, but if I spread more blocks of writing time throughout the week, it should make it easier for me to stay committed towards reaching my deadline.

Or something.

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