Day: August 8, 2014

Day 47–51 of No More Zero Word Days

Lynn

Day 47: 3,055
Day 48: 2,610
Day 49: 2,692
Day 50: 95
Day 51: 766

I’m at 51 consecutive days of writing at least 50 words of fiction. As you can see, my numbers have finally definitely started trending upward, so I’m calling this experiment a complete success. 51 days. Boggles my mind. :) I can’t wait to see how long I can keep this going.

That said, I was more right about yesterday than I expected. I got almost nothing written. I barely crossed my minimum, coming in at 95 words for the day after I sat down at 11 PM and did my best to get something done. I had told myself I would start writing once I got home but that didn’t come to pass. Instead, I watched the entire season 2 of Hemlock Grove. I have no idea why. :o

Today’s been tough going, especially considering what I set as my goal. I’ve already spent 3 hours writing with nothing to show for it. I haven’t really got going yet so I hope I can pull out a miracle and end the night strong. I’ll update today’s number when I’m done. (It’s final now.)

I made a change to my workspace that I hope is going to help with tonight’s numbers, and it’s time to get to it.

New Chair Woes

Lynn

I love my new chair. You know, this one:

New Chair

But…

The new chair’s interfering with my ability to focus while I write, and I’m sure of it. A new chair means comfort. Apparently comfort means less writing.

This breaks my heart. I thought I was going to increase my productivity if I made my stints at my workspace more comfortable, but it’s had the opposite effect.

The problem could be anything from an incorrect height adjustment (I’ve tried many, many adjustments over the last week seeking the perfect height—if there is one, it eludes me), to a wholly psychological issue. Don’t know and don’t care at this point. I just need to feel right when I’m sitting at my desk so I can write. And I haven’t felt right since I moved that chair in here.

So, back to the spindle-back dining room chair, like the one you see here:

Desk

Ah well. I can still use the new chair when I’m not working, so all’s not lost.

Remember This: Don’t Rewrite!

Lynn

So I’m staring at a passage in one of my books that I need to get right so I can figure out where the hell to go next with this thing and I’ve just realized that I’ve spent about 3 hours on it.

It’s a passage of only about 1,600 words and I’ve cycled through it, rewriting, more times than I want to think about.

I keep reworking it, mainly I think to give myself a jumping off spot for what happens next, but I still don’t know what that might be.

I’m now trying to decide if anything I’ve done has made any difference whatsoever to the passage, but I can’t tell. There’s a part of me that’s very afraid I’ve screwed this up. But there’s a part of me that knew last night that I needed to soften one of my characters and the only other choice was to scrap what I had and just rewrite the scene from scratch.

Which is exactly what I should have done, and I don’t know why I keep forgetting that. Rewriting is time consuming and rarely does more than make me crazy. The story needs to be written fresh, not pieced together from scraps already on the page. And yet that’s exactly what I’ve just done. And I can tell you now, those 3 hours of writing would have gotten me at least the 1,600 words I have now, so chopping the 1,600 wouldn’t have been a big deal in the end. In fact, I would probably have more done now than I have if I’d just chopped the passage and started fresh.

I need to remember this. I NEED TO REMEMBER THIS.

Maybe that’ll help. ;)