That Novella Is an Albatross Around My Neck

I’m making progress today! How exciting. :) I had to (again) abandon the novella for the moment to do it, and it’s making me really wonder if that novella’s just not meant to be.

I made up a simple table to keep up with today’s writing. I wrote in 45 minute blocks this morning, and I figure this afternoon, I’ll do the same except for the last one which will probably be 30 minutes. I started a bit late this morning at 7:35, so I’m not surprised I came up short. I’m going to try not to do the same with the other sessions, and I’m hoping I’ll make up some time.

Goal Actual Minutes WPH
7 to 10 1,875 1,183 135 525.7778 (692)
2 to 4 1,250 492 90 328 (758)
8 to 9 625

I created my goals based on 625 WPH because of how many words I wanted to write today and how much time I scheduled to write them in, figuring a bit of a stretch from my current 531 average would be good for me.

I’ll update when I finish my next session. :)

Update (4:24 p.m.)—

Unfortunately I lost 30 minutes in my afternoon session (not sure how exactly because I can only account for about ten to fifteen of those minutes.) And I was writing really, really slowly. It’s mostly a case of just not knowing what’s happening and having to build it. I think I’ve said before that I often have to piece my stuff together.

I write linearly, but only in one sense, because I very much don’t write linearly on the paragraph/within-each-scene level. I write one scene at a time and move on to the next scene when I’m done, but putting the scene together is a strange piecemeal process that I really never noticed until recently. For some reason, I had never really noticed how much I jumped around within my sentences and paragraphs until one day I just… noticed. I write a lot of fragments that have to be filled in, because when something pops into my head, I move on even when I’m in the middle of something, then have to go back and complete the thought.

Also, I’m going to track this for a while, because I find it interesting that I did so much worse this afternoon than this morning. My speed took a nose dive and it had barely started to recover before I ran out of time.

Anyway, hoping to make up a few words this evening.