I have a deadline coming up, very much a “can’t miss this date” deadline. It’s making me anxious.
I mean, technically, I could miss it. The date is still listed as tentative, but in my head, I know it’s not a deadline I need to miss. I don’t want to miss it. The fact is, though, that it’s really getting beyond my current capabilities to reach unless I have some kind of breakthrough in my writing.
So here I go trying to force that breakthrough.
I’ve found a schedule I don’t remember having tried before, and I’m going to try it today.
It pushes my pace a little bit, but nothing out of reach (~667 wph needed to stay on track). Where I’ll have the most trouble is just focusing on start and end times for my sessions and actually doing them when I’m supposed to do them. Five minutes late getting started is no big deal, but my history shows that I tend to get behind early, start every session late, until it’s snowballed and I’ve eliminated massive swaths of writing time just by letting five minutes here and there become twenty.
Here’s the plan.
1.5 hour writing sessions where the goal is 1,000 words each session. (Yes, I’ve tried this part before.)
.5 hour breaks between sessions (This is where it’s different. The writing sessions are all evenly spaced all day long.)
Here’s where I’ll update results.
12:00–1:30 – 1,296 words – Woo hoo! Things are off to a good start.
2:00–3:30 – 977 words – Only 1.23 hours, because I’ve fallen pretty far behind. I’ll have to skip the next session to get back on track. I’m hoping I can get ahead with some better word counts for the next couple of sessions. I had just enough time before 6 to finish it off before I started that one. :)
4:00–5:30 – Skipped to catch up
6:00–7:30 – 840 words – I’ve fallen behind again. It’s 8:17 and I have half an hour on this one to go. I’m going to keep going with it at this point.
8:00–9:30 – Skipped, because I was still working on the previous session.
10:00–11:30 – Skipped because I’m exhausted and I’m going to bed early so I can start off strong tomorrow.
If I get behind, I’ll cut a session or break short and move on to the next session.
If this goes well, I’m going to try it again tomorrow, starting earlier and taking a full hour between sessions (if I want—it certainly won’t be mandatory). The only reason I’m not doing that today is that I’m starting so much later than I planned when I came up with this idea last night.
Now, gotta go. I’m already 15 minutes behind. Yeah, I know. Not kidding. :o
**This might seem like it hasn’t gone well, but considering how badly I fail at this and how often, I’m actually really pleased with what I accomplished using this schedule. I’m definitely going to try the slightly modified version tomorrow, with the hour between sessions and see how that goes. I don’t yet know if the longer breaks will help or hinder my ability to stay on track.