Day: November 6, 2017

A little motivation to finish early

Lynn

Earlier, I said I was hoping to write 3000 words tonight. That still stands. But I’m setting a deadline to finish this by 9 p.m. I’ve stayed up too late too many nights in a row (and can’t sleep late to save my life) and I need a good night’s sleep tonight.

As long as I make an effort, when 9 p.m. comes, I’m going to stop and spend the hour before bed relaxing instead of trying to keep myself awake to write.

I definitely need an early night tonight. :-) It should be a nice little reward for a productive evening. (And I will not let myself watch hours of TV the way I did a few nights ago! Maybe a simple one hour documentary on something I can use in one of my stories.)

Anyway, I’ll track my progress here, so I can have some accountability as tonight’s deadline approaches.

Progress reports

7:34 p.m.

I’ve done four 15 minute sessions and have added 469 words to my story. Wish it were more but overall I’m pleased with my progress.

8:19 p.m.

Did some chatting with family on Hangouts and now I’m staring at the time wondering how I’m going to find the energy to write from now until 9 and knowing I can’t just give up yet. I’m not at 500 words yet and I really wanted to get a lot closer to 3,000 than this tonight.

Alrighty. Time to regroup. I’m just going to take a quick break and then write until 9 with the timer timing me instead of counting down. I’ll be back at 9 for a final report.

I reached 505 words by 9:08 p.m. and called it a night.

Six days now

Lynn

I’ve extended my daily writing streak of 500 words or more to six days now, squeaking by with 503 words.

Here’s my log of word counts since I began the 500 words a day minimum.

10/31/17 – 517
11/1/17 – 533
11/2/17 – 520
11/3/17 – 1,004
11/4/17 – 515
11/5/17 – 503

As happened the day before and the day before that, I waited until so late last night to get started that I was falling asleep with my computer in my lap and kept having to rouse myself to write the words. It was tough, to say the least.

I’m going to try not to do that again tonight.

In fact, I want to try for 3,000 words today, and I’m going to do it by focusing on writing 600 words at a time.

(600 x 5 = 3,000)

Or, you know, I could just finish the book before I reach 3,000. I’m perfectly happy to do that too. :-)

Resistance didn’t win

Lynn

(I thought I posted this last night but must have missed it, so here it is.)

Last night, I extended my streak of writing more than five hundred words a day to five days with 515 words. Resistance didn’t win. The total word count is adding up slowly but it’s better than a streak of zeroes any way you look at it.

I’ve learned something over the last few months, or maybe just been reminded of something I already knew but haven’t taken seriously enough. I can’t tolerate boredom. Spending two hundred and fifty-six days on one story is just asking for trouble.

Once I lose the thrill of the idea, writing becomes hard, and I become too critical of myself, the writing, and the idea.

I have to start writing more often. I started to say faster, but the truth is, speed isn’t the problem, not in the sense of how many words an hour I write. Writing even 200 words an hour would get me 1,000 words a day in 5 hours! Two months is pretty doggone reasonable for a novel. Even three months wouldn’t be so bad if the story grew to the length my current book has reached. Anything more than that is just too much time. I can’t sustain my excitement for a story that long and I’ve proven that time and time again.

But there’s good news.

What I did last week, last month, last year doesn’t have to be what I do tomorrow.

See you tomorrow. :-)