Another day of writing more

Today I need to sit down and finish my book. I’m so close. So so close. My plan is to work again in 30 minute sessions, but only take breaks if I need them.

I’d like to commit to 60 minutes, but sometimes I just need to get up, and I really want to set session lengths that I can force myself to honor.

So 30 minutes it is.

Anyway, I’m going to heat up my tea and coffee (maybe not the coffee, just not feeling it this morning), and sit down and start writing. I’ll post updates only when I stop for actual breaks or when I think it won’t interfere with my flow. :-)

Updates below.

#1

I’m having real trouble starting this today so I’m setting a start time of 2 pm. It’s 1:44 now and I need to finish lunch, but then it’s writing for the rest of the day.

#2

Well, I decided I needed to go to the grocery store before I sat down to write. It’s now 4:39 and I’m going to set a start time of 5 p.m. sharp.

#3

And it’s 7:49 pm. I haven’t started writing. But I am starting now. I’d claim procrastination is the problem on this, but today, I’m mostly blaming the fact that I don’t feel all that well and it’s made it a lot harder to just sit down and do it. But I am definitely starting it now. I’m ready to go. Well, I have to trim my nails first but that’s a quick thing and then I’m starting right in on a 30 minute session.

#4

Ha! I started writing, finally!

307 words, .5 hours

And I noticed that I got distracted immediately after starting the update here for this one, so I think I’m going to make the rest of them in OneNote and add them here later or tomorrow. I can’t afford to get distracted again. I lost almost an hour to researching a plugin for this website, writing an update for my author website, looking at my sales reports, and taking a quick look at some forum threads that interested me.

I’m thinking I might just have to change my whole process when it comes to breaks. I probably shouldn’t be getting online at all between sessions. I really do lose a lot of time to checking “just one thing” and taking “quick peeks” at stuff that interests me.

Alright. Getting rid of the potential for distraction is probably the best way forward. From now on, I’m going to write my blog posts in OneNote and post them only when I’m not trying to write. That might be during a long break between sessions that I take purposefully, or later, when I’m done writing for the day.

In fact, just writing these three paragraphs took an additional thirteen minutes! Yep. Gotta stop posting when I’m supposed to be focused on writing. I like posting but I’m going to have to save it for OneNote or skip it altogether until I’m ready for a long PLANNED break.

#5 – Final

563 words. Ended the day at 11:33 pm after way too many distractions.

Day 9 of 500 words a day

Yesterday was day 9 of my 500 words a day streak. I wrote 2,626 words.

My daily average since beginning this effort is now 803 words. This just goes to prove that it doesn’t take much more than the 500 words a day on a few days a week to really improve my long-term average.

Through day 8, 575 words was my daily average.

Add in day 9 and my daily average shot up to 803 words, which is 188 words above my all-time daily average. Meaning that if I maintained this pace, writing mostly 500-520 a day but having 1-2 days where I write quite a bit more, I would write an additional 68,620 words in a year. Or another entire novel.

It’s something to keep in mind, for sure. For someone like me, who finds it difficult to maintain a consistent pace, having a low set minimum appears to be a great way to at least ensure a minimum of production, while increasing the chances of producing more. I’ve already talked about the benefits I’ve been seeing, so I won’t go into that, but suffice to say, I’m feeling really good about this new plan to write 500 words a day. It’s going better than I ever expected, to be honest.