April was a great month for writing. I wrote more than 50,000 words. May has been fantastic. But I’ve recently finished a book and now I’m fighting to keep up my momentum.
Finishing a big project leaves me feeling adrift. I have to stop letting myself feel like I’ve finished something when I finish a book. The big project is my career, not this one book, so I have to keep writing if I want to avoid a long break between books.
Implementing the plan should be easy but we all know it won’t be. But here’s what I’m doing.
1. No writing break between books.
2. No moving on to a book I “should” finish while I’m interested in writing a different book.
I’m writing the book I’m most interested in writing right now, not the book I feel like I should write right now. That particular series has waited this long for another book, and it can keep waiting.
Enthusiasm = intrinsic motivation = finishing the next book before I lose interest in it and have to work hard to regain it.
I hope it works, but I really won’t know until I’ve tried it a few times and seen the results. :)
I’m also still following my rule about sweets and 1,000 words. This little rule helped me write more than 50,000 words in April. And that momentum put me in a position to break my 6,241 words in a day record.
My new record? 6,606 words on May 7, 2019.
I don’t have a post for that day, because I’ve really been focused on writing fiction and saving the blog posts for progress updates, but I am thrilled I did it. It was awesome. It was also exhausting. I’m really not meant to write that many words in one day! :-) Next record to break? 7,000 words in a day. It’ll happen.
Now, off to write. Today is the first day of the new book. (Which I started in January, and wrote a few thousand on between then and now, so I’m not actually starting the book at zero words. I really want to write this book! It’s going to be so much fun.)
And I really want one of the brownies my daughter made so I’m definitely about to start writing. :D