As a motivational exercise today, I’m tracking my writing and breaks. My goal is to write for as much time as possible between now and say 7-ish this evening.
Day 48: 1,553 DONE
7:33 am: 88
11:09 am: 350
3:45 pm: 839
5:59 pm: 1,553
10:03 pm: 1,553
Yay! Not a negative number after my 25 minutes this morning. That’s got to be a good sign for today’s writing. I got up with the intent to write as much as possible today, time-wise, so seeing a positive number right off feels like a good omen. :D
Between 7:33 and 11:09 I got in a single 1.5 hour writing session. My pace is 182 words an hour. Ugh! I’ve gotta improve the ratio of writing time to break time. That means I’ve gotta keep this break short. I can tell now that the rain’s coming, because the sun is gone and the wind is shaking the trees outside my window. But the story is moving along. I’m still working in chapter 4, but I hope to finish it soon. I like some of the stuff I’ve done so far so I’m still hopeful this is going to be a good writing day! This isn’t rewriting by the way; it’s more like redrafting. I’m not fixing prose. I’m fixing story. :D
Between 11:09 and 3:45 I finished another 1.5 session of writing. My pace is about 246 words an hour, so at least that’s an improvement, albeit not by much. :D Guess I’ll take what I can get! At this point, I’m up to about 5.03 hours of breaks and 3.42 hours of writing. Wow. Don’t know how that happened, to be honest. I’ve actually stayed on task much better than usual for me the last few weeks. Still, though, that’s a glaring difference from the 5–30 minute long breaks I imagined between writing sessions. Having the kids home for the holiday probably isn’t helping, but really, it’s mostly been me today that’s the problem.
And yep, I’m still working on redrafting chapter 4. Considering I’m deleting as I go and replacing with new text, I’m probably writing 2 times as much material at it appears for there to be a net gain in word count. Next goal? Stick with my entire 1.5 hour session without needing a break. I’m hoping to improve my ability to focus for longer periods of time over the next few weeks. Off to work on session #3!
Between 3:45 and 5:59 I managed another 1.5 hour writing session. My pace is increasing. It’s now at 316 words an hour and that’s the entire days words and time. I’m going to do one more session after a quick supper and then I’ll call it a night. :D But I’m pleased so far with my progress.
Between 5:59 and 10:03 I intended to write more but my daughter wanted some attention and I couldn’t resist watching a bit of my favorite Pride and Prejudice miniseries with her. Ah well. :D I love spending time with my kids so more writing time will have to wait until tomorrow when I do all this all over again. :D See you then!
Why I need the extra motivation…
I started working on 2014 Novella #1 on Day 8. I had some good progress in the early part of the story, but as I made it into chapter 4, things started to slow down a lot. Chapter 4, 5 & 6 is where I’m at now. I switched out chapter 4 & 5 (not something I usually do, to be honest) and I’m massaging chapter 4 into something more fitting to the story. I really should’ve just deleted the whole thing but there’s a scene I really like and wanted to keep. It feels kind of stupid to be worried about that now, but we’ll see. I didn’t end up deleting the whole 5,000+ words of chapter 5 & 6 yesterday. Probably should’ve.
I just can’t seem to get into the flow of the story. The voices aren’t speaking to me so everything I write has to be thought out from actions to dialogue to the flow of the narrative… Nothing’s coming without a lot of effort. This isn’t how I remember the writing of the first book in this series. It was fun—and a lot of fun at that.
As you can see below, my progress on this book has been sporadic and my numbers are more than a little pathetic. :o I want to change that today, and get into a groove so the rest of the month flows more smoothly.
Day 8: 1,435
Day 9: 184
Day 10: 948
Day 11: 363
Day 12: 2,697
Day 13: 412
Day 14: 2,752
Day 15: 223
Day 16: 1,369
Day 17: 493
Day 18: 365
Day 19: 0
Day 20: 0
Day 21: 0
Day 22: 0
Day 23: 0
Day 24: 0
Day 25: 276
Day 26: 2,913
Day 27: 0
Day 28: 0
Day 29: 0
Day 30: 0
Day 31: 0
Day 32: 0
Day 33: 0
Day 34: 188
Day 35: 0
Day 36: 24
Day 37: 0
Day 38: 0
Day 39: 235
Day 40: 84
Day 41: 163
Day 42: 459
Day 43: -52
Day 44: -113
Day 45: 230
Day 46: 91
Day 47: -199