Category: Challenges

It’s 5:42 pm. I’ve never started writing so late in the day and successfully written a lot of words. I can’t say what my upper limit is for such a late start, but I’d say it’s in the 2,000–3,000 word range. Definitely not 5,950 words, which is where I’m planning to end today. (Because, confession time, I totally screwed up yesterday too and wrote only the words I got as I made a couple of fixes I needed to make in my book. Or, you know, 318 words.)

I will need to write super fast tonight, much faster than my usual average. I will also need to write freely and not get hung up on anything as I go. Deep breath. I can do that. I’ve written 5,000 words in 6 hours before, so all I need to do is write fast, take super short breaks, and stick with it until I’m done.

No more tea, water, or other drinks at the computer. I take too many breaks when I have them.

I’m doing two quick things and then I’m getting started. I’m going to get this done tonight if I have to stay up half the night. Bad idea, I know, so I’m going to finish before that happens. You can’t see me, but I’m wearing my serious face. :-|

I can do this.

Update: I got started at 6:39 pm. I’m currently at 2,273 words. My pace isn’t anywhere near where I’d like it, but surprisingly it’s actually not bad either at 921 WPH. Normally I’d be thrilled at that pace. It’s 10:11 pm though and I’m not staying up until 2 am, which is how late I’ll need to stay up to write 5,950 at my current pace, so I must get faster because I do not want to stop until I’ve reached that word count! :o

Update (next morning): I reached 2,625 words, and although I called it a night after that, I think this little challenge served its purpose: I wrote more words than I would have if I hadn’t tried it! Today I try again, but this time, I have the time to make this a success. :)

Hmm. So far, not so good. I’m not restarting this challenge so my big fat zero from yesterday has really put the pressure on and my 271 words so far today isn’t doing much to release it.

Oh, well. Gotta keep going. That’s really all I can do. I don’t want to give up yet so I’m not going to. :)

I don’t even want to talk about my fail yesterday, but fail I did.

Today I’m starting even later, and I don’t have any excuse at all except that it’s Saturday and apparently I’m just not “on” today.

I managed to recover enough yesterday to write 2,465 words. That was after writing only 561 (plus 277) by 5:55 pm. I’m proud of myself for one thing only yesterday and that was realizing the spiral I had fallen into and taking corrective measures.

You see, I decided to watch The Big Bang Theory at lunch. New episode. But it was short and I wanted to take a quick look at Hand of God on Amazon while I was sitting there, so I did. I watched two entire episodes, when I realized I was going to spend way too much time watching TV if I didn’t do something to stop myself.

So the something I did was skip straight to the last episode and watch it. :D

It worked. I got closure and the urge to watch more episodes disappeared. I was ready to get back to work without distraction and that was key. I could have given up at my 561 words, but I didn’t. And I ended up with 2,465 words instead.

I’m cut off from the world here, really, and didn’t hear about the terrible violence in France until I read some NPR news last night. I don’t mind admitting that I prefer ignorance when it comes to news. I haven’t stopped thinking about what I read and that kind of anxiety over something I can do nothing about isn’t helpful.

Anyway, moving on.

Despite my late start today, I’m going to try to finish my book today. It’s a personal challenge I’ve set myself for the day. I don’t know how many words that’ll be but the goal is 4,558 words, and if I have to write something else at the end of the day to get them, that’s the plan! Today is a writing day, and I really think how I’ve separated my writing days from my publishing days is a lot better way of working for me.

Updates later, in another post likely.

For now, WIFI is going off and staying off until I’ve hit 4,558 or it’s dinnertime!

Today I try again to break my new one-day word count record. The target is 5,221 words and I’d like to smash it, really. If not, then I’ll settle for 5,222. :D

I have a chicken/egg dilemma: I’ve been having a lot more thoughts and breakthroughs with the story since I started writing at an accelerated pace. I had not been having much luck beforehand. I can’t say for sure which came first though. Was I primed to start writing faster because I’d started to become more energized about the story, or did I become more energized about the story because I started pushing myself to write more?

Ah. It’s an unanswerable question as of yet, though I lean toward the idea that writing more generates its own momentum and inspiration. I’ll go with that and use it as a reminder to keep going even when it feels like I’ve outrun the story. That’s happened a few times, but I’ve kept at it and seen decent results.

On the other hand, I freely admit I think everyone’s going to hate this book, and it is by far not my strongest work. I persevere anyway!

Fail!

I wrote 535 words. I blame a headache. (It started on Friday and I blame it for both of the two unexpected days off I had, Friday and Sunday—Saturday was an expected day off.)

Luckily, the headache finally went away Monday and I got a really good start to the week.

I’m not even going to make excuses for why I’m starting my writing late today. I don’t have a schedule, so there’s no reason I have to start at a particular time, but I know I’m starting late because I intended to start earlier. I procrastinated. That’s really all there is to say.

Also, I’m waiting on a cup of coffee to finish brewing. Yes, regular coffee. I ground up almost 3 tablespoons of coffee beans for just under 9 ounces of water for my french press. I’ll be high as a kite here in about half an hour. I will likely regret it then, but right now all I can think about is how down I feel and how unwilling I am to miss writing again today because of that.

Yesterday was a good day, so I really don’t understand the abrupt mood swing. I’m taking measures to mitigate it, before it has time to set in and depress my spirits and keep me from following through on my plans. :)

Today is to be attempt #2 to break my one-day word count record of 5,208 words.

Time to get started.

3:02 pm update—

I have no idea what’s going on, but I haven’t been writing. Not fiction, that is. I think this is a good bit of evidence in favor of staying away from coffee. It’s not a cure for whatever ails me. I did vacuum my carpets and hardwood though. :o

Now, I’m going to start writing on my book, and although I don’t expect to have a lot success with the attempt to break my record, it’s not actually out of the realm of possibility yet, so I’m not writing it off as done. See you soon with an update! :)

9:07 pm update—

This is one of those are you kidding updates where I confess to having written only 128 words this evening.

Don’t ask why. I don’t even know.

And I feel lucky I got those.

I’ll have to try again tomorrow. For now? I’m shutting off my WIFI tonight and I won’t be turning it back on until after I’ve written my word count or it’s dinnertime. Whichever comes first. (I started to say lunch time, but let’s be real: if I turn WIFI back on during lunch, I’ll spend a bunch of time catching up my online reading and I’ll be lucky to get back to work afterwards at all. So, dinnertime it is.)

I’d call today attempt #2, but yesterday, I never even really got started. I spent the day on other things.

I’m starting later than I’d hoped, but of course, knowing I wanted to do this today, I spent all of last night in and out of crazy dreams and woke up feeling like I hadn’t slept a wink. How typical of me. :o ← I am not actually surprised. :D

I’m not really planning to use the timers today, not at this moment anyway, so I guess I should just get to it. I think I’ll update as the day goes on to mark my progress.

9:39 am → Just getting started.

10:58 am → 280 words. I’m working through the crap that’s been holding me up for the last month so I guess I’m lucky I’ve gotten this much.

12:07 pm → Uh, I’m supposed to have more words? This was not an interruption, it was a complete derail! I was reading forum posts and just realized (phone alarm) that it’s been an entire hour since I stopped writing for a quick break. Holy crap! Lunch at my desk today. :o

1:16 pm → Returned from lunch, and did not eat at my desk after all.

Ha! And as soon as I pressed play on my music, Journey’s Don’t Stop Believing started up. I’m going to take that as a sign, because I’ve been feeling pretty bummed this morning. :D

I have to wonder if I’m running a temperature today. I keep getting chilled and the heat is set at 72°. Oh well, moving on anyway. Back to my book.

WIFI off.

2:30 pm → I finally deleted all the things I needed to delete, leaving behind just a few straggling lines that I’d like to save if I can. That’s put me down -1714 words. For once, I’m going to ignore that and figure up my actual writing today separately. I’ll figure my net words once I’m ready to call it a day. Only 4,918 to go. :o

4:11 pm → 626 words. Only 4,582 to go. :o Holy crap. I really have no explanation.

7:36 pm → Just getting back to it after stopping at 4:11. I’ve got one hour to get as many words as I can and then I have to call it a night because of an obligation I have tomorrow.

I can say with confidence that there’s 0% chance I’ll break my record today. I’m bummed but I admit I haven’t felt well today so maybe I’ll do a lot better on Thursday when I try again.

I’ll post my end of day word count later. Right now I want to try to take advantage of what time I’ve got left. :) Night!

I need to write a lot of words today. It’s imperative I complete this book I’m working on sooner rather than later because I’ve been saying it would be ready soon for much longer than soon can justify. :o

On that note, I think I’ll make today an attempt to break my one-day word count record of 5,208 words. I’ve still not broken that record and I set that record back in August 2013. The last time I reached 5,000 was July 30, 2014. (Ouch! 2015 has definitely not been a stellar writing year for me.) If I don’t break that record today, then I’ll try again tomorrow. And the day after. I’m going to keep trying to break that record until I do. I’ve really dropped the ball this year and it’s time I picked it back up.

I think the schedule became a crutch for all of my excuses. It’s not that I think it was bad for me. But if I’m not going to follow it and write when I’m supposed to, it just lets me make excuses to not keep trying after my scheduled work day is over. Because my problem is almost always getting started. If it takes me all day to get started, stopping just after I do isn’t helping me. I thought the schedule would help me retrain myself to get started sooner. That’s not how it’s worked out.

Okay, I need just a few minutes to get set, and then I’m starting my timer for some timed writing sessions, and I’m going to spend the rest of the day trying to break that record.

(Hm. See that post right above this one? Yeah, that one. I did, unfortunately spend a big majority of my writing time today figuring all that stuff out. :D I feel more hopeful than I have in a while about my writing production, but the little time I had tonight didn’t net me very many words. Definitely nowhere near what I needed to break my record. So . . . I’ll be giving it another go tomorrow. Wish me luck!)

Today’s word count: 104 words.

Big ouch.

Today’s challenge is to try to write for 4 to 5 hours to get 2,995 words.

So far, at 10:59 am, I’m not proving to myself that “no schedule” is a great idea. Then again, I wasn’t doing anything during my scheduled writing time lately either!

I will update as soon as I get ready to write my first session or when I finish it. :D

(Well, bummer. That was a failed exercise.)

As long as this little challenge is exciting me, I’m doing it again. Yesterday, I ended with fewer words than I wanted, but the deleting set me back and I never recovered. That particular story is moving a bit now but still feels too tight. Hopefully this challenge will continue to loosen it up.

So that I work on a slightly different arrangement of stories (in case I repeat yesterday and only make it through a few), I’m going to shuffle my list. :)

Of course, my most important story is still going to get 4 slots out of the 10 per 50 word cycle, meaning I’m actually only working on 7 stories.

Update #1: Holy crap, it’s 11:35 and all I’ve done so far today is add back a bunch of tags to this site to group related posts in a way that makes things easier to find. I must recharge my laptop battery or go sit at my desk and get to writing! I am terribly disappointed with myself at the moment. :o I mean, my schedule still exists, even though I seem to be in the middle of a rebellion against it. It’s still on my calendar though and I have no intention of deleting it because I have to believe I’ll come around sooner or later. It’s a great schedule. Even if it only worked for me for about 3 weeks. I’ve been trying use it since mid-April and it’s mid-September now. Oh. That’s a let down, seeing it in writing like that. It’s been 5 months. I hadn’t realized. Bummer. It’s probably not ever going to work for me long-term, is it?

I rescheduled yesterday’s challenge for today. Early in the day yesterday my father arrived with scaffolding for a project I’m doing and the day spiraled out of control from there. So, challenge moved to today when I should have no such interruptions.

The plan is to start at 9 am sharp and I will update as I complete each cycle through my list of stories. I’m excited about getting started. I’ll see you back here later.

Update #1: Cycling through the stories for the first time and I’ve only made it through 4 of them so far, but I’m at 1,285 words. Interesting!

Update #2: I’m still working on the same 4 stories, and I’m at 1,734 words. It’s 4 pm so I’m going to try to hit my most important story one more time and then take a break and work on copy edits for something else.

Update #3: Yikes. I did get back to my most important story and ended up deleting. It has set me back a good bit and I don’t think I’m done deleting. I’m at 1,088 now. I’m going to try to make it up. I’d like to end the night at 2,995. It hardly seems possible considering everything else I need to do. :(

Today I’m going to write 50 words on each story I have in progress (writing more as the muse strikes) and cycle through them at least 6 times. No filler words allow! All writing has to be done with the intent that it’s “real” writing not just something meant to fill space.

I have a line up of 7 stories to work on, and I’ve slipped my most important story in there an extra 3 times for an even 10 cycles. If this works like I want it to, I’ll end up with at least 3000 words today, and I’ll break through the block on the one story that’s really been holding me back from getting that book finished.

Truly this is about loosening up after an extended period of story avoidance. I think it’ll work. I’m already excited about it!

I’ll update this post with results.

The challenge today is to stay on schedule and write 1,000 words for each of the last three days that I wrote nothing.

The numbers 1–6 represent the 6 hours of scheduled writing from 9–12 & 1–4. The second number is where I should be at the end of the hour to be on schedule.

The true challenge is to stay ahead for all 6 hours.

11 am – as you can see from the numbers above I’m going to have to pick up the pace if I want to finish at 4 pm today.

I’m tired and my head feels like I’m sleep deprived. The truth is, although I’ve been getting about 7 hours of sleep time a night the last three or four days, I’ve been waking up during the night more than usual and losing sleep because of it. I probably had about 6 hours of sleep last night if I’m being generous. The days of me being fresh on 5 to 6 hours of sleep are long gone. These days 6.5 hours isn’t enough to get rid of the fuzzy headed feeling. It’s takes a solid seven hours of sleep before I don’t notice a difference in how I feel. Maybe a short nap is in order before I lose more time to this lethargy. I do believe I could write all my words between 1 and 4 if I felt more energetic. I’m not saying I will, just that it’s possible. All I know is that if I keep feeling this way, I’m certainly not going to make it to 3,000.

UPDATE: I didn’t return to writing after I stopped for that nap. It just didn’t turn out to be a good day for me and writing, although I’m glad I didn’t give in without at least trying. Two hours was certainly better than another 0 word day.

A few days ago, I felt like a challenge and that worked out well for me. Today I don’t particularly feel like a challenge but I need one because I need to get writing again before I fall too far behind.

The last three days have been a mess. I’ve written a great big fat 0 words and I don’t know what to blame for that other than my own inability to get started. Getting started is really the hardest thing I do all day when it comes to anything that needs to be done.

The night of my great day (when I didn’t even want to stop because the writing was going so well) I read through what I’d written and made some notes of things to correct or adjust. I didn’t find enough to turn me off the story, so I’m not sure why the hold up. It might not be related, but I do think it’s worth noting.

I’ve also been working on a few of my websites the last couple of days. Kind of obsessively, tbh. I thought I’d gotten it all out of my system finally, but yesterday, right when I was supposed to start writing, I decided I absolutely needed to write something for at least one of the sites.

Trust me when I say that’s not true. The site hasn’t had an update in over a year. I doubt doing one then mattered at all.

I want to challenge myself to write 1,000 words today for each day that I wrote nothing AND to finish proofing a story I was supposed to have finished proofreading weeks ago.

So… at least 3,000 words today on schedule is the challenge. :)

I have the intention of writing about 3,000 words today by 4 pm, but I’ve noticed I’m writing at a really nice pace (using timed writing, during my scheduled writing time) and I’m thinking I might like to try a personal challenge today.

I think I’ll try to write my 3,000 by 12 today and take the afternoon to do some proofreading I’ve been putting off.

The first set of numbers is cumulative, the second set is by session. I’ll update as I go.

Ah! I slowed down considerably for the next few sessions, but I’m going to keep trying. I’m also about an hour behind after a few unexpected interruptions.

Well, that didn’t work out. :)

As you can see, I only managed 90 minutes of timed writing sessions during the 9–12 portion of my schedule today. I will need to improve that considerably to end up where I want to end up today.

My revised challenge is to keep up my pace and reach 3020 today before 4 pm.

The following chart shows where I should be at the end of each hour—not timed hour of writing, but the hour into my schedule. 9–12 comprises hours 1–3, and 1–4 comprises hours 4–6.

I definitely didn’t meet this challenge but I’m not too far behind where I should be at this time so that’s good. :)

I’ll be back after lunch.

I’m back! And… ouch.

As you can see, my pace has settled around 700ish words an hour since lunch and that means I’m behind, mostly because I just cannot get my timed writing to match up to my scheduled time. I’m at 2.75 hours of timed writing even though I’ve been “on the clock” for 5. I have one hour to complete my words or I’ll end up writing past 4 pm (because I’m getting 3000 words today, one way or another).

Okay, final numbers for the day. I did make it to 3,000, but not before 4 pm. I stopped at about 5:09. However, 240 minutes is only 4 hours but I worked for 7. Not a great work/break ratio there.