New “finish the book” challenge: day 1

Last week was terrible for my experiment.

  1. I didn’t really write on multiple stories at all
  2. I’m seriously behind on the one book I MUST get out this month
  3. End of the school year is here and it’s killing my routine—one more week to go before I can settle into a new one
  4. I had enormous resistance to writing, and so I spent a lot of time reading, which I shouldn’t have, but it’s a given that when I start to feel overwhelmed, I self-medicate with distractions—thank God I’m not a drinker

I’m still going to try to meet my deadline. Consider it a challenge. The latest I can finish the book in question and reasonably expect to publish it when I need to publish it is the 26th. I’ll have to have my best week of writing ever to do it. But I haven’t missed a hard deadline before and I don’t plan to miss this one.

Today I’ll be writing for 8 hours, word count irrelevant. 8 hours is the goal.

Of course, I’d like to keep my speed up and have a record-breaking day of writing, but that might not happen. It’s okay if it doesn’t. I estimate I’ll need a minimum of 43 hours of writing this week at a much slower pace to finish on time. That means 8 hours a day until it’s done. And yes, 8 hours of writing a day is actually a lot more time than it sounds like because those 8 hours don’t include even one pee break. :o

So, I’m off to start writing. This is going to be one crazy week.

Challenge: 8 hours a day of writing until the book in question is done, starting today.

Progress

Hour 1: 391 words

I’m in a terrible hole in this book that I just can’t seem to dig out of. I’m definitely hoping for some easier writing soon, but I’m afraid that’s going to be an unfulfilled wish today. I have a long way to go to merge the new stuff with the old stuff.

Hour 2: 610 words | 1,042 cumulative

The numbers don’t add up, I know, but somehow I got distracted by the story and wrote for 10 minutes during the break between hours. That’s where the extra 41 words come from.

It’s also already much later in the day than I need it to be, so I’m going to have to really focus on getting these sessions done before it’s too late to actually get them done and still get to bed at a reasonable time tonight. Sleep absolutely has to come first. Not getting enough of it is probably the number one reason I fail to meet goals.

Total: 1,201 words

I didn’t even come close to the 8 hours of writing I wanted. Will have to try again.