Tag: Writing fiction

I write fiction—it’s how I earn my living—and I like to ramble. Just so you know. Nearly everything I do these days relates in some way to writing and publishing, so most of my posts are here.

New “finish the book” challenge: day 1

Lynn

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.

Multiple stories at once: sixth week

Lynn

Thursday—Wednesday, May 12–May 18

306 2 stories
0
3,618 2 stories
372 2 stories
0
0
0

Total: 4,296 words

Ouch. This was a terrible week when it came to writing. Honestly, it wasn’t much better for anything else either. It’s the end of the school year and my routine is completely out of order and I’m just trying to keep writing and make it through one more week of this. Plus, heating/A/C unit is still down, awaiting repair, and last night was graduation.

 

6,000 word challenge for today

Lynn

I’ve never written 6,000 words of fiction in one day. I want to do that this month. In fact, I want to do it today. It’s 11:22, but there’s still time.

6,000 ÷ 7.5 hours = 800 wph

I need to aim for 800 wph or more to get this done today, because that’ll use up about all the time I have left in this day, and I do have a few things other than writing I need to do too.

So, yeah, I’m probably being optimistic I can do this today, but I like being optimistic. :D

I’ve written half a book in an effort to avoid writing half of another book

Lynn

Friday was the first zero word day I’ve had since April 20th. I recovered yesterday, sort of, doing 1 hour in the morning, but then only managed to restart at nearly 7 pm. Can I explain what happened? Really, no. I just didn’t want to get started again.

I came very close to reaching my goal word count last night despite that by jumping into another story instead of continuing to fight for words. I ended the day with 3,618 words in 3.8 hours, a pace of 952 wph.

I’m now beyond 28,000 words on that story, mostly from writing on it when I’m not interested in writing on something else. My goal is about 50,000 words for that book, meaning I’ve written half a book while trying to avoid writing the second half of another book. There can be no doubt that working on multiple stories is helping me beat my usual issues with low word counts.

This is the breakthrough I’ve been looking for. It just proves that the best way to find what works is to keep trying, in every variation possible.

I thought I’d tried working on multiple stories as a way to increase my word counts, and I had, in a sense, but not in this exact configuration. 1 hour blocks, switch at will, stick to the stories that interest me but at least try the others once in a while to keep them fresh in my head, ignore deadlines, ignore the part of my brain telling me write this today, and get started on anything, because as long as I start, I’m getting somewhere.

Finally, I’m feeling the lack of a heating unit this morning. The temperature in here is 66° F. Not bad, honestly, but I don’t like being cold, and sitting at the computer and typing doesn’t keep me warm. My fingers are already feeling stiff.

Still, I have a ridiculous number of words to write today, and also need to download some images from my Dreamstime subscription before I cancel in a few days. Another month’s renewal is going to be a waste of money, because I have credit for 294 images to download already. I have no idea how I’m going to download so many images over the next few days and get all my words written and deal with getting another of my books ready to publish to meet a May publishing deadline and deal a bunch of personal things this week.

I really don’t multitask well and I don’t handle switching my focus all that well either. I’m already feeling overwhelmed.

Best way to get over that is to pick something and just do it. I’m going with writing. Here’s to a good day. I’m going to try to break my 6k word barrier again. Post coming up for reporting today’s progress on that. :D

Writing delays and deadline approaching

Lynn

Yesterday I wrote:

Time to get to work now, and I’ll report back later with the results! I’m hoping to get all the way through the book today, and add about 4k words to the story.

And then my A/C and heating unit died.

So yesterday did not turn into a stellar writing day. In fact, I wrote only 306 words, and I’m lucky I did that. I don’t find it easy to concentrate when I’m anxious. I waited for the serviceman to come out and one of my kids came home from school early, feeling bad, and then I got the bad news about the unit.

It’s in a really bad way that’s going to cost me out the nose to get fixed, assuming it’s not just more economical in the long run to buy a new unit altogether.

Yep, that bad.

Today, I’m struggling to let it all go long enough to get started on my book—I honestly thought I’d be writing by now, and maybe finishing my second hour up.

Against my better judgment I’m still trying to catch up by finishing one particular book this month. I’m down to 8 days until I pass up my deadline. I need at least 3,526 words a day just on this book to now maybe reach the end of the book in time. If it goes long, I’m in trouble. If I miss a day, I’m in trouble. If I use all my time writing on some other story, I’m in trouble.

Let’s just admit it: I’m already in trouble with this book.

I’m just going to ignore the part of my brain trying to tell me I can’t do this, because of course I can do this. I’ve shown these past 5 weeks that I can write 3,933 words in as little as 4 hours. Worst case scenario, I can still write 400 words in 1 hour, and that means I can write 3,526 words in 9 hours. I can write for 9 hours. I don’t really want to, but I can.

So no excuses. I can do this. I can finish this book in 8 days, and maybe have a little writing left for other stories too.

I just need to get this one book out of the way so I can have what my write multiple stories at once experiment seems to be promising me: total writing freedom while writing many more words than before. :)

It’s time to quit putting it off and get started. I have somewhere to be later today and I’d like to finish my writing before I go so I can end this day feeling accomplished.

Multiple stories at once: fifth week

Lynn

Thursday—Wednesday, May 5–May 11

701 1 story
1,656 1 story
747 2 stories
256 1 story
1,613 1 story
3,728 2 stories
2,581 1 story

Total = 11,282 words

I didn’t feel like I was writing multiple stories this week, probably because I’ve been panicking a bit about a book I’m trying to finish (which is something I hope will be over soon, but there are 2 books that I just really need to get caught up on).

I worked on 2 distinct stories this week. The only day I really broke out on, I spent most of my writing time on that second story. That was what helped me realize something was wrong with the other one, because I could still write faster and easier when I was working on something else. (And this is a great example of why the multiple stories method is really working for me to increase my word counts.)

Overall, it was another week that was much lower in word count than I’d hoped since I’m aiming for 27,533 for a full writing week, but I still did much better than my average.

I’ve now had 5 weeks in a row where I’ve written more than 10,000 words each week.

My current total words written since I started this experiment is 72,989 words. Not the 98,333 words a month I want to reach eventually, but a damn sight closer than I’ve ever been in the past. :D I’m pleased.

This experiment continues to be a raging success.

Panic on hold

Lynn

After going back to the beginning and starting through the book adding stuff, I started to have a feeling I’d been too hasty in deleting all those words yesterday. So I recovered them, then kept going through the book. I added just over 2,500 words in the first 4 chapters and a new chapter 5. I realized some things about the story that had been bothering me, and this stuff I wrote yesterday, I’m very excited by it.

I’m gonna be upfront here and say that some of that decision could have come from the last 2 videos from Dean Wesley Smith’s Originality Workshop series that’s freely available on YouTube at the moment. Even if you don’t want to bother watching any of the other videos, those 2 are worth watching multiple times.

Anyway, after listening to those 2 about 3 times each, I decided I wasn’t being true to what I wanted from this story. I remember reaching a point where I wondered what readers would think about a choice I had to make, and I remember quite clearly making the safe choice for that reason. But it wasn’t right. It wasn’t what this story needed. So I fixed it. And boy, do I love what’s there now so much better.

I didn’t do much rewriting, but I did do some—although I’m positive I was going at it creatively, not destructively. To me, destructive rewriting is when I’m just trying to make something sound better in my head. Creative rewriting happens when I need to make changes to create a better story—in this particular case, creating something I like better. Those are two different types of rewriting, in my opinion.

As a general rule, I don’t think rewriting does me any favors so I avoid it as much as possible. On the other hand, if the story isn’t coming out the way I want, I don’t see any reason not to rewrite sections as I’m trying to work my way into the real story. In all honesty, what I’m talking about probably isn’t even rewriting so much as it’s just part of the writing process. I mean, I’m only 19k-ish words into a story I fully intend to land around 50k.

It really made me more excited about what I was writing to revisit the opening chapters. Something to note is that I originally wrote this opening back in February 2015, so there could be other factors at play in the rewriting thing, such as that I’m just in a different place creatively speaking now than I was then, so of course the story had to change.

Whatever the reason, I just started to feel like my first few chapters of this book weren’t the same book as the ones that followed and something had to give or I was going to flame out with this story. (Because of the way I work, I often start books that I don’t get back to for months or years at a time. I’m trying to fix that with the multiple stories method.)

And I do admit, this has been an unusual case. This is as close as I’ve ever come to feeling a need to just scrap a story and start from scratch.1 Yesterday, I admit, at one point, I panicked a bit, remembering a quote DWS has repeated a few times on his website about steaming piles of crap, but I ignored it, because I had this feeling that my problem with this story wasn’t that it was a bad story, but that I’d failed somewhere along the line in the telling  of it.

Then I figured it out, and things started to fall together. I have a new chapter or two to finish today, and then I have more story to go through, and I have a decision to make about my character that’ll determine just how much I’ll have to fix going forward, but I’m very hopeful I’ll be keeping the vast majority of those words I thought about deleting yesterday. :D

Now that I think about it that way, nope, I really don’t see any of what I did yesterday (or am planning to do today) as rewriting, because I’m very much still in the process of creating this story.

Time to get to work now, and I’ll report back later with the results! I’m hoping to get all the way through the book today, and add about 4k words to the story.

1^ I came just about this close back in January 2015, but I think this one was closer. I ended up loving that story. I still do. I did a good job with it. I just wish more people would find that series and like it because I love it enough to want to keep writing it, but hardly anyone’s buying. Bummer, that.

Time to panic

Lynn

I just deleted 11,117 words, after deleting 1,442 words last night from the same book. I’ve gone from being comfortably in the middle of this book to being all the way back to the beginning. This is absolutely the most words I’ve ever deleted from one story at one time.

I’m hoping desperately that it was the right decision. Progress on this book has been pathetically slow and I just haven’t been happy with this story for the majority of the book.

So, today is a day of recovery for this book.

I hope to figure out how I want to go forward, and if by the end of the day I’m not thrilled with a new direction, I’m going to pull up the copy of the doc I made before I deleted anything and force myself to keep going with it.

I’m already behind on this book, again, and my May deadline is—as usual with any deadline—about to bite me.

God, I hate deadlines.

Multiple stories at once: fourth week

Lynn

Thursday—Wednesday, April 28–May 4

2,260 2 stories
3,228 2 stories
1,439 1 story
1,009 2 stories
595 2 stories
2,330 3 stories
1,087 2 stories

Total: 11,948

Definitely under where I’d like to be, but it still works out to a daily average of 1,707 words which is considerably better than my 2016 daily average of 779, or my 2015 daily average of 685.

So, still a ways to get where I want to be: 3,933 words on writing days, or approx 3,233 daily average, for 98,333 words a month, but much closer than I’ve been in the past (as a whole, not my recent past—I did much better last week and the first week).

Since I started this experiment, my daily average has increased dramatically, more than doubling to 2,033 words a day. :D I call that success.

I worked on 5 distinct stories this week.

It’s Friday—What?

Lynn

I’ve failed every attempt this week to meet the challenge I’ve set myself to break 6,000 words. In the last 7 days, I haven’t even broken into the 3,000 range.

See? 1,439; 1,009; 595; 2,330; 1,087; 701; 0 (today)

Today’s 0 won’t be zero because I’ve already started writing.

My last >3,000 word day was last Friday.

I’m not really sure where the blame for this lies. It’s just been a rough week and the writing hasn’t been easy. I think I’m making the obvious mistake of pushing myself to write more on one particular book and because I’m having issues with that story, I’m stalling out a bit, and it’s creating the beginning of that vicious cycle of writing avoidance I’ve talked about many times in the last couple of weeks as I try to keep myself working by only working on what I want.

Unfortunately, I’ve committed to finishing a particular book this month and I mean to meet that commitment.

But I guess I don’t trust myself. I’m worried that if I just write, without keeping an eye on how much of my time is spent on that particular book, I’ll screw up and realize I’m too far behind to catch up before my personal deadline hits. The 20th is the latest I need to finish this book and have a chance of meeting my commitment, and that’s 15 days from now, or about 2,321 words every day, or somewhere around 3,200 words for 11 out of 15 days.

Honestly, these are totally doable numbers. It’s 2 to 3 hours at my current year’s wph rate. My daily goal is 5 hours of writing. That still leaves me plenty of time to switch between stories and try to get my momentum up before I hit this book.

So why has this week been so bad? I think because I just haven’t remembered this stuff that I just wrote. I mean, I don’t have to work on this book every moment I’m at the computer writing. I just need to focus on reaching my 5 hours a day (maybe 6 until this book is done) and try to start at least a few sessions with this book every day. If they don’t get off to a good start, I can switch back, but I don’t think that’s my problem. I think it’s just the resistance to starting at all. :D

Going forward, I just need to catch up with this particular book and one more and then I can let go of all deadlines and really stick to writing only what I want when I want. I expect I’ll be more than able to keep up with reasonable releases within my series then just because I write so much faster when I keep switching between stories.

So, I guess I’ve just worked out a few thoughts I’ve been struggling with. Let’s see if it helps today be a more productive—and interesting—writing day.

Now, time to get back to the fiction. Tomorrow and Sunday both will have me short of writing time if I’m not careful and I can’t really get any more behind than I already am this month. Plus, I don’t need to fall back into the habit of making my writing take all day. There are other things I need—and want—to do sometimes. I’d like to get to a place where I can do those things and still count on being able to hit my daily writing goals!

 

A challenge for today

Lynn

I posted about the last few days’ writing, and now I’m going to post about my challenge for today. I’m trying one more time to break through the big 6,000 words in a day barrier I haven’t yet broken through.

Here’s my plan.

Write for 1 hour on each of my stories in progress. I’ve started the next book in the series for the novel I finished last week, so I’m back up to 6 stories that I consider myself to be actively working on. That’s 6 hours of writing.

But…

I’m going to try to write an extra 2 sessions on the story I need to finish asap, so I’m hoping to reach 8 hours of writing today. But just in case I can’t, I put those extra sessions for this story within the first 6 hours of my planned writing today.

I definitely think I can do 6 hours of writing today without too much trouble if I’m into the stories. I feel good, better than I have in quite a few days. :) It’s possible I was sick on Saturday (that headache) and not just sleep deprived, but whatever the problem, I’m feeling better now.

It’s time to get going on the writing. Lunch will be here before I know it, and I’d like to complete 3 sessions before I stop.

Challenge progress

Hour 1: 837 words
Hour 2: 720 words | 1,557 cumulative 1
Final count: 2,330 words, and about 3.5 hours total writing time (I didn’t use the timer at the end)

1 Hour 2 started much, much later than it should have. Considering just how behind I am, I have no idea if there’s any reasonable way I can still meet this challenge. The good news? I have worked on 2 stories today, and 1 of those was the book that I need to finish sooner rather than later. :)

 

Too much reading to write

Lynn

I’ve been reading too much (fiction) the last few days to write much of anything. :o But I finished reading a book last night just before I went to sleep and I didn’t start another. I’m not planning to. I haven’t gotten to a place where I can put a good book down and get back to work, so I’m going to have to get away from reading for a while because I have books to finish writing. Balance just doesn’t seem to be part of my personality.

My word count yesterday was 595 words, but considering how much I didn’t write, I was surprised to realize I wrote that many.

Saturday I still managed 1,439 words, and Sunday, 1,009. So, yeah, I admit, I’m still doing much better than I have in the past, especially while obsessed with something other than writing.

All I can say is that something has definitely changed. I just don’t know what yet.

Learn something from Dean Wesley Smith

Lynn

I’ve taken many of Dean Wesley Smith’s lectures and the only thing that’s stopped me from taking the workshops is the homework. I have difficulty writing on demand and I just can’t convince myself I can keep up with the assignments. But this week he started uploading some video from his Originality workshop to YouTube, and I jumped on it.

You can find the videos on his YouTube channel.

I’ve embedded the first video below.

Good month, bad day

Lynn

I’ve reached one new record this month: April 2016 has now become the month in which I’ve written the most words since I started tracking. Fiction words, of course, because if I counted these blogs posts and other stuff, who knows what it’d be? Just know that when I talk about records, I’m always talking about fiction I plan to publish.

I’ve written 55,810 words this month. Then there’s today.

It’s unlikely I’ll reach my 3,933 word count goal for today, but I have written a few more words that I’ll add to that number, and I might write a few more on top of that. We’ll see. More below on that topic.

I feel like I’ve slowed down these last few days, but I think it’s because I’ve been so tired from lack of adequate sleep. I want to write more, but I just don’t have a lot of energy for it.

I’ve already made a pact with myself to get into bed early tonight. I really have to stop staying up late for stupid reasons!

Unfortunately, that resolution doesn’t help the fact that I’m dog tired today, and it’s 3:52 and all I’ve written so far is 302 words. I didn’t use the timer for those words either, so I have no notion what my writing speed is—I think it’s slow. Like, really slow.

The big problem seems to be my natural affinity for morning light. It’s getting light outside very early in the mornings here, a little before 5:30 am. I’m just not getting to bed in time to get a good night’s sleep considering how difficult it is for me to sleep after daylight comes. I’ve been waking up around 5–5:30 am and not getting back to sleep. That’d be fine if I was going to sleep before 11:30–12:00, but I’m not. I don’t believe I’ve gone to sleep before 11:30 once this past week, and it’s been much closer to midnight many of those nights.

I need more sleep.

If I don’t make myself get it, I’m going to stall out again on the writing. I can tell. Today proves it. I feel the desire to write, but I can’t even keep my eyes focused on the screen as I’m trying to write. (I sometimes get headaches if I don’t get enough sleep and today is one of those times. My eyes don’t focus well when I have a headache and I don’t work through headaches well.)

Anyway, all that to say today kind of sucks for writing.

But—I want to keep trying. I’m about to start an actual session on one of my books. Maybe knowing the timer is going will help.

I could be reading the book I finished yesterday, searching for mistakes, but yeah… I’m sure that’d go great with this headache. I’ll save that for tomorrow.

By the way, lack of sleep really can feel like inebriation. I have that same floaty head feeling and it’s dogged me all day. And there’s one reason why I don’t drink alcohol very often. I hate that feeling.

Let’s try this again

Lynn

Today is not a good day for breaking my record, but I think I’m going to try again anyway. Here’s the deal: I have things to do today that mean I’ll be away for at least 4 hours, probably more than 5.

But to break my record, if I can maintain my current speeds (average of about 835 words an hour, or 922 if I only count this last week’s work*), I can write 6,000 words in about 7 hours of writing. I think I can keep those speeds up with the way the writing’s been going.

So here’s the plan: write for 3 hours before lunch, take a short lunch, and write 3 more hours before I have to stop. Then, if I’m close, I think I can find the motivation to write for 1 more hour before I call it a night, and I’ll sleep in tomorrow morning.

Then, of course, do it all over again. :D (I wish. But why not dream big?)

So here goes. I have to get started, because it’s already 8:40 and I’m terribly bad at losing time to breaks. Lunch will be here before I’m ready, guaranteed!

Hour 1: 1,067 words
Hour 2: 1,392 words | 2,459 cumulative 1
Hour 3: 756 words | 3,215 cumulative 2

1 Whoa! Also, I’m less than one session away from finishing that troublesome novel I’ve mentioned in several previous posts. Yay!

2 I totally screwed up by not finishing 3 sessions before lunch, and then watching tv during lunch. It was not a short lunch. :o Hour 3 dragged on and on, but I finished one of my novels! I’m not sure about the last couple of lines, but I think it’s going to work. Either way, I’m saying it’s done. I’ve sent it to my Kindle for a read through later. :D

Final count: 3,228. I added a few words but I’m definitely not going to be able to write for another hour because it’s much later than I expected it would be. So that’s it for today.

*Why am I writing so much faster than my previous speeds? I credit the high level of interest I’m maintaining in my work by switching freely between projects. It’s been a magic pill, really it has. Also, I don’t know. Something might have changed in me.

Multiple stories at once: third week

Lynn

Thursday—Wednesday, April 21–27

245 (4 stories) (was not a writing day, just inputting error corrections after a read through)
2,245 (1 story)
2,863 (1 story)
149 (3 stories)
2,831 (2 stories)
4,858 (1 story)
3,736 (2 stories)

Total: 16,927 words.

It was a good week—really good, in all honesty, but I didn’t really come close to my goal of 27,533 for a full week of writing.

Still, I cannot deny that something has changed. I’m giving all credit to the things I mentioned in two posts I’ve written since I started this latest experiment (key to success, multiple stories first week).

I worked on 5 distinct stories this week.

Having another go at the record today

Lynn

Yes, I’m having another go at the record today, after an unfortunately bad night of sleep again, so no promises that I won’t make it half the day and conk out.

But, for the moment, I feel like I could do this today. 6,000 words is the number I’m taking aim at, although I only have to get past 5,758 to break my current one-day record. In the vein of “more words, less time,” I’m hoping to do it in 7 hours or less. See ya when I have some numbers to report.

Update: TOTAL BUST. Okay, not a total bust. But I’ve been so, so tired today. I’ve spent one hour writing, and I’m hoping to get another two before I stop for the night, but there’s no chance I’ll break any records today, except (maybe) my monthly best record.

Final numbers.

Hours Words Session WPH
1 858 858 858
1 1725 867 867
0.5 2260 535 1070

Trying again to break my record

Lynn

Yesterday I failed to break my one-day word count record. Since today is another day like yesterday, where there’s no real reason why I shouldn’t be able to devote most of my day to writing, I’m trying again.

Bonus? I’m only 6,253 words away from April becoming my highest word count month since I started in 2012.

Session logs:

Hours Words Session WPH
1 944 944 944
1 1966 1022 1022
1 3004 1038 1038
1 3736 732 732

I didn’t make it again today, mostly because I just felt bad. I had a headache off and on all day, and I’m frankly amazed that I wrote as many words as I did!

And now I’m only 2,516 words shy of my current record for my best month.

This “writing only what I’m interested in writing” thing is starting to look like the best method I’ve ever come up with.

I think I might try to break my one-day record again tomorrow. The only thing I can see stopping me is another headache, but I’ll wait to commit to the idea of the challenge until tomorrow. Good night!

Major push today for record

Lynn

I’m going to use my 1 hour sessions and cycle through my stories in progress today to try to beat my one-day word count record and break through the 6,000 word ceiling I seem to have.

I might fail, but today seems to be a good day for trying, so I’m going to. :)

I’m about to start hour #1 and I’ll be working on Story Gf. It’s the one I’ve been most interested in the last couple of days and I think it’ll get me warmed up for the rest.

Even if it’s going really well, I think I’m going to make myself switch to Story O for hour 2. That’s the one I’m supposed to finish as quickly as I can. I really haven’t been devoting the amount of time to it as I need if I want to finish it as soon as I’d like, but it is what it is. I like the book, but it’s just not as interesting to me at the moment as Story Gf.

I’d like to avoid getting sucked into working on just one book for the moment. And although Gf is really attractive to me right now, I’m afraid I’ll slip back into bad habits if I stay on one book for all my sessions for too many days in a row, even if I’m driven to it by interest the first few days. I’m hoping to spread out my interest today and make a little progress on all my stories. :)

Finally, I am hoping to perk up my interest in Story O, and if that does happen, I’m going to try to slip in an extra hour or two for it between my other sessions.

So we’ll see how today goes. I’d like to write for 7–8 hours today and that’s asking a lot from myself! So I’d better get to work. :)

Hour 1: 929 words
Hour 2: 972 words | 1,901 cumulative 1
Hour 3: 967 words | 2,868 cumulative
Hour 4: 1,096 words | 3,964 cumulative
Hour 5: 894 words | 4,858 cumulative 2

1 Things are going slow. By this time, I’d hoped to be starting my 5th session, instead I’m about to start my 3rd. 6 more hours of writing tonight doesn’t seem likely. I’m not giving up yet though. :) If I can keep up my high wph, I could break through 6,000 with as few as 6 sessions (meaning only 4 more hours). If I can increase it, I could be done in as few as 3 more sessions. That’s asking a lot from myself, but it’s definitely something to aim for!

2 Well, I didn’t make it as far as I’d hoped today. I’m happy with what I got, of course, but I just ran out of steam earlier in the day and took too long to get back to writing, so I ran out of time. It’s bedtime, so maybe I’ll try this again tomorrow. Also, I’m a little disappointed that I ended up writing all those words on one book! And not the book I needed to write them for. So, bummer. But yay, too. Because 4,858 is a lot of words and I just can’t believe how it’s starting to feel normal for me to reach these kinds of numbers.

Gathering speed, but not there yet

Lynn

Yesterday I wrote 2,863 words, in 3 hours. My goal was 5 hours and 3,933 words, but I didn’t make it. I started much too late yesterday and never really recovered.

I’m hoping to do much better today! Unfortunately, I spent a bit of time this morning adding some corrections to 3 stories, found when I read through my current works on my Kindle last night and this morning. (I send to Kindle my Word docs each night when I’m working for that very reason, and highlighting mistakes works great to keep me from getting heavy handed with changes.)

I added 149 words this morning so that’s where I’m starting. I had wanted to get in 3 hours before lunch, but now it’s looking like I’ll be good to get in 2. Anyway, getting started now. Not sure which story I want to work on first, but I’ll figure it out!

Update: I never really could get going on anything, and I don’t know why exactly—I was tired, feeling fuzzy headed, blah blah—so I took a break to watch an episode of Telenovela (which I’m hoping doesn’t get canceled but I’m not holding out much hope) and ended up binge watching the entire season 2 of How to Get Away With Murder. That’s a lot of television. :o I certainly don’t plan to do that again. But no, I didn’t end up doing any more writing yesterday at all.