Day: April 22, 2014

Strangely enough, I’ve been blogging a lot lately, even if I haven’t been posting those posts (hereafter to be called b-logs). :D

I’ve been using Evernote (which I’m still doing for this one, tbh) and just writing the b-logs the same as I was doing on the site, and holding them with the intent of posting when I turned my WIFI back on. But it’s gotten kind of out of control, and I don’t feel a strong desire to post more than a dozen backdated b-logs.

It’s been a relatively good month. I’ve also had a few relatively bad days with my novella. I’m stuck on it, and I’ve had a hell of a time with it since January.

My current experiment

At the moment, I’m schedule free; the way I’ve been working has been working so well for me that I haven’t needed a schedule. :D Happy days…

A few weeks ago, I decided to try writing on multiple stories at once, every day, 800–1,000 words on each of 4 to 6 stories for 3,200–6,000 words.

I’ve increased the number of words I write daily, even if I haven’t been able to work on more than 3 stories most days, or get higher than 3,374 words in one day. But my daily average for April is currently my fifth highest out of twenty-one months of writing. I’ve also finished a novelette and made real progress on one of my bigger novels I need to finish in the next month or two.

I’ve been happy with this, and it’s kept me writing at a nice pace. It feels easy and I don’t know that I can ask for more than that with the lack of motivation to write I’d been feeling the last few months.

Here’s what I do (or try to do)

When I hit a wall with my concentration on one story, I switch to another. I try to do this instead of check email, forums, and blogs for a quick distraction that always ends up being a major time sink.

That’s pretty much the sum total of how I’m handling the different stories.

A lot of times, the writing feels easier when I go back to a story I was working on earlier than it did right before I switched, as if the switch loosened something up and I can now keep going without the same drag I was feeling when I hit the wall. And that’s it.

Week before last, I made it over 3,000 words on 3 days, and over 2,000 on 3 days. I ended that week with my highest 7-consecutive-day total to date of 18,049 words.

Last week wasn’t as good. I lost a big chunk of words when I decided to revisit my languishing novella and cut over 5,000 words from it. I’ve mentioned before that my spreadsheets immediately take deletions into account, and it knocked me back so that I ended last week with 4,523 words.

I had hoped this week would start off well, but it hasn’t. I got stuck on the novella and I haven’t been able to let it go. I’m dragging myself down as I agonize over that book.

I need to finish it; it’s a sequel I’ve already said I was writing; but I can’t seem to get unstuck on it. I’m even toying with the idea of deleting the whole thing and starting over, only I’m not sure how I’d do any better a job with it if I did that. This might be a case of just finishing it and putting it out there so I can get it off my mind.

All that aside, it’s time to get to work. I have stories to write. :D It’s raining today and I like writing to the sound of rain. I’m going to do a separate b-log with today’s summary of progress. Just easier that way! ;D