Month: March 2015

I wrote only 449 words yesterday. I came up an hour and twenty-one minutes short on my morning session, but I intended to get back to it after … well, let’s cut this story short and get to the point. I didn’t finish that one and never started the evening session.

I’m going to get better, I swear, but today wasn’t the day either. Sadly enough, those 449 words are more than I’ve managed today in twice the time. I only have 23 minutes left on my timer for this morning (it’s definitely not morning now) and I have only 205 words. I’m not even sure I’ll get more. I’d like to blame the time change, but the time change isn’t the problem. I’ve hardly noticed it this year.

I know what the problem is, or at least what’s messed up my writing for the last three days. I have no idea what’s going on in my story. I have a scene that I stopped in the middle of and I have a character in the middle of something but I don’t have any idea what the next move is. The next sentence isn’t coming to me so I spent the majority of the last two days (today particularly) revisiting previous scenes and going over old material, tweaking here and there.

That’s a waste of time, mostly, and I know it, but it’s about the only thing I feel capable of doing.

The day before yesterday I ended up over 1,000 words only because I skipped around and wrote a couple of bits out of order and that’s never a good thing for me, trust me. I’ll probably end up losing it all later anyway and if I don’t, it’ll hamstring me when I get to the point where I want to work it in and my pace will turn glacial as I try to make it work.

I need to write right past this blank spot. It’s the only real way to get my momentum back. I’ll agonize and mess with old stuff and act like writing is terribly difficult for a while and in the end, that’s exactly what I’ll do.

I think I’m just going to skip all that and go straight to writing my way out of this.

Tomorrow.

As for tonight, I might just go to bed. ;) Daylight Saving Time means 6 am tomorrow is going to feel awfully early.

I’m on pace for 1,090 wph right now. Sounds great, huh? It isn’t that great. That’s for 18 minutes of writing out of 2 hours and 10 minutes.

Because…

I’m not supposed to have WIFI access right now. I’m supposed to have it turned off while I’m doing my morning writing. I didn’t turn it off when I should have and now… well, now I’m updating posts, posting to my author site, and just generally using it to distract myself.

Since I’m trying to get my challenge off the ground today, I need to fully finish this morning’s writing session before I have to stop for some non-writing stuff that I can’t get out of doing today. If I’m behind after that’s done, I won’t catch up. There just won’t be enough time in the day without sacrificing sleep time and I can’t do that without risking tomorrow’s writing.

So, I’m going to have to take corrective action on these developing bad habits. WIFI must stay off during writing time.

And that’s my cue to post this and shut off my WIFI access until I get this morning’s writing finished. I have an hour and 52 minutes to go—unless I can hang onto that 1,090 wph pace. ;) That’d be a really nice start to today.

 

I wrote 1,023 words yesterday (I think). This is another case of not remembering exactly but I’ll check later and correct this if I need to. I do know it was over 1,000 words. :) (I was wrong about it being 1,012 words, but I’ve corrected it now.)

I’m about to get settled in to try starting that challenge again today. I’m wishing myself good (and speedy) writing today! You can wish me luck too if you want! ;)

I wrote 158 words yesterday. I’d say I was embarrassed, after writing that post about how I was going to get to work and finish the time I still had on my timer and get started on my next session, but honestly, I’m really not. :D It is what it is. I couldn’t stand looking at the work and I bailed for the night and watched tv instead.

Today I tried to get a challenge for myself off the ground, but so far it looks like I’ve failed. I wrote for most of my morning session but I’d started late (school’s been out again for bad weather yesterday and today) and then the writing dragged, so I paused with 35 minutes left on the timer. I plan to finish it here shortly but the original plan had been to do the morning session, a mid-morning session of the same length of time, and then my evening session.

Unfortunately I didn’t get the mid-morning session started and it’s looking like I won’t have time tonight to get that session in even if I wanted to.

I might just shelve this one until tomorrow, hit my minimum tonight, read a book, and go to bed happy. :)

I got in another few words last night but I never did settle in for that evening writing session. All in all, I wrote 1,606 words yesterday.

I’m trying again today to finish 2 sessions, but I’ve already put myself at a disadvantage. I started my morning session, wasn’t making good progress (158 words after 50 minutes!), so I paused it and decided to revisit later. Well, later is now and it’s 6:19 pm. :o

Still, the plan is to finish that session and then move right into the evening one. It’s just been that kind of day. We’ll see if it improves any.

I wrote 1,577 words this morning—but I almost didn’t. At 51 minutes left on the timer, I was only about 100 words from my projected minimum (1,084 words at 500 wph) and I thought seriously about quitting as soon as I hit it. I hadn’t made up my mind when I passed that number but I wasn’t paying close attention to the timer and the next time I stopped it, it was at 21 minutes. I decided to work on my last paragraph just a bit more and restarted it. Then at 10 minutes left, I was over 1,300 words and I was so close to giving up, but… I only had 10 minutes left after all so I managed to convince myself to persevere, so I doubled checked a plot issue that crosses over from the last book to this one and by the time the timer went off, I’d written another couple hundred words. Yay!

I enjoyed a successful morning and that’s even including a phone call from my sister. I really like talking to my family and I almost never turn them away. So… I just have to work around it.

I admit, 8:55 am to 12:50 pm for 2 hours and 10 minutes of writing isn’t exactly efficient, but it seems to be about the best I can do. :o I really should have started at 7:30 and this morning I’m not really sure why I didn’t. Oh well. I’m happy and I have a long break ahead of me regardless because 7:30 pm is still many hours away! Toodle-ooh. :D

So, today I’m really going to push for that second session tonight. I did manage to pull up my morning pace so that I finished only 65 words under my minimum. I wrote 1,019 words this morning. If things go okay tonight, I might be able to make that up without too much trouble and end the day where I’m hoping to end it: >2,000 words!

But I am taking a break because my head feels funny and I can’t concentrate. I had to turn the heat up. I also had a really strange dizzy spell, while sitting down!, but I think it’s because I’m still phlegmy from that cold (or another one, who knows at this point), and it’s possible I’m having some ear trouble.

Anyway, that’s just to say I’m having trouble staying in my story and my mind keeps wandering. I’m going to give myself 5 more minutes and then I’m getting back to work to try to plow through the hour and twenty minutes I have left of this morning session. I’m bummed because my pace right now is only 371 wph so if I don’t pick up speed, I’m not going to reach my minimum for this morning’s writing. Wish me luck. :)

I wrote 153 words today and every bit of that was the 23 minutes I needed to catch up from yesterday. After that, I had planned to write at 7:30 pm, but I never got started.

I’m noticing a pattern here. I think I’m going to have to push for the time in the evening because I’m not doing it just because I ought to. Finally, the morning time is really going to have to be the one session I prioritize every single day because if I don’t do it, I don’t seem to do much writing at all.

Now, to figure out how I’m going to push for that evening time… My current habits don’t seem to want to give way for it (and that’s probably the biggest problem with it, but I’d LOVE to be able to make it work as is).

One last note. I found out today that my toddler niece has the flu. Yesterday she sat directly across from me at a small card table and coughed in my direction more than once. I knew she wasn’t feeling well but I didn’t imagine she had the flu, poor thing. Either way though, I have my fingers crossed that I haven’t caught the flu. I really meant to get the flu shot this year and I just never got around to it. According to the CDC, it could take 1 to 4 days to show symptoms, with 2 days being average. You can bet I’ll be watching with an eagle eye for any signs of illness!

Still, I better get on the ball tomorrow and get some decent word counts in because I definitely need to build up a buffer. This is not a month in which I want to fall behind.

I wrote 244 words yesterday. I lost a lot of time to a scene I wrote the day before. In an hour I’d managed only to add 52 more words than I deleted. The scene didn’t need that kind of work, either, so that’s kind of a bummer.

I’m not getting sucked into that again until the final read through (when it’s possible I’ll ignore it then too). :D

I came up short about 20 minutes on my morning time, so I’m going to make that up today before I start this morning’s time.

My average since I got back on the daily writing wagon is still over 1,000 words a day. If I can push myself to start hitting that evening session (still haven’t done it), that’ll double my word count and push me past the 2,000 a day average mark. Good luck me! :D