Fiction writer. Expert procrastinator. This is my life.
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
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