Day: June 4, 2016

Multiple stories at once: eighth week

Lynn

Thursday—Wednesday, May 26–June 1

2,220
1,852
2,854
1,181
0
0
193

Total: 8,300 words

I wrote fewer words than I wanted this week, by far (goal is 27,533) but I still ended May in a much better place than usual, so I can’t complain much. Nothing I can do about it anyway so I might as well enjoy the small win.

Probably the biggest reason for the fail is the fact that I still only wrote on one story this week, despite my decision last week not to get stuck in that frame of mind again.

My pace this week was also again much slower than I’d hoped. I averaged 516 wph over the week, and that’s in line with my old average, but much slower than I’ve been tracking since I started with the multiple stories experiment.

I’m just really at a point where I want to finish this book so I can let go of the stress that’s interfering with my ability to let myself work freely on multiple stories. I’m really feeling the pressure to finish this book, and it’s not helping me at all to push it, and yet, I keep pushing it.

Here’s hoping next week will turn out better, but I can already say based on the fact that today is Saturday, that the ninth week isn’t off to a great start.

Honestly, considering the fact that I’m obviously not working on multiple stories right now, and I know it, I’m not even sure these weeks should count.

Trying again to reach my daily goal

Lynn

Yesterday was a bit of a let down. I didn’t reach my goals—not even half.

Today I’m going to try to use the same plan I tried to use yesterday, with a minor change. I’m going to split up my writing sessions: 2 right after breakfast (right now, that is), 2 right after lunch, and the last (and maybe one extra) right after supper. So, the plan is 5–6 hours of writing today.

All with an aim to finish each block as soon as possible, so no dawdling.

Today’s goals

  • Write 3,933 words in 5 hours
  • Copy edit 1/4 of pen name 2 book #2
  • Skim read pen name 2 book #1 (checking for consistency with book #2)

This’ll be a busy day.

  • Writing = 6 hours
  • Copy editing = 3.8 hours (I can copy edit about 5,000 words an hour. Getting through 1/4 of the book is a stretch, but possible, I think, if I’m efficient with my writing time today.)
  • Skim reading = 2 hours (I don’t want to skim so fast I don’t pick up on details.)

Total estimated time = 11.8 hours

Doable, but a stretch. I’m going for it. See you back here when I’ve got something to report. :)

Updating….

I’m really failing at this today. I’m not sure what’s going on, but I think some of it is that I need that “mull over” time I talked about when I explained why writing multiple stories seems to work to get me such better word counts.

Or maybe it really is just the fact that I’m distracted by having almost no time to myself right now.