First up, this is a catch up post for the days I haven’t posted the daily post. I’m not going back and adding one for each day. There’s just no point.
Second up, I’m not posting in the mornings anymore as a general rule and that is what’s to blame for the lack of daily posts the last few days. I’m having a lot of trouble getting myself to sit down and do a post in the evening after I finish writing—or as is more often the case, just calling it done.
I’ll be honest. It’s actually really hard for me to write “after the fact” posts. I’m much more comfortable writing about what I want to do rather than what I’ve done. Because what I want to do feels inspiring, but what I’ve done is usually disappointing.
I’m not sure how I feel about that now that I’ve typed it out, but it’s a piece of truth probably worth putting in writing.
Are my goals too high for what I have proven myself capable of doing? Probably. But I just don’t want to give up on the notion that I can do it, if I just find the right motivator, or the right schedule, or the right—
Uh oh.
That sounds like perfectionism, doesn’t it?
Hm. Something to think about later.
I’m still trying to find a routine that will get me to 3,600 words a day. Except I’ve changed that to 4,000 words a day. Except sort of not, because I’ve decided I need a minimum goal and a stretch goal, and the 4,000 is the stretch goal and 1,800 words a day is the minimum, for reasons I won’t bore you with.
Let me just say that I spent a lot of hours playing with my spreadsheets before I settled on that, but only after realizing that, as usual, it all comes back to about 2,000 words a day. 1,836 is more exact, as is 2,404, but 2,036 is a good one too. All those numbers get me something I want, whether it’s income or numbers of books written in all the series I have going, or something else.
I really spend far too much time playing with numbers, but for some reason they inspire me to keep believing that I can figure out how to get myself to write more—even though it’s been seven years and seven months since I first decided I was going to write to sell again and I haven’t been able to get even one of those years’ daily averages above 1,000 words a day.
There’s no reason I can’t get there. I just can’t seem to get there already.
All I know is I’m very mood driven and that’s probably an integral part of my personality. If I’m not in the mood to sit down and focus, I damn well don’t sit down and focus and nothing I promise or threaten can make me.
Being self-employed is both a blessing and a curse for someone like me. It’s the only lifestyle I’ve ever lived that didn’t make me utterly miserable, and yet… I can’t self-motivate worth shit. :)
On that note, I’m calling this post done with a quick summary of word counts for the missed posts.
Jan 12: 376
Jan 13: 212
Jan 14: 1,569
Sunday I kind of wanted the day off and it shows. I went to my Mom’s and spent 5 hours there, and didn’t do any writing at all when I got back.
Monday I wrote those words at the last minute, right before I shut down my computer for the day after doing no writing at all that day. I did come up with a new writing schedule. I won’t tell you how many hours I played around with different options before settling on the one I’ve been trying to make work this week.
First order of business was to stop trying to micro-plan and micromanage my sessions on a calendar and just go back to blocking out some reasonable blocks for writing time!
Tuesday I finally sat my butt down in the chair and tried to stay focused. I stuck out two blocks of 2 hours each (the plan was for three) and ended up with a mere 2.33 hours of timed writing because I couldn’t stay in the chair for the full two hours of either block. I kept jumping up to reheat coffee or go talk to my son or check the weather forecast or feed the cat or… well, you get the idea. I vacuumed the floor. So some good came of it.
And what the hell, I’ll bore you with the details of the goals in tonight’s post after I finish my daily writing. :-)