Really it’s just an old routine, slightly modified. Write 1,667 words from 7 til 10 but keep going if I haven’t quite made it to my word count goal.
It’s almost winter, so getting up earlier is easier as long as I get to bed at a reasonable time and I started doing that two days ago. I woke up on my own at 6 a.m. this morning and I feel better than I did yesterday. I stopped the coffee again, because after two weeks of caffeine, I can say with certainty that it’s making no difference in how much I write: the first week on coffee again I wrote 10,251 words and the second week I wrote 21. Not a typo.
It’s 6:51 right now and I’m finishing breakfast quickly and making an effort to get back to a 7 a.m. start time. I usually have more energy first thing and then by 8 or 9 I’m sleepy again. If I’m already writing and into my stories, I can push that back. If I’m not, then I end up not writing until the afternoon usually, and then it becomes a struggle to get started at all. Such as with yesterday, when I wrote nothing but a blog post.
Today’s goals are simple. Finish 1,667 words before 10 a.m. if possible, definitely before lunch. Then write 1,333 words before bed. Also, work one hour on my paperback formatting. Now, it is 7 a.m. and it’s time to get to work.
Update (8:33 a.m.)—
I set up my timer with 3 hours on it. I’ve had to take 3 quick breaks so far (tea, phone, phone—school’s letting out early because of sewer problems, ack) so I’m sitting at 2 hours and 42 seconds left on my timer and that means I’m about half an hour behind. My word count at the half hour mark was a negative because I deleted some stuff, and now it’s at 57 words. But I feel like I’m gaining some momentum finally so maybe my next update will be a lot better. :)
Update (9:37 a.m.)—
I deleted more, meaning I ended up into negative numbers again, but now I’m almost caught back up. I don’t have anything else ahead of me that I can delete (there’s nothing but a blank page waiting for me!) so I’ll be moving forward from this point on. My timer’s sitting at 1 hour and 29 minutes but I forgot to restart it for almost half an hour after my 8:33 a.m. update so technically I’m not really behind this time other than the half hour I was already behind.) Still, since I was too busy deleting stuff instead of adding, I think I’m just going to go with the timer. No way I’m going to get caught up to 1,667 words in only one hour, but maybe, possibly, I can do it in the 1 hour and 29 minutes now that the sludge is cleared away and it’s all fresh writing ahead. We’ll see.
Update (10:59 a.m.)—
I’m down to 18 minutes on the timer and I’m up to 487 words. I’m also just about certain I just wrote a bunch of stuff that doesn’t need to be in this book but I think I’m just going to go with it for now. I’ve been working on that novella this morning and I’m just glad to be making progress. :) But now, I need another break before I finish those last 18 minutes. Be back soon.
Update (12:29 p.m.)—
I’m pleased with my progress. I didn’t make it anywhere close to 1,667 words but the novella’s story is moving along. I ended up with 3.75 hours and 591 words. And this is a great example of what I mean when I say I feel like I spend the entire morning working, focused and on task, and still end up with significantly less time writing than time spent.
I wrote from 7 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. That’s 5.5 hours. And yet I wrote to a timer, logging 3 hours plus the time where I forgot to run the timer for about 30 minutes and then kept writing after the timer stopped for about 15 more. The difference between that 5.5 and 3.75 hours is 1 hour and 45 minutes of time lost to breaks that I can’t account for. My breaks felt significantly shorter than that, and sometimes I wonder if my ability to feel the passage of time is impaired.
Anyway, I’ll be back later today to work on those 1,333 words I’m hoping to get this afternoon (on the novel I started this month unless I have a great idea for the novella in the meantime).
Update (3:25 p.m.)—
This post has gotten very long and it’s about to get longer. I’m starting my afternoon session at 3:30 p.m. and the goal is to write 1,333 words before 6 p.m. if possible, but definitely before bedtime. Such as with this morning, I’m mostly going to stick to the 2.5 hours I have planned and hope that does it. If not I’ll try to go longer, but I don’t plan to go past 8:30 p.m. which is when I’m going to do that one hour of work on my paperback formatting.
Oh, and I watched an episode of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. which has shown up on Netflix. What a great show so far. I’m ready for episode #3 now. Quite a fun bunch of characters!
Time to get to it.
Update (5:07 p.m.)—
And I’ve had a few interruptions but nothing too time consuming. I’m at 1 hour and 25 minutes on the timer and 502 words, so I’ve been writing for just about an hour. I wish I weren’t behind at all, but that’s just the way it goes sometimes…
Update (6:29 p.m.)—
I’m not quite done. My timer is at 33 minutes left and that means I’m about an hour behind. I’ve had a lot of interruptions this last hour and a half, although an hour feels excessive when I try to recall them. The problem is that whether I can recall them or not, the time is the time and the timer doesn’t lie. At least not when I’ve remembered to start and stop it appropriately, which I’ve done. I’ve written for about 2 hours and I’m up to 815 words, with my total for the day coming in at 1,406.
I’m going to try to get to 1,667 for the day, since that’s the average I want to hit and hope that after a few days the writing will get easier so I can keep it up and maybe even make up some of the zero days since I started aiming at the 1,667 words a day average.
I just don’t understand why writing is so hard sometimes.
Update (9:37 p.m.)—
I just realized I’ve spent 3 hours watching YouTube videos. I’ve done this before, but rarely—like 5,000 words in a day rare. I have no idea why today had to be that day but I have just binge watched 3 hours of talent show clips. What. The. Hell. And now it’s past my bedtime and I haven’t even had supper yet. I cannot believe that was three hours. Seriously. Cannot believe it.
Wow. I guess I’m calling it a night at 1,406 words. I’m a little disappointed in myself but I can’t for the life of me figure out how I can stop this from happening again because I don’t know how it happened in the first place.(!!!!)