Tag: Writing more

On Day 46 I wrote 765 words and I was lucky to get those. Not because there wasn’t time (there was) but because I am in the throes of self-doubt, hypercritical self-assessment, and a general “all my books suck” frame of mind.

I also have no idea where any of my stories are going at the moment and my usual method of just going with it isn’t working. I just keeping going with it right over a cliff and I’ve deleted more in the last couple of months than I’ve deleted in the last two years prior to that put together.

Yeah. Writing is so fun right now.*

At least I’m doing some writing these days. I’ve written 30,945 words that I haven’t deleted since day 1 of my streak. Silver linings and all that. :D

*Lots of sarcasm! I apologize profusely but this is how it all came out, comma shortage and all… 

Somehow I skipped a post for day 39 so I thought I’d add it to this one. :)

Day 39: 2,065
Day 41: 609
Day 42: 5,091
Day 43: 52
Day 44: 247
Day 45: 1,727 (yesterday)

As you can see, my output lacks consistency. I’m working on it. :)

Yesterday was my 40th consecutive day of writing, and it was the 3rd time I’ve ended the day with a negative number because of deleting more than I wrote.

I should have stayed at it longer, because I could have made up those words, but I let the day get away from me and I was too tired to keep going after I deleted that last chunk.

I ended the day with −176 words.

It’s definitely not a zero.

Apparently after I do weed trimming (not being someone who usually does that) my arms feel like gelatin and all I want to do is lie on the couch. This was news to me. If I’d suspected I’d feel like that, I would have skipped the trimming, since I made yesterday’s writing plans the night before. Live and learn, as they say.

Day 37: 458 words
Day 38: 2,244 words

Today, on the other hand, I had life-outside-of-writing stuff to attend to and I was gone for a big chuck of the midday. I could have written more after I returned, but I just couldn’t write more. And the muscles in my arms are tight and sore from the previous day’s weed trimming.

Next time, I’ll just let the weeds grow. I always did like the wild look. :D

I slowed down yesterday (day 36) and ended the day with 650 words.

I started out the day with hopes that I would go for another 4,000 word day but within about half an hour of getting up I knew I wasn’t going to be doing any such thing. I was tired. Really tired.

But 650 words is way better than some of the words counts I’ve been doing in the past couple of months so I’m still very happy! I wrote those 650 words in one leisurely session that ended up being about 15 minutes long and seven 5 minute sessions during a one hour writing block.

5 minute sessions are making it possible for me to reach several hundred words even on my worst days. Happy? Make that thrilled. ;D

I have no way of knowing how permanent this is, but I feel like I could be on to something—the kind of thing that leads to lasting changes.

So today I put together another plan, this one to reach 4,000 words. Here’s how it went:

I ended the day with 4,047 words after 47 five minute sessions. I averaged 1,033 words per hour based on my totals.

As I’ve said before, the five minute sessions seem to be working really well for me.

Also, the planning obviously seems to be working really well too.

I’m ending the day with 2,637 words. Although I had hoped to end with more words than that today, I’m satisfied that I worked hard and made a concerted effort to do my best. :)

I wrote on two stories and finished 590 words.

Yesterday, day 30 of my daily writing streak, I only wrote 97 words, barely over my minimum, because I was away part of the day, then wasn’t feeling that great, then had my kids come home after a week away, and well, it all added up to a lot of distraction and interruptions. I should have written more, but I feel lucky  to have written anything. It was the kind of day that would have been a zero word day if I’d let it.

Today, day 31 of my daily writing streak, I wrote well over 1,000 words and clocked 3.67 hours of timed writing, and yet … I ended the day with 59 words. I kid you not. :D

I have to smile about it because what else can I do? I deleted an entire scene in progress, wrote a new version in a different POV, and then deleted that too when I realized POV wasn’t the issue. The scene was the issue.

So I let something else happen instead and the book took off again. I was able to clock over 600 words in eight 5 minute sessions. Definitely not my best times, but frankly, I’m tired and I feel kind of lucky I even got that!

Perfectionism has been riding me hard these last few months and writing has been less than fun much more often than it should be. I feel lucky that I’ve broken through some of that, even if I still need to work on breaking through more of it.

Tomorrow I hope to start fresh, and here’s to the fact that I’ve got two stories moving along at a very nice clip!

Just a short summary of the last couple of days. I’ve been posting more general posts, and my progress is in there, but I thought I’d do a quick post to summarize how I’m doing on my streak.

Day 27: 1,360
Day 28: 713
Day 29: 1,582

I’m working on day 30 now. It’s been a strange day and I’ve not done much writing so far, but even as late as it is, I’m making a few attempts at my 200 words in 5 minutes goal. Who knows, maybe this’ll be the day! :)

Day 25: 126 words
Day 26: 79 words

I finished day 24 with 121 words written, although after some major cuts in the middle part of the story, I ended the day at a net word count of -2,618 words. If only there weren’t a negative sign before that number…

Eh. I’m too tired to care.

So I wrote at least 50 words again today! And promptly deleted a bunch more—not the same words, so that’s something, right? I currently stand at -35 words for the day. I’m not that comfortable ending the day on a negative again. That would be 2 out of 23 days, which doesn’t sound bad, but it sure does feel bad.

…And a half hour later…

I couldn’t end it there. So I wrote some more words and now I’m at 253 words for the night. It took 31 minutes to go from -35 words to 253 words, which is approximately 576 words an hour. I really wish I could speed that up. But I have a lot of trouble organizing my thoughts as I write fiction and it takes me a bit to get things moving, and keep them moving without veering off into very, very strange territory—nonsensical territory, to be blunt. Ah, well. I have accepted my lack of any real speed as I write, or at the very least, I’ve decided I can’t dwell on it. :)

Sometimes there are reasons for putting things off. I’d like to think I had reasons today. I did one 5 minute session this morning, which lasted 15 minutes and got me 89 words. So, yay! My daily writing streak is 22 days long.

That, unfortunately, was the only 5 minute session I did today.

I’m still recovering from that sunburn, btw, and I felt both a lot better today and seriously run down. The amount of skin peeling off my body is both fascinating and alarming. :D

I’ll be able to get back to this experiment on Saturday, although I do have a few sessions scheduled for tomorrow. Same rules apply (and will always apply): Use a little willpower, sit down, write 5 minutes, and I’m done. It’s been an interesting experiment and I’m anxious to continue it.

Yesterday was the first time I wrote, met my 50 word minimum, then ended the day on a negative. I happen to know I wrote approximately 86 words, then knocked myself down to 66, then -289, then came back up to -22. That’s where I ended the day.

Success, regardless of final count. The deleted words were not the words I wrote yesterday.  I cut some stuff that didn’t fit with the ending I’m going for in the novella. :D

I swear, some days lately, I feel like I’ve forgotten how to write.

Day 19: 166 words

Day 20: 135 words

I avoided deleting what needs deleted, although I probably shouldn’t have.

I feel like the daily writing is going well, but I think I’m going to have to push myself a little to get to the point where I’m writing more each day.

The next thing I’m going to try is to set some super small goals scattered throughout the day to try to jump start my writing. At 8, 9, 10, and 11 AM, and then at 3, 4, and 5 PM, I will sit down and write for at least 5 minutes. After 5 minutes, I can stop if I want. I’ll do this 7 times during the day, and hopefully, get myself used to just sitting down and writing throughout the day again. I’ve fallen out of all my writing habits since last August, and this is a chance to start over. I would like to try this tomorrow, and as I’m writing this, that’s my plan. I’ve even set the reminders in my calendar so I’ll be notified when it’s time to sit down.

I know I said I would avoid stating intentions and focus on actions instead, but in this case, I think it’s okay. I’m not saying I’m going to write a bunch of words, or even any words. I’m just going to use what willpower I have to sit myself down at the computer 7 times for no less than 5 minutes each time.

It’s hard to believe it’s been nearly a year since this trouble started, but it has, and a year is plenty of time to fall out of any good habits I had going for me and fall into a bunch of bad ones.

What I do with that tomorrow is anybody’s guess. :D

Day 18 has been one of those days that would have been, without a doubt, a zero word day, if not for my desire to keep my streak alive, and my mini sized requirement. I had just enough willpower to get 52 words out, and that was it.

I have to delete more. I have been pecking away at the novella for the last few days, thinking about some stuff, and trying to figure out where I went wrong, if I even went wrong, because maybe the problems weren’t even real and I should have just kept going way back when. I don’t know.

What I do know is that I have to delete some stuff, but I don’t want to do it tonight, because I am done.

Yes, I know I said I wasn’t going to state intentions, but I feel like I have to state this intention: I am going to finish this book. Tomorrow, the next day, or the next, but I am going to finish it. Even if that means gutting it and starting over and writing hell bent for the end.

That said, I do have a major problem. I’ve done so much tinkering that I can’t actually remember what’s in the book and what isn’t and that’s … not a great thing for me. I don’t do revisions, and I don’t do them because once I get to this point, I can’t untangle my messes. I can’t let go of stuff in my head that should be, was, or was meant to be in the book. I can’t scrub it out. I can’t unthink these things and the confusion is extremely … confusing! I’m not sure how I’m going to do this. I might have to sit down and delete another chunk and then just read through the book as it is three or four times to solidify in my thoughts what’s actually there in the book. I read about half of it today. I could do that. There was some great stuff there that surprised me. And that’s why I’m now wondering if I screwed up nearly a month ago when I deleted a bunch.

There’s just no way to know.

Finished another successful day. 168 words, I think, although I’m pulling that number from memory. I squeezed out 41, then got on a bit of a role as I tried to get the next 9 so I could call it a day. :) I was (am) in quite a lot of pain, and I’m just happy I didn’t skip writing altogether!