Building the Writing Momentum

Last week I set myself these goals:

• Fit in five writing sessions


• Submit short story to another magazine


• Start on the next lesson in How to Think Sideways


• Blog post

I've had mixed results. My writing has been going great, and I definitely exceeded the five writing sessions goal, but I'll come back to that. As far as submitting the short story goes, I deliberately haven't, as I'm not really sure where I should send it. It's a 750 word one-shot, probably classified as urban fantasy (or at least something along those lines), but I'm not sure there's that much to it. So I think I need to reassess that one. I haven't started on the next lesson in Think Sideways because I've been spending most of my spare time actually writing, since I'm so deep in the story. And as for the blog post - voíla.

But it's the writing that's the interesting part. After last week's post, where I said that "I need to remember that evenings are available too", I decided that I was going to see what I could do with that. But rather than just doing so when I skipped my morning writing session, I thought I'd try for both. The results were pretty surprising.

I've found this before, and in so many ways it seems entirely obvious, but the more I write, the easier the words flow. I get completely into the story, so that when I come back to the page a few hours later it's still fresh in my head. This is why the rule "write every day" is so important for me - if I don't, I lose track of where I am, and it can take me a whole scene to get back into the story properly. I know there are some writers who work differently, but I'm learning that this is the most important rule for me. And writing twice every day places me even more solidly into the story, and lets me remember how much I love it.

I actually lost track of my number of writing sessions, but my total for the week is about 16K - by far the most I've written in one week since last year's NaNoWriMo. It might actually be my most productive writing week ever, which is a fairly staggering thought, because it's just seemed so easy. There's got to be a stumbling block just around the corner, but for now, I want to keep up this momentum and keep writing. At this rate, the first draft of this story could be done before this year's NaNo starts - and although I haven't got a clue what I'd write if I were to take part, I'm pretty sure I'd have to give it a go. Provided of course I don't run into total burnout, which is probably very likely.

All in all, though, an excellent week, making it a bit more difficult to set next week's goals. I don't want to lose momentum, but I'm not keen on setting daily word count goals, and it isn't practical to aim for two sessions daily, even if it is the best case scenario. Still, I need something to write on my whiteboard, so this week's goals are as follows:

• Fit in seven writing sessions


• Reassess short story and see what can be done with it


• Start on new ficlet


• Blog post

Current word count:

62587 / 80000 words. 78% done!