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!

Nowhere to go... and no time to write?!

I'm finally at home with no plans to go anywhere in the immediate future, which means there is the smallest chance that I might actually be able to manage a blog post now and again. I'm not making any promises though - life is unpredictable.

Despite being in one place, this week hasn't been the greatest writing-wise. I keep sleeping badly, which means I end up staying in bed longer than I should, which means that by the time I get up I feel like I really need to get on with the day job rather than fitting some writing time in. (This is a serious hazard of working a) from home and b) with my husband. Because I hate working late into the evening, but if I don't get the hours in then I'm letting him down - which means working when I get up is the best option.)

When I get up early enough, I love writing in the mornings - but tonight I realised that actually I quite like writing in the evenings too. This is the first time I've done this in months, so it was something of a revelation. The biggest problem with it is that I'm far more likely to be disturbed, but for those days when early morning writing sessions aren't an option, I need to remember that evenings are available too. If I plan my time well, I can actually have quite a bit to play with, and I'm incredibly lucky in that - but somehow it's easy to forget.

Despite not updating my blog, I have been working with weekly goals. I write them on my whiteboard, but I think it would make sense if I were to start posting them here too. I didn't do too well on this week's goals. (My week is from Saturday to Friday, incidentally, because that's how we do at Will Write for Wine.) In fact the only goal I met was to make a blog post - and you can see how last minute that one is. This means that a couple of my goals are carried through to this week - and the other two should be happening every week anyway.

• Fit in five writing sessions


• Submit short story to another magazine


• Start on the next lesson in How to Think Sideways


• Blog post

Last week I only got four writing sessions in and completely skipped the second and third goals. Hopefully next week I'll remember to check in - and maybe I'll even have met my goals!

Current word count:

46041 / 80000 words. 58% done!

Writing Lessons Learned

So. Yes. Once again, rather a long time between posts... what can I say? Life is hectic.

I haven't been writing very consistently of late - I'm noticing that my periods of blog-silence generally correlate rather neatly with the times when I'm not getting any writing done. Which makes sense, I suppose, since if I'm not writing, I have nothing writing-related to post about. And if I'm not making the time to write, I'd rather I wasn't making the time to write about not writing, if you see what I mean.

Anyway, despite the very small progress I've been making on the writing front, I have learned one or two things recently.

It really is easier if you write every day.
I know it's said all the time, but I'm seriously growing to recognise the truth of this. If I skip a few days, a week, a fortnight, then when I finally get round to actually sitting at the keyboard I've lost all sense of who my characters are and where they're supposed to be going. I suppose it wouldn't be so bad if I were writing short stories, but it isn't just the story itself that I lose track of - it's the actual writing. Words fit together much more easily if you're making it happen regularly.

If I plot, I have to plot every scene.
With the first novel I finished, it was pantsing all the way for me, until about 20K from the end when I hit a solid stone wall and found I had to figure out what was going to happen before carrying on. With this one, I actually plotted out the bare bones before I started. As I've gone along, I've found myself planning additional scenes - and having to plan them before I write them. Not intensively by any means, but if I don't have a sentence or two describing what needs to happen then I can't seem to write the scene. They've crept up on me, and developed from the story as I went along, but once they pop up they have to be plotted. I'm finding this rather baffling, since I've always considered myself a pantser or discovery writer. But when I realised a few days ago that there were two days in my story timeline that needed to be filled, I was incapable of writing another word until I'd figured out what had to be accomplished in that time and how I was going to do that. (I ended up with five extra scenes plotted.)

I need to be more flexible about my writing time.
One of the reasons I've been writing so little lately is that I'm travelling all the time. I like routine - I like being at home and being able to get up in the morning and shut myself in my little room that nobody else uses just to write. But when I'm staying with other people, I don't have my own little room. (I have somewhere to sleep, obviously, but since my husband sleeps later than I do as a rule it's not an ideal place to write in the morning. I need to try and make the time later in the day - perhaps in the evening - to creep away to a quiet corner of the house I'm staying at and write. Otherwise I keep coming back to that first problem and not writing for days.

In other news, I was delighted to learn recently that Will Write For Wine is returning to regular podcasting from October 9th. This is a fantastic show - thoroughly entertaining and always useful. There'll be a new podcast each month, and you can help influence what Lucy March and CJ Barry (AKA Lani Diane Rich and Samantha Graves) talk about by posting in the forums. I can't wait!

SocNoc, Blogging Fail and New Routines

June was an utterly insane month, as we moved house and juggled some of our biggest jobs ever, and as a result I didn't do very well in SocNoc at all. I wasn't really expecting to win, but I only managed 12,336 words, which was less than satisfying. Still, I'm up to 25K in the new manuscript and really enjoying the story, so I won't complain too much.

Blogging, of course, dropped off my to do list entirely, for which I can only apologise. Actually, I think double apologies are in order, since I should have posted a couple of weeks ago when we finally managed to stop in our new house for more than two days at a time. The problem with that was that I wanted to post about my new writing room, and in particular put some photos up, but the truth is I haven't got round to taking a single picture of the house yet. (I did, however, manage to write an article about Using Writing Spaces and Rituals to Your Advantage, if you're at all interested.)

Another thing that was rather ignored during the madness of June (and most of July, obviously) was my How To Think Sideways lessons. I nearly have all the lessons now, but I'm only half way through what I have (I'm on lesson 11 of 22). When I've had the chance to work on it, it's continuing to be very useful indeed, but lately that's not been very often.

As a result of the last couple of months, I've changed my routine a bit. I missed so many writing sessions that I got quite grouchy about it, so I've lowered my sights a little. I'm setting myself a weekly word goal of 4000 words and giving myself weekends off. That works out at 800 words a day, which is usually quite manageable, and if I hit my word goal earlier in the week, I can have an extra day free. (I'm also considering an Amazon reward system, but I'm not sure that's entirely wise.) It's an odd way to do it, but it seems to be working - it's not that I don't want to be writing on weekends, it's just that we're still so busy at the moment that I need to let myself off the hook a bit.

I'm really only working on the novel in the mornings now, although I'm trying to make a point of doing something writing-related in the evenings - whether that be blogging, writing an article, or working on an HTTS lesson. Assuming that I manage to stick to that, I hope it won't be quite so long before my next post.