Making Progress
I am living proof that you can write a lot of words just working here and there. Jot a line or two a dozen times a day, sit for a bit after work, and you can produce a lot, depending on your typing speed. I carry a notebook with me everywhere and I’m always surprised how many words I managed to get down before I get home. Then I transfer it to the computer, fleshing out each scene and making a few notes.
I started on July 18th and have 36017 words against my goal of 65000. Some days I get 12-1400 words. Others, I can get close to 3000. The first day I wrote for it, I did a marathon of just over 10k words. This is very different from writing a novel from my head, which takes longer and seems to drag. When this one hit, I obeyed and started typing. As long as I keep the faucet open, it’s all good. If I stop or even take an evening off, it could dry to a slow drip.
(Please keep in mind that I get home between five and five thirty and work exclusively on the book until bedtime at eight. My alarm goes off at 3:30 and sometimes I actually get up then to squeeze some words out before leaving at 4:15. I have an empty nest and a tolerant husband. There is no way I could do this word count before my kids grew up. No hate mail, please.)
A sentence here, a bit of dialogue there…it really does add up. I spend a focused 30 minutes of longhand before I leave for home and 2.5 hours on the computer before bed typing up what I’ve done during the day.
I will never again be able to tell myself I don’t have time. I’d be lying.
Note: I’m really sleepy and my hands are shot. If you find any typos in this post, please put them with their nose in the corner. I’ll join them later.
I am inspired by your progress!
I’d be sleepy too if I woke up at 3:30. Wow. And I’m impressed! It’s taken me TWO months to get to 37k. I’m almost to 38k as of yesterday. Good luck with your progress! My goal is 80k for this book. I’m sure it will take at least another month or two.
I feel bad talking about my progress sometimes because so many of my writing friends have small children and other demands on their time (though my husband is almost as bad some days).
As fast as my rough flow comes out, editing is another story. Writers who take their time on the rough draft and therefore have fewer revisions can catch me up pretty quickly once the first flow is done. One of these days I hope to test that theory.
You are doing great. I keep writing, but don’t have the time in the evening like you to sit down and type it up. I have to figure out a better schedule.
my kids are nearly gone, and only since they’ve been leaving the nest has my writing come along. I love reading about your progress!
BJ,
You’re encouraging me to spend more time on my own writing. I end up working on client projects (or blogging) when I plan to work on my novel-in-progress.
Been putting a lot of thought into going down this path again. But I don’t have that bug in my ear like you do…
@Lillie Blogging is the devil (as is email, Flickr and feed readers) when I’m trying to get the words out. I can spend so much time on these other things, and it is a sacrifice to turn away for a while. I just can’t figure out how else to do it since timers just make me cranky, lol.
@Anna, wonderful, isn’t it?
@Matthew Hello my friend! Miss you.
@Robin I’ll have a huge to do list when the first rough is complete, and I am grateful for the time. As long as hubby is tolerant….