Good stuff and less-than-good stuff
Hos and I were going to make a road trip Wednesday. The plan was to go to San Antonio to meet up with a friend we know online from California, who was going to be at a conference in SA. Unfortunately, his trip got canceled by forces beyond his control and so I will not get to meet the great and glorious Aldin in person, much to my regret. There would have been cake. Which is a Portal joke and yes I've been playing today, why do you ask?
Anyway, I'm a little bummed about not getting to see Aldin (and he seemed pretty bummed too), but I'm looking on the bright side. Namely that I won't be trying to cram 3k words into a day that will be spent mostly in non-writing environments. I'm pretty sure Hos would have killed me for asking him to drive all the way there while I typed in silence. And Wednesday till 2:30 is work. Hate. Hate hate hate. But it's the last day, so that's a good thing.
On the brighter side, I was really looking forward to putting pen to paper today. The characters were talking to me and the plot had piqued my interest. It's so nice to be engrossed in what I'm writing. Got my word count done in two nice chunks of about an hour each. My goal is 3k a day, which is a bit extreme, but also completely doable in about two-and-a-half hours.
My method this year is words/time. If I say I can get a thousand words written in an hour and then break it down to hundred word chunks (100 words/6 minutes), I keep very focused. I don't have time to daydream so much when I've only got two minutes to write 30 words! It's a mini deadline that would probably drive some people crazy, but it's working very well for me so far. I generally write far more than 100 words in six minutes (and thusly more than a thousand words an hour, but if I shoot for a thousand, then I feel accomplished. And then there will be cake and grief counseling), so if I ever need to step up the pace, I think I can. But this way, I get in a good habit about it and I can keep pushing through when I'm blocked.
The key for not getting blocked, though, is not to spread out the interesting bits. If I think something is going to happen that won't be fun to write, I'm glossing over it. This includes travel and some redundant conversations. If I keep it to the punchy bits a) I won't be bored and it will be ten times easier to write and b) it'll be a better novel since there won't be a lot of time spent boring the reader with what people ate for lunch. Yay for punchy bits.
In addition to writing 3k words, doing two loads of laundry, and accomplishing an extremely time consuming (and somewhat boring) quest in WoW today, I started cleaning up the living room. We're going to rent a rug shampooer this weekend and see what we can get accomplished. I'd like to do the living room and the entire upstairs, but I'll settle for the living room. And by settle I mean start with :P. The great family convergence is coming back this year for Thanksgiving (will this hell ever end? I think not!), so I want the house to look really nice so I can showcase the new table and china cabinet instead of having them look at the messy kitchen and dirty carpet and shake their heads at my lack of housekeeping skills. Bugs the shit out of me both that they will be doing that and that I care enough to go to all this trouble. But the way I figure it, if I do go to all this trouble and I still get the head shake, they can have their party someplace else. Because when I bust my ass, I expect compliments, dammit. Or at least consideration. Anyway, moving on to non-anger-inducing topics!
I need to make a Portal icon. Just cuz I'm a dork :P. That may be on the agenda tomorrow, along with more laundry and some other house cleanup stuff. Yay for free time to get things done.
Oh, and the counter! In fashionable Monday Green!
15838 / 50000 words. 32% done!
Anyway, I'm a little bummed about not getting to see Aldin (and he seemed pretty bummed too), but I'm looking on the bright side. Namely that I won't be trying to cram 3k words into a day that will be spent mostly in non-writing environments. I'm pretty sure Hos would have killed me for asking him to drive all the way there while I typed in silence. And Wednesday till 2:30 is work. Hate. Hate hate hate. But it's the last day, so that's a good thing.
On the brighter side, I was really looking forward to putting pen to paper today. The characters were talking to me and the plot had piqued my interest. It's so nice to be engrossed in what I'm writing. Got my word count done in two nice chunks of about an hour each. My goal is 3k a day, which is a bit extreme, but also completely doable in about two-and-a-half hours.
My method this year is words/time. If I say I can get a thousand words written in an hour and then break it down to hundred word chunks (100 words/6 minutes), I keep very focused. I don't have time to daydream so much when I've only got two minutes to write 30 words! It's a mini deadline that would probably drive some people crazy, but it's working very well for me so far. I generally write far more than 100 words in six minutes (and thusly more than a thousand words an hour, but if I shoot for a thousand, then I feel accomplished. And then there will be cake and grief counseling), so if I ever need to step up the pace, I think I can. But this way, I get in a good habit about it and I can keep pushing through when I'm blocked.
The key for not getting blocked, though, is not to spread out the interesting bits. If I think something is going to happen that won't be fun to write, I'm glossing over it. This includes travel and some redundant conversations. If I keep it to the punchy bits a) I won't be bored and it will be ten times easier to write and b) it'll be a better novel since there won't be a lot of time spent boring the reader with what people ate for lunch. Yay for punchy bits.
In addition to writing 3k words, doing two loads of laundry, and accomplishing an extremely time consuming (and somewhat boring) quest in WoW today, I started cleaning up the living room. We're going to rent a rug shampooer this weekend and see what we can get accomplished. I'd like to do the living room and the entire upstairs, but I'll settle for the living room. And by settle I mean start with :P. The great family convergence is coming back this year for Thanksgiving (will this hell ever end? I think not!), so I want the house to look really nice so I can showcase the new table and china cabinet instead of having them look at the messy kitchen and dirty carpet and shake their heads at my lack of housekeeping skills. Bugs the shit out of me both that they will be doing that and that I care enough to go to all this trouble. But the way I figure it, if I do go to all this trouble and I still get the head shake, they can have their party someplace else. Because when I bust my ass, I expect compliments, dammit. Or at least consideration. Anyway, moving on to non-anger-inducing topics!
I need to make a Portal icon. Just cuz I'm a dork :P. That may be on the agenda tomorrow, along with more laundry and some other house cleanup stuff. Yay for free time to get things done.
Oh, and the counter! In fashionable Monday Green!
15838 / 50000 words. 32% done!