This weekend I pushed myself to get some solid writing done.
The year has been a challenge; my aim of 150,000 words of new words may not sound like much [it didn’t seem that bad to me – someone who has completed 50k in each of the last 5 Novembers], but as I pushed out words every day, every week… As I surpassed or failed to meet that 12,500 word monthly goal, I became exhausted of writing. I stopped attending my writing group. I stopped submitting. I hit a wall that even as I continued to write, I ceased engaging with the story.
Yesterday, having taken all daily aims off my list for 3 weeks, I sat down with the idea that I would write “a good amount of decent story.” I didn’t use any numbers, didn’t track my “time spent actually writing.” I just needed to get something on the page — to remind myself of progress and of decent writing.
I woke at 7am, took my other half to work, bought chocolates and biscuits, and sat down with around 20 cups of herbal tea. I wrote 1,700 words. Not amazing, but I don’t tend to pass 1k at the moment. Today (Sunday), I took him to work again, and put on some videoed writing lectures. I went back to a book I enjoyed last year to study my plots compared to those ones, and then wrote over 1,200 words with the lectures as my background music.
The scenes I’ve written this week have all focused on one character – a falconer I only really realised I wanted a POV for last week. Generally, I write things in order. X happens, then Y happens, and whoever’s there gets a POV of it. To add scenes to chapters 1-5, all from one view, all needing to tie in with my main POV character’s scenes has taken up a lot of time. Re-reading the scene before and after to check where the story is at really complicated my process.
But I’ve learned that I can do it, if needed. I already know my preference to follow the story in sequence. But it’s nice to know that I can take one character, and only tell her story for a while.
As of tonight, I’ve passed 29,500 words, which feels much better. And I’m nearly back to the “current part”; the new POV character introductions close to completion for this draft.