My university portfolio is due in under 3 weeks, and although the actual pieces are completed, there are a lot of admin aspects such as ordering of pages, labelling sections and getting various signatures from other staff.
So I set myself the usual ‘minimum’ for novelling: I must write at least 1 new word of fiction a day. In an ideal word, being able to really focus on writing all the time might lead to faster story progress, but sometimes it’s as much about mental energy, which is somewhat finite.
So I set my minimum, and once the deadline passes, I’ll be free to spend more of that head-space on the story. Looking at the last 7 days, my daily word count likes like this:
| 16 |
| 7 |
| 11 |
| 2 |
| 4 |
| 7 |
| 80 |
My daily ‘aim’ would normally be 135 words. But sometimes, life gets in the way, and it’s important to prioritise things differently when deadlines or events are coming up.
For me, the importance is to keep some momentum going – keep that sense of progress going. If nothing else, it keeps my place in the story, and trains my brain to still be thinking about the plot holes that often fill themselves if we don’t try to hard to fill them in.