In the last 30 days, I’ve written 23,000 words. For a non-NaNo month, that’s pretty good going.
I made a commitment, “just for a while” to write every day – like with NaNoWriMo, but on a smaller scale. I picked 3,000 words a week – that’s 500 words a day with one day off, because I never manage every day.
But for the sake of ease, I summarised that as 429 words a day (which felt even more manageable).
And here I am, 31 days in row (I’ve not written yet today), and I’ve not only managed to write every day, but I’ve surpassed my daily aims by nearly three times!
~
Back in October, I wrote about how NaNo didn’t really work for me anymore; and how I needed to tailor the idea to best fit my current state of writing. The things that didn’t work? Having to write daily. And that’s what set me on edge with the Write Chain Challenge — having a plan to write daily, even when I know that doesn’t work for me… It sounded counter-intuitive at best.
So I guess today’s post is about trying new things, but also re-trying old things. When I wrote that post about NaNo not working, I was editing. Right now, I’m re-writing; including around 30 brand new scenes. And with an average of 1,750 words per scene: that’s near enough a 50k NaNo novel of new writing. After 31 days in a row, I have 23,600 words under my belt. That’s nearly half of a NaNo month with only a third of the daily goal. That says something, doesn’t it?
So try things, and feel free to make decisions on what works. But don’t throw the idea away. If it worked for a while, it may come back. And if you’re at a different phase in your writing career, perhaps it will offer you a new way of thinking, just when you run out of other ideas.
Have you ever returned to an old method of writing or plotting that you’d thought didn’t work for you?