Day: November 28, 2018

Day 18

More cleaning up and more new words. The cleaning up feels good, filling out the story, fixing gaps. The story is moving forward, and conflict definitely makes the writing easy and faster. I’m enjoying the pull-push-tug between characters, and the surprises that pop up, like new characters.

20″ 84 words

25″ 119 words

40″ 1075 words

20″ 675 words

TOTALS SO FAR: 1055″ & 22,438 words

 

Day 19

Wrote lots of dialogue today, which I will need to clean up tomorrow. Note for the Future: “Jeopardy” on the TV in the background is not helpful. Nor is Merlot. Whoops. Still, I managed to get more words down, so yay, but I was kind of spacey. More words tomorrow.

20″ 181 words

30″ 323 words

20″ 536 words

TOTALS SO FAR: 1125″ & 24,042 words

 

Day 20

Gak! Still struggling with no idea of where the story is going, and no momentum. SLOW. I find myself falling back to old tricks (ex/ writing just dialogue). Unfortunately, I’m not sure that is working.

30″ 511 words

20″ 504 words

20″ 439 words

TOTALS SO FAR: 1195″ & 25,476 words

 

Day 21

Note to self: I realized that all the stories I’ve written this year came from writing prompts that I just did as writing practice and then got caught up in, but not every practice got fleshed out as a complete story. It was like the stories had already proven themselves in the practice, so perhaps some of my struggling with this story is due to it not getting that chance or metaphorical pre-soak. Just a thought.

30″ 263 words

20″ 225 words

15″ 97 words

10″ 373 words

30″ 626 words

TOTALS SO FAR: 1300″ & 27,160 words

Day 15

Still very slow going. I have absolutely no idea where this story is going or what happens next, which is frustrating and feels like I’m slogging through muck. I just keep puttering, filling in details/description, deepening the scenes as I ‘write the next sentence’ and try to bring the story to life.

45″ 727 words

60″ 455 words

TOTALS SO FAR: 730″ & 15,153 words

 

Day 16

I am seriously freaked out, and now procrastinating because I don’t know what to write or what to write towards. Very itchy feeling. SO SLOW. Ugh. Still no idea where this is going.

30″ 648 words

40″ 643 words

TOTALS SO FAR: 800″ & 16,444 words

 

Day 17

Slowly getting into the story, and discovering that the longer I’m in it, the easier and more fun it gets. Twists and turns just seem to happen when I sit down and write. Got a fair bit accomplished today. Lessons learned:

WHAT WORKS:

• distraction-free software (Writemonkey FTW)
• writing in chunks of 500 words in 20-ish minutes
• following tangents, setting, and jumping ahead in the story
• shutting up and writing
• having word count goals —word count for the day AND total word count

WHAT DOESN’T WORK:

• “researching” (online research for things I think I need to know more about, but I don’t, really)
• cleaning the kitchen (helpful for keeping the kitchen from being overrun by dirty pans and plates, but doesn’t increase the word count)
• extended reading breaks in the bathroom (seriously? sometimes I can’t believe myself)

50″ 818 words

40″ 1023 words

50″ 1141 words

10″ 141 words (to get over the 20k total word count mark)

TOTALS SO FAR: 950″ & 20,067 words