I decided to take some music yesterday, one of my favorite pieces to listen to when I write, the Gladiator soundtrack. Plus, I get to think of Russell Crowe, never a bad thing. It helped. I did 1277 words in 1 hour and 15 minutes.
$12.50 hourly. $2.51 snacks. Gas still holding out great!
Some of my other favorite writing CDs are the sound tracks to Kingdom of Heaven with Orlando Bloom, and King Arthur with Keira Knightly and Clive Owen. If anyone else has suggestions, I’d love to hear them.
Gia
I had a difficult writing day yesterday, only 891 words in 1 hour 45 minutes, but I knew it was going to be tough going in because of the lingering emotion of the defeating dreams I’d had the night before.
I also opted to change some pretty big issues with the plotline, but being only 4,000 words into the story, it was a good time to make the decision. I did resist the urge to go back and re-write immediately (which tends to send me on that loop of never getting past the first 15,ooo or so). Instead, I marked the pages that need to be changed on a day I sit down to edit.
On the plus side, I had a character walk in that I wasn’t expecting, and the story has taken on a different feel because of it. I think it works, because obviously this character is ready to go!
$2.14 snacks, 891 words, $17.50 hourly.
Got 958 words today in 1 hour 25 minutes. $2.14 for coffee and chocolate…have to have the coffee and chocolate.
Getting a bit down on myself, wishing I was one of those authors who can spit out thousands of words per day seemingly without effort, and put out a novel every two months or so. Sigh. My process doesn’t work that way, and I have better things to do with my time than wishing it was different.
I have learned to accept that I can only do a thousand or so words a day, it’s always been like that for me, with the occasional breakthrough scene that keeps me going another few hundred words beyond that. I am a clean writer, I can’t vomit words onto the page without thought of how they sound. I have to clean things up a bit as I go along. The beauty of this, however, is that I have very few revisions once I get to that stage of the game, and I enjoy the revision process because I do take some extra time in the first draft.
Even at my thousand words per day, five days a week, I will finish a ninety-thousand word manuscript in sixteen weeks. I usually revise in two or three, which gives me a good solid two books per year, with the possible novella or short thrown in for good measure. In the end that’s not a bad output, and even the longest of books begins with the very first word.
Appreciate your own process. Own it. Make it work for you.
As an addendum, I had some very defeating dreams last night and today I feel like a failure before I’ve even gotten started. Isn’t it funny how these things can affect you? Chris Vogler calls them threshold guardians in his work The Hero’s Journey, beasts that one must conquer in order to progress. (I could have done without them this early in the process.)
A better start to the week. $2.02 for snacks with 926 words in 1 hour 5 minutes. Yeah, a little bit lazy, but I’ll take nearly 1k.
A quote for the day:
| Don’t think. Thinking is the enemy of creativity. It’s self-conscious, and anything self-conscious is lousy. You can’t try to do things. You simply must do things. | |
 Ray Bradbury |
Here are the stats from last week. I did work on Saturday to make up for a snowday, so I had 2 days of writing time.
Costs: $36 – tow, $25 – gas, $4.78 – snacks, $37.50 - 3.75 hours writing. Total=$103.28
Total word count= 2,446
Are you all laughing? I am. At this rate, I will be bankrupt before getting halfway through the book. Hopefully this week will be more productive, less costly.
Gia
Finally, up and dressed today. If I can navigate the pitfalls of getting in my car and out of the driveway, I’m set.
Not that my outfit is anything to write home about. Anonymity is my friend
Gia
Okay, I got dressed today, packed up and ready to go!!
Then, I couldn’t get out of the driveway. No problem. A quick shovel and all was well.
NOT.
So another quick shovel…and here’s the thing. The driver’s side door doesn’t open. So I reminded myself not to close it while I was shoveling, but of course I managed to bump into it just enough the lodge it shut. Not all the way, mind you, just enough the stupid lock latched.
Okay, I’ll just open the passenger door.
NOT!
Somehow I managed to lock the @#$%$#@*&% doors. I have no spare key, my husband has them at work. But I found the extra remote control.
YAY!!! The day is saved…
Until the &$@#@! remote doesn’t work. So now my car is running out of gas in the driveway and I am ready to cry, feeling totally defeated before I even get started.
This sucks! Bad.
OMG! Did I say I was actually going out in this weather? I must have had a total loss of sanity, senior, hormonal moment.
Right. But that was the spirit of the exercise, and I know that if I had a real job, I would be let go for not showing up for work. Sigh. Couldn’t do it today. we are still at a level 2 snow emergency. See–self sabatage at its finest.
Gia
Okay, so we are still under a level 3 snow emergency. Not a very auspicious beginning to my project, but I have high hopes to get all the bugs worked out early, then it’s smooth sailing to the end.
I will spend the day working out the last kinks in my plotline so I will be ready to go tomorrow!
Gia
Today is problematic. We have 7 inches of snow on the ground, so technically I cannot get dressed and go to work. Will have to decide if getting dressed and working at home counts, or if I have to take a snow day and start tomorrow. Trust me when I say that the prospect of putting on career clothes and make-up on a day like this does not ring my bells in any way at all.
Gia
