Weekly Writing Roundup

Well, the first week of writing has gone pretty well.

By my rough count, tallying up the times noted in the daily logs, I wrote for about 15.25 hours.

The net word count total for the week (i.e., the words that are still on the page after revisions, not the number of new words I wrote each day) came to 12,987 words.

Frankly, that's better than I expected, especially for the first week. Putting it into perspective, the monthly writing word count goal for National Novel Writing Month (which unfortunately takes place in November, a terrible time for me to write due to holidays, birthdays, and all the time the kids have off from school) is 50,000 words. Four weeks at this pace would put me over that goal.

Now, when I've tried my hand at NaNoWriMo, I've never felt that the manuscript I produced was very consistent and I've never been able to build off of it toward a finished novel. I hope that I come out of this effort with more confidence in the results.

I've got to say that taking the time to outline each chapter and the key scenes in each chapter, particularly thinking about what I wanted each scene to achieve in terms of developing character, setting, and plot, has been very helpful. I have enough options so that if I get stuck I can jump to something else. For me that's been very helpful.

Also helpful has been trying to follow the advice for quitting just before you are finished with all the writing you wanted to do. That way you start the next writing session with some goals already in mind.

Looking at the overall productivity and the time spent writing, I'm thinking of setting a daily goal of three hours of writing for Monday through Friday when I don't have a freelance contract. On some days, such as when I volunteer or go the grocery store, that will be a bit more challenging to achieve. But it should still be doable, especially if I'm able to get some writing done at one of the library locations.

Anyway, if I can hit that time goal and a minimum word count goal of 10,000 words, I think I can safely take the weekend off from writing and use that time to work on pondering some of the writing issues that arise, as well as for drawing.