Weekly Writing Intentions: April 23, 2022

Daily Diary, Day 601:

Last week, I decided to start my “writing” week on Saturday because I was finding it defeating to start on Mondays, when there were often a number of planned and unplanned interruptions to my day, with a resulting low word count. As I reported this past Monday, this worked well and I wrote over 1000 words a day on Saturday and Sunday.

Unfortunately, for a variety of reasons, my word count dropped precipitously for the rest of the week. I did end up writing slightly over 4000 words total, which put my average at 578 words a day. This was good, given that my goal when I started this story was to write at least 500 new words a day. However, without that unusually high word count last weekend, I would have done abysmally.

So, here we are on Saturday morning, and I have decided to go into the next two days with the intention of again writing 2000 words, just in case the following five days prove to fill up with other non-writing stuff.

To meet this goal over these next two days, I am going to do three things. First, I am going to start doing sprints (writing for 20 mins, then taking 10 mins off to get up, stretch.) Second, I’m going to avoid spending writing time doing any research or getting lost in details—like a new character’s name or physical description. Research and coming up with details can be a time suck, and are much easier to accomplish during the editing process. Third, I am going to relegate things like reading the news, answering emails, and checking to see what my substack statistics are (as of this morning I now have 125 people signed up) until the end of the day.

Obviously, these are good writing goals for the rest of the week, but what happens as a day fills up with other things (phone calls, dentist appointments, zoom meetings, etc) it that it is harder for me to be that disciplined about writing. And I’m not so sure it is good for me, in terms of living a balanced and joyful life, to be that disciplined. So, for now, I’m only going to hold myself to this standard for the next two days.

Given that this first draft of Mrs. Stein Solves a Crime is now over 10,000 words, there is a very good chance it’s going to be a novella (which are generally seen as being between 17,500 words and 40,000 words.) That pleases me, and I hope it will please my readers.

Finally, I got my second booster shot yesterday—and I am feeling a little achy, with a headache this morning––so the weekly deep cleaning I do on Saturdays is going to have to suffice for my morning exercise. Then, assuming I feel better (and have hit my word count!) I will walk longer before dinner. The photo is from yesterday’s second walk. Flowers are really blooming all over the place.