Monday, November 14, 2016

#amwriting: Upping the Ante


This screenshot is showing a couple of things. First, you're seeing that from a week ago Thursday when I first wrote about the Scrivener Project Targets, I've written 6452 words. So that's good! Yay! 

Also, you can see that I've upped my Session Target to 700 words. That part is the daily quota.

This brings me to my revised NaNoWriMo strategy, which is this: In the first week, I made myself write 500 words per day. That was challenging, but doable. The second week, I was all warmed up and primed for the effort, so I upped my Session Target to 600 words. No problem. I averaged above that for the week. 

Now, you see in the third week of NaNo, I'm pushing for 700 words. This seems like it'll be a bit of a stretch, but once you do 600 or 620, what's just a couple more sentences? Next week, I feel like I might go to 800. That's a lot, so I'm not sure, yet. But actually, I think I can do it because I only have school on two of the days next week and it'll just be for the week - not a permanent new habit.

You also see in the screenshot that my whole Manuscript Target is 75,000 words, which is typical for - ahem - women's fiction. Who wouldn't be excited to see that she's approaching halfway?! So, that keeps me typing.

I have a trait that's both unfortunate and handy: If I say I'm going to do something - even if I just say it to myself - there's a pretty good chance I'll do it.

This week, someone asked me, "How do you write so much when you have a full-time job?" My answer is both simple and stupid. It's this: I said I would. Another nice motivator is that I paid a pretty penny for a writing class that has four weeks left. A third motivator is that I decided to have private coaching from my writing teacher in February, in lieu of taking another class. The teacher said, all nonchalant, "I'm looking forward to continuing our work. I'll need the completed manuscript by February 1st."

So. There's that.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

That is an exciting idea....in February having her be a coach! I would like to treat you to that as a Christmas gift! Love, mom