4 Reasons I Quit Writing Exercises – I totally agree. When I’m not writing for a project, I write for my blog. I’ve done writing with prompts and journaling and other things like that, but to me, that ended up feeling like like training for a marathon by doing wind sprints.

Why Word Count Goals Can Be Destructive – Again, totally agree. I used to have word count goals, and I spent way too much time tracking my word count while writing and after my writing sessions. I now have what I think of as “soft” word count goals. They’re goals, yes, but my main goal is just to write something. I can track that easily with either a 1 for Yes, or a 0 for No. I track my words, but on a more meta-level now (at the scene/chapter level rather than on a daily output level).

Why You Should Stick With A Story – I have much less experience with actually finishing a story, but I certainly do agree with the idea that you should finish what you start. (Do as I say, not as I do!) That way, instead of practicing starting a new and exciting idea over and over, you practice toughing it out, and you practice writing a complete story. As they say, “No one wants to read just the beginning of a really cool story.”

I believe that’s the first time (since I’ve been keeping track) that I’ve topped 2,000 words in a week! I was inspired! I’ve been writing some somewhat tough scenes, too, in that, I already know what happens before and after the scene, but I’m filling in what actually happens so that readers don’t have to make spectacular jumps of logic to follow the story. And in doing so, I am now only 517 words away from 20,000 in The Nine Mothers of White Home. With a goal of 90-100,000 that puts me at 20% done! That actually seems like a decent number.

Not much, but as I always say, it’s 353 more words than I had last week at this time. It seems like there is only one really obvious day for writing. That’s when I get my 300+ words per week in. So, now I just need to work on creating time on a couple other days, so I can get closer to 1000 words per week. I can crank out the 350 pretty easily, but I do it, and then I kind of rest on my laurels for a couple days, and then I get back to where I want to write more, but then I don’t have the time. It’s definitely a pattern, and I’m hoping that being aware of it will help me to change it.

And to make this post a little more interesting, here’s a picture I lomo-ized from the trip:

Last week I mostly had positive comments about the writing… this week, while I got over 700 words, but each of those days when I actually did some writing (not counting the 23rd), the time was spent on a different project. So, despite getting over 100 words a day (hey, it’s something), really each project is only getting 34 words per day. Which means that to get any of them to 90,000 words, it will take me 7.25 years. And since I’m working on all 3 simultaneously, that puts the end date about 21 years away. I’m fairly certain this is my subconscious way of continuing my normal mode of operation; that being: start doing something, don’t finish (or only work hard enough to get somewhat decent at a skill), and move on.

There are two things that worry me here: The first is that the bulk of those words (and there’s not that many of them) are on a new project that I just started a couple weeks ago. This follows my habit of starting a multitude of projects and not finishing them. The ability to actually finish a project is, of course, the main thing that separates people who get published from the people who have unfinished works sitting on their desktop forever.

The second thing worrying me is the lack of determination to write every day. As you can clearly see, I have not yet formed the necessary habit of writing every day. I’ve been posting to this blog nearly every day (though several of those posts came from drafts started a while ago), but that doesn’t count as “writing” because it’s not writing fiction. However, you can also see that the public shame (as it were) of posting my word counts led me to write 435 words which I might have just left for a later date if not for knowing that I had to post this. Yes, I know there’s approximately 2 people who read this blog, but even that is enough to push me to at least a weekly writing habit.

And, I’m only 207 words behind my goal average of 500 per day. So, I’ve only fallen an average of 17 words per day since the first time I reached the 10,000 word milestone on 2/15 (exactly 2 months ago – and March was a pretty weak month for my writing; the counts for February and April look a lot better).

So, I was off on vacation for part of last week and the week before. In the realistic part of my mind, I knew that I wouldn’t have time to come up with 10,000 words, even if I had brought my computer. Okay, maybe I thought somehow it would get done. Note the passive verb there.

I knew I’d have time on the plane, and at least one day while my wife was prepping for the wedding (she was a bridesmaid). And that was exactly the amount of time I had. I think it was a self-fulfilling prophecy kind of thing going on. I probably could have made more time if I’d really tried.

Anyway, in the 6 days we were gone, I got 1,114 words written for part of The Nine Mothers in my little Moleskine notebook. (avg: 186 words/day) Of course, writing by hand slowed me down to about 50% of my speed as compared to using a computer. I kind of thought it would slow me down more than that…

Of course, now that I’m back, I’ve decided to go back to working on a project I’ve been trying to do since high school. It’s gone through at least four different titles, but I believe my official title is now: Hear the Grass Grow, Sound the Ringing Horn. In the past two days (aka this weekend), I’ve written 848 words for that one. I think that’s pretty good considering I went out to lunch, took a nap, and went to a party yesterday, and then today was at church, followed by visiting family, followed by preparing for the coming work week.

I’ll get into more details about HtGG (as I now call it) when I actually get closer to releasing it into the wild.