I've overcome the relentless strain of trying to write while school's on. Well, today was my first day back and I managed to write. That's one point to me!

What's the awesome news? I've only got 2 weeks left of school!

After that? I'm sure I'll discover more things that get in the way of writing. I just hope I can manage to work around them.

As far as the actual writing goes, I'm still making good use of Write or Die. When I'm worried about not having much to write about, I set it to write 200 words in 20 minutes. Sometimes, though, I trick myself, and set it to write 200 words in 30 minutes. This takes some pressure off, because I'm happy with anything over 200 words, but I keep writing until those 30 minutes are up and often surpass 300 words despite my lack of confidence in myself.

I did that today, and finished with 321 words after edits. Certainly not bad, when I thought I might struggle.

Speaking of struggles, last night was probably the worst I've had it as far as word flow. Not just the production of the words (which tend to be pretty good artistically), but in the construction. I couldn't find the right words to express this beautiful village I have in my mind. Still, I pushed through that section to get it down and now I'm on to more exciting things. Sometimes the best thing is just to put down what you can, keep going, and when you've finished the chapter or the first draft, you can come back and work on that scene for as long as you like.

Funnily enough, I still got 277 words down in that session. I'm finding that the ease of producing a decent number of words each day is increasing just through the action of doing it every day.

And that is the whole point of my ongoing Habituals series.

We're 11 days into the month and I'm over 3,500 words. To some that might be nothing. To me it's huge. I've had months where I've struggled to pass 2,000 words. Everyone has to do what works for them, and for now, this works for me. Maybe when this habit's more ingrained in me, I'll be able to increase the minimum daily goal to 300 words, and later 400 words. I'm staying safe for now, until I'm confident I can stick to it.

Pretty picture time? I think so.