I've been gone for a while. From this blog, I mean. Yes, I've had some trouble writing the last few days. Five, to be exact. I should have jumped back on the ball after the first day I missed, but I kept getting distracted. Not by anything important, just stuff that's easier than writing.

"I hate writing. I love having written." -- Dorothy Parker

While I do love the actual construction of sentences and all that micro stuff, it is an intense and generally slow-going process for me, and it's certainly not easy.

Today I wanted to make up for the days I've missed. I'm sure it's okay to do this once in a while, but I don't want to get into the habit of writing big chunks sporadically. That's just not productive for me.

For this next bit I'll let the graph do the talking.

When school returned for the last half of October, I lost it. Writing fell to the wayside once more. School's tiring, and it always seems to have this effect on me. Well, not anymore. You know why?

NO MORE SCHOOL.

I'll savour this feeling while it lasts. I have a few exams left, but they're nothing.

This couldn't have come at a better time for my writing. I'm on the cusp of hitting 60,000 words, which I've now decided is my bare minimum goal. I'm really shooting for the end now. It's not exactly in sight; I have many grand events clouding the way. But those events are clear to me. The path is laid out and now I just have to follow it.

The beginning of each new month repeatedly gives me new resolve. I consciously think: it's the 1st tomorrow -- I can start writing again! I don't know why this makes it easier, but at least I can rely on it. The only catch is that I need to make the effort.

The writing's going well so far. I've written all three days. I could show the graph but I'll just tell you, I'm above the line.

Good luck and good speed to all the NoNoers. The least I can do to support you is to attack my own measley daily goals.

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.

Hooray for writing 8 days in a row!

I've had a lot of late nights this month. And I mean a lot. Speak of the devil, it's currently 3:40am in Australia. I blame daylight savings.

My writing is coming along smoothly. I've written five days in a row, never less than 200 words, sometimes passing 300. That's all I need. 7,000 words in one month is just awesome, and I'm well on track.

Put simply: success.

Nothing has been happening for me on the writing front. I'd say I was too busy with school, but that would be lying. I'm a lazy student. But it's still tiring, and it's much harder to write after a day of school than without.

I haven't written these holidays either . . . until now.

And after I'd decided to write tonight, I took special note of the fact that tomorrow would be the 1st of October. I thought fondly back to July, when I started writing on the 1st and managed to hit 7,000 words.

I want to do that again.

My intentions for the next month are this:
- Writing is back in
- Habituals are back in
- Blog posts are back in

Can I achieve my goals? We can only wait and see.

Well, I've missed a few days here and there unfortunately, but I wrote today and that's something. At this point I only have 1,000 words left to write to reach 7,000 words this month. I'm well past my 5,000 word goal of earlier months.

I knew this was going to be a challenge with school coming back. By George, it was!

I've been hoping to implement a schedule but we all know schedules don't work for me.

Anyway, here's the rundown.

12. Jul: 319
Total: 3966

13. Jul: 271
Total: 4237

14. Jul: 74
Total: 4311

16. Jul: 695
Total: 5006

17. Jul: 222
Total: 5228

18. Jul: 237
Total: 5465

21. Jul: 234
Total: 5699

24. Jul: 227
Total: 5926
 

Well, it's that time again, and I come here today with a proud fact. I have written every day this month. And I feel that my "write every day" philosophy is working well to keeping my writing productive, even if some days I write somewhat little.

Here's the rundown.

6. Jul: 419
Total: 2463

7. Jul: 139
Total: 2602

8. Jul: 57
Total: 2659

9. Jul: 201
Total: 2860

10. Jul: 402
Total: 3262

11. Jul: 385
Total: 3647

So of course there are some dodgy numbers in there. I think it would be unrealistic to expect anything else. But many of the other times, it seems like I'm going to get another dodgy number. I sit there for an hour or two slowly writing from 26 words to 70. But then I push through, and come to a part that is more interesting to me, or a nice chunk of dialogue, and the word count runs away with me.

Speaking of word counts running away, the current chapter is nearly 5,000 words long at the moment, but I've already decided where to split it to make two shorter chapters. I think shorter chapters would facilitate the reader better than one long one coming up to the end of the first part.

So, it's been a few days now since I updated on my Habitual. I can gladly say that I've written all five days of this month, and most of the word counts produced weren't much to laugh at.

1. Jul: 248
Total: 248

2. Jul: 711
Total: 959

3. Jul: 347
Total: 1306

4. Jul: 126
Total: 1432

5. Jul: 612
Total: 2044

Wow! To be honest, today my word count was on track to being 70 words. What happened with that? Well, late at night, after hours and hours of perilous procrastination, I finally hooked up to my Write or Die desktop edition. At first I put in to write 100 words in 15 minutes, thinking 200 to be a decently respectable number. Then I fiddled a bit, thinking Why not take the pressure off? and gave myself more time to do it in (let's say 25 minutes). And then I wrote, and I wandered for a bit. But then I found my place. And I wrote and wrote. When the timer went off, I'd written 288 words (totalling well over 300). But hey! I wasn't done! I'd gotten into the flow, and I knew what I wanted to write next, and I wasn't going to wait until next time for it to get away from me.

It's those times when you're focusing so intently on the scenes rolling out from underneath your fingertips -- it's those times when the word count gets away from you. I can't believe tonight was going to be another one of those meager nights like last yesterday. I hate to think where I'd be if I'd gone to sleep instead (it's 4:00am -- no surprise there).

And then, then I see that over the past five days I've written just over 2,000 words. What?! I think that's more than I wrote all last month!

And it's so, SO rewarding to see the word count and progress meter in my sidebar trickling upwards consistently. Tomorrow I should be passing into the 44,000s. I'll expect nothing to last, but I will hope and try, and I'll enjoy this while it lasts.

Time for shiny!

I apologise to anyone who finds the above word offensive, if people in fact do. But that was a little bit how I felt after writing tonight. There were many times when I could have stopped.

I don't know if I can say I was enjoying it particularly, although it must have felt great to get that scene out of my head. I didn't really feel any emotional reaction as I was writing. I just kept going, because I knew there was a place I wanted to get to and I knew if I just write that bit more, that bit more, a little bit more, I could get to the end of this scene.

So I did.

There isn't a feeling I could associate with the process that occurred. It was nothing I wanted particularly much; I wasn't inspired; I hadn't given myself a deadline or a big goal to fill.

I think I've worked it out now. It was one of those scenes that I always knew would be in the book, one of those scenes that I always used as a "checkpoint" to keep me writing, to give me a foreseeable goal to write towards. Those scenes I think always have a tendency to just topple out of me.

But enough about that. Let's get down to the nitty gritty.

Yesterday I wrote 248 words. I said, "I don't expect that every day but it's a great start."

Today I wrote 711 words. When I finished I felt like saying something along the lines of awhapbopaloobalobawhapbamboom!

That's a GREAT start!

Well, I probably wasn't going to post a Habitual today, but just look at the shiny graph!

Click to enlarge. [Is there any better way?]

Well, today was a decent success. Actually, quite a good success!

I wrote 248 words, and I don't expect that every day but it's a great start. I'm currently above the progress line. I'm sure I will dip under it every now and again, the idea being that I'll be able to reach my seven thousand with a few focused writing days thrown in among the consistency.

I'm going out tomorrow so let's see how I manage to fit it in then. I have a few more useful blog posts planned so expect one or two in the next week -- also, this Habitual should mean I can re-start my Sample Sundays!

See you guys soon!

I'm a little disappointed in myself -- this disappointment comes in bouts. Even with school, I'm not a busy person. I have so much time on my hands, and I'm not making use of it. If I can't do it now, how will I do it when I barely have any time to spare?

But the gist of it is, in three words: I miss writing. The more time you spend away from your world, the farther from it you are, and the harder it is to get back into it next time. I won't let Válkia get away from me. Sometimes it may take a holiday, and I can't stop it. I'll accept that.

But when I saw the clock tick over to 12:01am, I was inspired to start up my habituals again, something to get me writing something every day, and I feel like accountability is the only thing I've got going for me.

So I'm here with a somewhat ambitious monthly goal: 7,000 words. But being on holidays, I'm sure I can take one or two days off doing nothing in order to get a thousand words in.

The focus this month isn't writing lots or to a goal each day, but to write something. If I feel like I want to challenge myself some days, then that's great.

Reading a blog post today, I was also inspired to try something different with my writing if I felt it would get me writing. That is, if you have a scene that you are excited to write and the one you're writing isn't exactly getting you pumped, charge ahead and write that scene! You can come back to the current scene later. I'm hoping that having written that later scene might in turn inspire me to finish off the first one. Even if, by some crazy circumstance, I didn't finish it, I have time to go back near the end or at the end of the first draft. I won't have a choice, really. But knowing me, I'll want to get it done.

I probably won't update every day -- I think that would be tedious for all of us. I might update twice or thrice a week. That way we won't get clogged amongst my other posts.

Wish me luck! (I may need it.)

I won't be able to write tonight. I just wrote a 1,000 word essay for Literature and now I have to write a short story for French. And it's nearly 2:00am. And these are overdue. So I don't have an out. Tomorrow's Friday, though, so I should be okay for the next few days.

This prioritisation is something I will have to face a lot. All I have to do is practise getting back to the writing as soon as possible.

Wow. All right, admittedly, it's been two days since I wrote, but I did jump back on today. I don't think I'll get to 5,000 this month, but I think I'm set up well to approach next month with more force. School is coming back tomorrow, and I'm excited to test myself to work around school, homework and the many other things that occupy my time.

Writing tonight was sort of funny. First I wrote a bit, and then I did a WorD Splurge (if you don't know what it is, Google Write or Die -- it's an amazing tool!), totalling to what word told me was around 280 words. But then, when I did the calculations at Critique Circle, it appeared that I'd somehow written an extra 40 or so words in there, and it churned out a 320! So I was very happy to see that number, and happily drew that number from my "manuscript progress" over to my "monthly progress". Here's what it looks like now. It's looking a bit sad, but I'm still seeing this as a positive. It proves that even after two days I was able to jump back on and write again.

Yep. Even more than writing, I need to take a break, so tonight I'm going to catch up with some sleep. But I won't be trying to "catch up" with any writing tomorrow. I know where that's led me in the past. I'll be jumping right back on the horse tomorrow, with my next 200+ words. I'll still be very much on track to hit 5,000 words by the end of the month.

The real challenge in the next few days and the coming weeks will be trying to work writing into my days regularly while also keeping ahead with homework and getting enough sleep. I think the trick lies in getting the homework done when I get it, or some days before it's due, and that's something I have to work on.

Today: 362 words.


Pointless caption is pointless.

While tonight I wrote far less words than I have on all the other days, I have to say I'm not surprised. For one, I was very tired after two nights in a row that I was up until 4:00am. "For two", the scene I had to write today wasn't exactly rivetting, but necessary. So I got the whole transition scene done and tomorrow we will actually get to meet the Thief-King for real!

Today's result: 244 words.

Not too bad, really. I've done far less before, and this is great forward momentum. I kept going despite the lacklustre nature of the scene. I mean, I'm sure the actual scene itself isn't bad, but as a writer, you can't help but get excited by scenes where secrets are revealed left right and centre, or we get to meet a new character who will somehow push the story forward. So I'm done with transition scenes. Tomorrow I'm going to meet the Thief-King, ruler of the Meiraan Underground.

Okay, so there's this room in the Underground hideout, and it's sort of the planning room, where there's an amazing map of the whole city. This is where we meet the Thief-King.

One of the men from the organisation, when giving directions to my characters, simply called it the "map room". But when Eoin and the others come to the room, on the door it actually says Cartachamber. What are your thoughts on this? Does it sound clunky or mysterious?

Because I definitely survived today. Oh yeah.

The result for today: 454 words.

That's right, did you hear me? I'm overwhelmed. Because while 1,000 words may be what I vaguely set myself, and I've never reached it, I am doing darn well for myself.

How can you not be a little happy when your progress looks something like this?

Okay, children. So this is what an erect...progress graph looks like.