A Resolution
It's new year, and amidst the usual resolutions I make at this time every year (lose weight, go to bed early, keep a journal, stop making resolutions I never keep) I have added a new goal:
I'm going to write a minimum of 500 words a day.
That's easy actually. An email to my boss, shopping list, couple of Facebook comments, submission letter and I'm halfway there...
No? Right. Because when I say write I mean write. As in, creatively. As in, novel. And that's a bit more difficult. In fact, I'm starting to feel (on only day 3) as though I've signed up for a whole year of NaNoWriMo purgatory. But I've printed out my "Don't Break the Chain" chart so that I can keep tabs on my goal, and I'm going to be reporting my progress weekly on my Facebook page so that I can be accountable to all my lovely readers. And 500 words a day means that I can write two 80,000 word novels a year which would seem to be somewhat conducive to keeping the publishing ball in the air. So I have all the support and motivation I need.
It may only be day 3, but I'm already finding out why I really selected this new resolution. On the 1st and 2nd of January I wrote well over 1,000 words of Blackwood (Gothic novel for children) and really fleshed it out and got a sense of how it is going to work. That was exciting.
Today I wrote 1,300 words of a new novel, Tabitha, about a young girl living in a closed religious community who I think will probably find forbidden romance with an outsider. Working out the details of this new story is thrilling, and as I invented traditions and rules for Tabitha's family it was difficult to drag myself away from her world back to mine.
Tomorrow I think I may return to my comedy chick-lit project, Finders Keepers and reacquaint myself with the characters and their entertaining efforts to find love, many of their misadventures based on true stories reported to me by my friends.
I love writing, you see. I always have. But I often forget that, and so I need this goal to force me into that chair at the computer, however busy I may be and however much laundry there is to sort, so that I can lose myself in creating people, adventures, worlds and plotlines. I need to be reminded daily how fulfilling and enjoyable writing is. I hope that, by this time next year, I won't need to set that goal, but that finding time to write, and revel in the process, will be second nature.,
I'm going to write a minimum of 500 words a day.
That's easy actually. An email to my boss, shopping list, couple of Facebook comments, submission letter and I'm halfway there...
No? Right. Because when I say write I mean write. As in, creatively. As in, novel. And that's a bit more difficult. In fact, I'm starting to feel (on only day 3) as though I've signed up for a whole year of NaNoWriMo purgatory. But I've printed out my "Don't Break the Chain" chart so that I can keep tabs on my goal, and I'm going to be reporting my progress weekly on my Facebook page so that I can be accountable to all my lovely readers. And 500 words a day means that I can write two 80,000 word novels a year which would seem to be somewhat conducive to keeping the publishing ball in the air. So I have all the support and motivation I need.
It may only be day 3, but I'm already finding out why I really selected this new resolution. On the 1st and 2nd of January I wrote well over 1,000 words of Blackwood (Gothic novel for children) and really fleshed it out and got a sense of how it is going to work. That was exciting.
Today I wrote 1,300 words of a new novel, Tabitha, about a young girl living in a closed religious community who I think will probably find forbidden romance with an outsider. Working out the details of this new story is thrilling, and as I invented traditions and rules for Tabitha's family it was difficult to drag myself away from her world back to mine.
Tomorrow I think I may return to my comedy chick-lit project, Finders Keepers and reacquaint myself with the characters and their entertaining efforts to find love, many of their misadventures based on true stories reported to me by my friends.
I love writing, you see. I always have. But I often forget that, and so I need this goal to force me into that chair at the computer, however busy I may be and however much laundry there is to sort, so that I can lose myself in creating people, adventures, worlds and plotlines. I need to be reminded daily how fulfilling and enjoyable writing is. I hope that, by this time next year, I won't need to set that goal, but that finding time to write, and revel in the process, will be second nature.,
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