How To Maximize Your Word Count And Write More Every Day « terribleminds: chuck wendig

How To Maximize Your Word Count And Write More Every Day « terribleminds: chuck wendig.

Oh how I love Chuck Wendig…

My favorite from the above post?

When life gives you no time, MAKE TIME TRAVELING LEMONADE.

That can’t be right. But it’ll have to do.

What I mean is, life is a low place that fills up quickly with whatever comes its way — water, sand, mud, elk scat, the tears of all the world’s children, whatever. Your time will swiftly fall prey to the nibbles and pecks of the Things-To-Do-Bird: you gotta go to work, go to the store, take out the trash, artificially inseminate that baboon HEY I SAID ARTIFICIALLY PUT YOUR PANTS BACK ON. Time fills up fast. Life is greedy and eager to exploit.

If you’re going to write a lot, you’re going to need to feint and duck, stick and move, and reach in to grab fistfuls of time-flesh and use it for your own sinister purposes: in this case, writing. Got a lunch break? Write. Sitting at a long stop light? Take a few quick voice notes on your phone. Lounging around in post-coital baboon afterglow? Put some words to paper, goddamnit.

Okay, but seriously. Go read it right now. It might be why I managed to pump out my 50K for July already.

 

April Review and May Goals

The April Review

Alas! The badge and icon you see to your right is not a winner’s badge for Camp NaNoWriMo. I made it to approximately 44,000 words in April. Yes, 44K!  That means I was only 16K shy of my goal. Considering visiting relatives, a work injury, and some form of strep throat, I’d say 44K out of 60K is just fine with me.

I still feel like a winner.

Moreover, one of my big goals for Camp was to finish my first manuscript project of the year and… I did!  Even if I was the only one hearing Handel’s Hallelujah Chorus from the Messiah, I’m going to continue to dance around and let the people at Starbucks think I’m crazy.

Also, my last two days of writing in Project Yarrow – by some fluke of the word count gods – I ended up writing exactly 1,231 each day. Fancy the coincidence of that!  I know, I know, not exactly Earth shattering news but weird and funny to me.

April Analysis

In hindsight, should I have made the ambitious 60K goal?  Yes.

Word count is not everything. (gasp!) Have a lot of my posts focused on word count? Yes, that’s the nature of The Writing Resolution beast, but the purpose behind TWR is to nail my butt to the seat and write more often.  I made the less-specific goal of finishing Project Yarrow before the end of April. And I did. (!!!!)

April is the largest contribution I’ve made toward accomplishing TWR so far. I am behind – I should be at around 120K for the year and yet I’m at 87K (i.e. one month’s worth behind).  Having the monthly target count helped me catch up, so I shall be repeating this from here on out until I catch up and/or until I don’t feel I need it any longer.

I’m glad I made the 60K goal, because ultimately it pushed me to write more.  By writing more, I learned where I can carve time out for myself and that writing that many words is possible – it’s a matter of prioritizing.

Now, as far as using visitors and illness as an excuse, I realize that life happens and life will continue to happen. The key is to work around the rest of life. Again, priorities.

May Goals

Without further ado, here are the May Goals – both writing and non-writing related:

1. Write 50K in Project Shift.

2. Run 26 days per month.

3. Write 2 blog posts (here!) per week.

Have you set any goals for May? 

The Words: The End.

I just typed “the end.” 

Well, that’s not entirely true. I typed “End of Book One.”

Can I contain my elation?  Heck no!  That’s right, I just finished the first draft of Book One of Project Yarrow.

Now?  May a mad dash ensue to finish my second project (Project Shift) so I can return to Project Yarrow to edit with fresh eyes.

Not to mention, it’s still April for about 12 more hours and I’m still participating in Camp NaNoWriMo.

How does that saying go?

The End is Near! But in a good way…

Finally, after years (and a numerous deadlines past), I am within the foreseeable END to Project Yarrow, my first draft of my first project of the year of The Writing Resolution (TWR).  Even at the beginning of the year, it was hard to imagine getting to the spot I am now: page 300, more than 113K words, and a very important plot point/reveal!

Life. And Other Problems.

Of course, as soon as I saw the light at the end of the tunnel disaster struck in the form of strep throat (or lymph node infection, we’re not sure… I just care that its GONE).

A summary of life right (write?) now.

After the NaNoThon, I was jazzed – I was so close!

The next day? I woke up with a sore throat and the inability to swallow basic liquids like water, much less move. Don’t worry I still managed to turn my taxes in on time though.

Then, add to that, a great number of “other” life duties: visiting (out-of-town/state) parents, visiting friends, overtime work shifts (be nice to your waitress, btw, its good karma), helping friends in a tough spot, and other employment searching… Well, life is just crazy right now.The down side?  I’ve had to prioritize my life and, regrettably, the blog took the biggest blow time-wise.

Worthy to note: these duties and people for interrupting my writing time annoy the p*ss out of me. Okay, not entirely – I love my family and friends, I obviously need to work to pay the bills, and since my current pay-the-bills job is driving me batty, I need a different type of work (logically anyhow).  Still, my current recovering health prevents me from creating more writing time by shaving off hours of sleep while attending to these duties and I am left frustrated with lack of time to write.

Ah, what I could do with 2 or 3 more hours in the day…

Never fear though, as I race toward the finish line of both my first project and finishing my 60K Camp NaNoWriMo goal, I have plans for this blog come May.  As long as I make my Camp goal, TWR will be close to on target, not quite though, but I’ll have more time to catch up here.

In Summary?

The end may be near for Draft #1 of Project Yarrow, but a revamp is near for this blog!

Prepare for: writing schedules and time management, waitressing as writing fodder, the short story vs. the novel, theories on writing, when you realize your high school English teacher was actually right about some things even though you cringe to admit it, and other valuable topics.

 

Cheers to anyone else participating in Camp NaNoWriMo and may this last week of Camp serve you well!

Write on, my fellow logophiles!