(Go me! About frickin' time, right?)
So far I've managed to add 13,000 words to Firechild in the past week and a half and each day I'm writing more than I did the day before. It feels AMAZING to be writing every day again - I feel as if my mind is waking up and I'm constantly being flooded with new ideas. The fact that I'm going to sleep at night looking forward to writing the next day is a good sign. I don't remember the last time I felt this motivated.
We seem to have finally settled into a temporary schedule - temporary because, let's face it, I'm still working on newborn and toddler time and that can be a finicky thing.
My typical day now looks something like this (excluding the days I go to my actual paying job, because those days have their own issues and rarely involve much writing time):
I get up sometime between 5am and 7am to feed the baby.
I stumble aimlessly around my apartment making coffee then sit to read whatever catches my fancy that day (facebook, writing blogs, some novel I've been into). I attempt to wake my brain up.
If I'm having a good morning, usually determined by how much sleep babyboy allowed me the night before, I will have started writing by the time my little girl wakes up.
I recently started hearing a lot about the Pomodoro technique and laughed when I realized that I already seem to have my own version of that. I write until I hit a section of the book where I need to do some brainstorming or when my brain is just tired and needs some fresh perspective - need to visualize, can't decide what sort of snappy remark my character makes or can't focus on what comes next due to my daughter screaming for "Yo Gabba Gabba" on Netflix. I usually take a break, feed my kids, wash some dishes, pick toys up off the rug etc etc all the while running through the dilemma that made me pause until I'm ready to tackle it.
Then more writing until the next need for a break arises.
My daughter naps somewhere between 11am and 1pm at which point I'll attempt to sneak a shower and work on one of the million household projects on my to-do list before settling down and getting back to my keyboard.
This pretty much goes on throughout the day until my husband gets home from work.
So far its been working and I've been amazingly productive, not just in my writing but also with everything else. It feels wonderful though I wonder how long I can keep going at this pace.
I've been writing somewhere between 1,000 and 3,000 words per day, 4 days a week. That may not seem like much to some people, but I don't exactly get "uninterrupted creative time".
I think it's pretty amazing.
I have a general word goal of 125,000 (or 500 pages roughly) and have been keeping track of my wordcount per day. I'm not usually a wordcounting writer, but since getting writing done in the chaos of my home is tricky, it helps me see my progress day to day. The novel is finished when it's finished whether its more or less than the wordcount goal - plus, I thought it might be nice for you people out in blog-reading-land to watch the progress as well so you can hold me accountable.
If I continue at this rate the "re-written first draft" (is that an oxymoron?) should be completed and ready for editing by the end of September.
So, you all keep waving your pom-poms and watching the words pile up and I'll keep pecking along on my keyboard.
Thanks for reading my rambles!
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