I have over committed myself this
month. I signed up for camp nanowrimo. 50,000 words in a romance idea I had ages
ago and had sketched out some basic story ideas for. That’s 1,667 words a day.
I promised my therapist I would write
1,500 words a day for the Aussie haunted house romance story that I stalled on
and that a first draft will be done by… you guessed it… the end of April.
And I’m doing an Udemy course with
Harry deWulf in which the homework is writing 500 words a day for yet another
story. I chatted with Harry online and he gave me a voucher to the course. Yay.
He’s a literary editor; the one who helps you iron out the story problems
BEFORE you waste your time writing a huge chunk that has to be deleted later.
I have often joked that my inner
critic sounds like my ex and it really is becoming a problem when it has me so
cowed I can’t finish any of my original fiction and I am making myself, and
everyone else around me, crazy over this. So I am doing something I have never
done before; talk to someone professional about it. I always feel drained after
a session, so I guess it is digging out some old wounds. That is probably a
good idea, too.
In order to have public accountability
for the Aussie story, I am posting the rough first draft on Wattpad if you want
to check it out.
And for the icing on the cake, I am
following suggestions in Monica Leonelle’s book Write Better, Faster: How To
Triple Your Writing Speed and Write More Every Day in which I use Pomodoro time
sprints of 20 minutes each and track everything:
where I am, what I’ve just done (walked, ate, consumed vast quantities of red
wine), which program I’m writing on, music or silence, what distractions there
are (the kids - always the kids), etcetera. The spreadsheet calculates how many
words a minute I am producing so I can say conclusively (after some time) when
how and where I write the fastest.
With my luck it will turn out to
be half drunk with music at full volume in the middle of the night, eh?
Links:
Harry deWulf
Udemy course ‘Readworthy fiction’
he’s just started a YouTubechannel as well
The House of lost hearts
Monica Leonelle
Her website - a lot of info is free on
here if you can’t afford the book
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