Hi everybody! It's a little over halfway through the month, which means that I'm a little over halfway through Camp Nanowrimo! If you're not sure what that is, I talked about in my last on my writing post. So the first week or two of April I failed. And I started to get really discouraged. If Camp Nano plus my critique partner holding me accountable can't get me to write what will?
But it wasn't for lack of wanting to write. I wanted to write badly. It all comes back to time. So I made a decision last week. I was going to set my alarm for an hour earlier than normal. That means that I'm setting my alarm for 5am. Oh dear lord that's early. I wondered if I would even be able to function that early, but I thought it was worth a shot and I would give it a go for at least a week.
These are my results:
Yes, I'm still off pace, BUT My word count steadily increased in the past week. I get up at 5am, get ready for work and then sit down with my breakfast and my tea and write for about an hour. I can crank out anywhere from 1500-2500 words in that time usually. It's not much, but it's better than my complete lack of writing for the first few weeks. (I started Camp with 10k words so my Day One wasn't actually that awesome...)
I'm loving this new routine. And yeah, maybe I'm a little more tired during the day, but it's worth it because I'm writing and I'm loving it. I'm love my new WIP that I'm working on which has a working title of Crimson Sands if you're interested. I'm really enjoying getting to know my characters and my world and I'm going to keep going. I told myself last time I wrote one of these posts that I needed to stop making excuses and I did. If this is something I want badly enough I need to make time and that's exactly what I'm doing. I may not hit that 50k by the end of the month, but at least I will know that I made progress. And I'm not stopping at the end of the month. I will keep going every single day until this book is done. And then I will keep going every day to revise this book and make it perfect. And if I do that, then maybe my dream of being published one day will be true and I can spend hours of my day writing because I won't have to have a day job. Day by day, word by word. That's how I'm working on my dream.
Are you doing Camp Nano? Or working on some other dream you have? How's your progress going?
I'm doing camp nano as well! I started off really well but I'm starting to slack off. I even lowered my word count goal. But good luck to you! I may try the early morning exercise.
ReplyDeleteYeah, I should probably lower my word count goal because at this point there's no way I'm going to make it. But that's okay. I'm just proud of myself for getting into some kind of routine.
Deletethat's awesome rebecca!!!! I can't do that. I cannot function early in the morning. I just can't. haha. It's pretty bad. :/ so glad the new routine is working for you though !
ReplyDeleteThanks!! I didn't think I could function in the morning either, but so far so good!
DeleteCongratulations!!! Sounds like you've got a good routine going. And your title definitely piques my interest…
ReplyDeleteAnd hey, I read somewhere that when asked how Brandon Sanderson (who cranks out book after book, and his books are LONG) writes so much he said he's not very fast, he's just consistent. So keep it up! :) ~Pam
Oh yay! Thank you! I'm glad you like it. I'm terrible at titles.
DeleteThat's interesting. I love reading about different authors and their writing processes and habits. Thanks! <3