Making up for lost time

Wow. I'd forgotten how long it's been since my last post.

Well, so much for good intentions. The class started last Thursday, January 12, and I didn't have my initial 10,000 words. In fact, I still don't--but I did write 1,275 this evening. Hoorah! Can't say they're necessarily quality words . . . The point is, I got them down.

Business is going well. Extremely well at the moment. In fact, I'm overwhelmed again. But instead of spending a couple of hours catching up on client assignments, I chose to make my writing a priority.

I have to make my writing a priority. Otherwise, it will never happen.

Efficiency experts say that you've got an 85-95% chance of accomplishing whatever you make your top priority. That's definitely been the case with me. Whatever I decide I absolutely have to get done, I do. Not saying that I can let my paying assignments slide. I just have to put my writing first.

Then, I can let the feeling of accomplishment carry me through the rest of my tasks.

Resolved to write

I'm going to finish writing my novel this year--if for no other reason than to get it behind me so I can move on to the next one.

I've set a goal of 500 words per day. I didn't meet that goal either yesterday or today, but I did write. About 200 words or so each day. And then I erased half of what I wrote today . . . Still, I made progress.

In the past three days, I've identified some important scenes to introduce my characters, and I've decided to include alternate points of view in the story, rather than limiting the entire novel to the protagonist's perspective.

And today I finally moved past a spot that had stymied me for months.

As I admitted earlier, I haven't made my 500-word quota yet, but I'm still limbering up these long-dormant writing muscles. By the time the weekend rolls around, I should be banging out 500 to 600 words per session.

Even if it takes me until next week to reach that pace, I'll still be fine: I've already got 7,750 words of this novel draft. I only need 10,000 by January 12, when I start the next online writing workshop.

The goal: 50,000 words over five three-week sessions.

That will make my second draft just as long as my entire first draft--and bring me halfway to a complete manuscript. The next draft should be more fine-tuning than anything else, not an entire rewrite like this one.

So my goal is to complete my next draft by this summer. Then, I want to get it into shape and place it with an agent by the end of the year. Maybe I won't find an agent by December 31, but it will be in shoppable form.

I'll make publication my goal in 2006.