I’ve just passed 15,000 words. It took me about four years with a few days now and then to get around to writing that much on the last book… And this was just eight days.
I’m sure it will get harder but this has been helpful already. It helped me see that the key to a rough draft is just writing it. I can always make it better later. I can find the time to write whenever I have to. Half an hour before breakfast, an hour after dinner, a bit more time on the weekends… That’s enough to make real progress.
And writing fast like this, with a concrete deadline, helps squish the procrastination bug. I can’t choose to do the dishes, or water the plants just because I can’t face the fear of my story not being as good as I want it to. I don’t have time. That does mean that the sink is filling up. (I’ve already killed most of the plants so you don’t have to feel too sorry for them.)
But it also means the story is carrying me along. I’m not overthinking it. I’m just writing. I did sit down ahead of time and figure out a rough idea of how the story might go and what the scenes might be. And I think I’m mostly following it. But I haven’t looked at that list of events and there have been some surprises already.
There are some decisions that I haven’t made yet about the story… But rather than stop writing until I make up my mind, I’m just going to keep writing and let my character decide how it goes when she dries out and wakes up.
I can always change my mind in the revisions.
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