Before I dive in, I wanted to say a quick hello and introduce you all to this brand new, weekly email update, focused entirely around my writing practice. I thought this could be a really fun way of 1) keeping anyone who is interested in the art of writingupdated on my particular writing practice 2) act as a sort of accountability partner in a sense for me to continue with my writing and 3) be a really cool place in which I might someday look back and remember the trails and tribulations of my writing practice at this particular moment in my life. 

I honestly wish I had some kind of more consistent reminder from when I wrote A Daisy in Lily’s Valley because my brain did this funny thing where it smoothed out all the edges of that two year long process and threw on some rose-tinted shades. So whenever I look back at that time of my life, all I remember are the fun bits, the wins. None of the lows seem to have lodged themself in my memory. I have to really go digging for them, which made the difficulties of my current novel all the more challenging. 

I digress. 

Shall we dive in to how this past week of writing has gone?

A little note before we begin…

A little note on how I count my current words on the page: Until I am finished with a chapter, I do not add my current words to my overall word count. This is because, when I write, I often do it in fits and starts. I tend to jump around, following wherever my brain is currently leading me only to circle back and connect the disparate pieces back together again. 

So I may be working on what I believe will be three chapters that turns in to only two, or a series of vignettes that all become their own chapter. And until I get the flow of what it is I need to say and what shape that will take (either a small scene or an entire chapter), I won’t count the words. Not until they feel more solid and less easily pushed around on the page. 

For those reasons, my word counts each week will be estimates. Things might change. I may write 5,000 words one week, but only keep 1,000 of them going in to next. I also tend to write a lot of outline-y type stuff as I go, just to keep my brain on track. These words I don’t count (even though they are often plentiful) because they look an awful lot like FMC walked to the cafe and sat down. She talked to the barista and together they learned XYZ. This is great for navigating my way around a scene, but almost certainly won’t end up being what I stick to the page. 

Where I Started

On Monday morning I woke up bright eyed and bushy tailed, ready to tackle my novel. My manuscript (which I am calling Project Magic for the time being) stood at around 76,000 words. A huge amount, no doubt, but I am anticipating this novel to be huge. I’m talking at least 150,000 words. Minimum. What can I say? This character is complex and has lived a big, full life, filled with nothing but regret. 

I was nearing the end of Chapter 22 and was primed to begin, what I had believed would be Chapter 23 (plot twist: I had another chapter already sitting in the wings, ready and waiting to be my Chapter 23). Monday’s are notoriously my favorite days in which to work because I am usually at my most energetic and productive. I’ve honestly no idea why, it’s just something I recently noticed. 

Mondays = Best Work Ever

Thursday = I’ve fallen off a cliff 

My Goals for the Week

I had a rather ambitious goal of writing 7,500 words this week which equated to around 1,500 words per day. This is above my normal average of 1,000 words per day, but when I looked at my overall goal of having this manuscript finished by the end of May, it seemed like I might as well shoot for the friggin’ moon and see what happened/ where my energy landed. 

Hint: I didn’t hit my goal, but I also didn’t burn myself out, so, I count that as an overall win all around. 

How the Week Went

As expected, I crushed my writing goals on Monday. I wrote a total of 1,931 words, introduced a new, pretty important character (I know, super late in the game), and was nearing the end of chapter 22. 

On Tuesday, I got a bit of a late start, but still managed to demolish my goal, ending the day with 2,119 words. I also managed to round off the chapter (my largest one yet standing at over 7K words–eeeekk!) and ya’ll. . . it got dark, in the most delicious of ways. I gave myself chills which is always a great sign that you’ve written something raw and honest and real.

Wednesday was another slow start. I didn’t track the words I wrote, but I vaguely remember it being around 400 for the day, which made sense. I’d written nearly 4,000 over the previous two days, so I wasn’t really expecting to knock it out the park a third time. 

And then Thursday rolled around. Complete with an all day allergy fit. I could hardly go a few seconds without sneezing, so I gave p on writing for the entire day and chose to restinstead. See what I mean? On Thursdays, I always fall off a writing cliff. 

By Friday, by allergy fit had subsided, but my energy levels weren’t back online after a terrible night’s sleep. I took the morning off and came back to the page in the afternoon with absolutely no expectations of writing more than maybe 300 words. 500 if I was feeling lucky. Instead, I accidentally wrote 1,100 and had the most fun to date. Granted, most of my words were about a sassy cat, but I mean. . . who doesn’t love writing about kitty antics?

And usually I take the weekends off from writing, but because I missed my session on Thursday and, let’s be real, was having SO MUCH fun writing about the sassy cat, I came back to the page earlier this morning (Sunday) to write. I squeezed out 969 words and had a blast doing it!

That left me with a grand total of 6,519 words. Sure, it’s 1,000 words less than I had wanted, but it was also 1,500 words more than my weekly average. I’ll take the win!

Upcoming Plans

For this week, I think I am going to keep the same stretch goal of 7,500 words. I kind of like having a goal that feels just out of reach, knowing that, regardless of how many words I actually write, I’m still a winner. 

I’m currently on Chapter 24, but I have the next several chapters more or less outlined(ish?). I’ve got an idea on where things are going. My goal is to finish off Chapter 24 and begin figuring out where those plans all fit. It’d be great to figure out how many chapters I will need to get me from my character’s current plot point to the next, bigger plot point. 

For context, we the reader are following my FMC for a little over three years. A lot happens in the first year and even more happens in the third year. Right now I am in her second year, where stuff happens, but it is more disjointed. It’s all important in her overall growth, so I cannot simply skip over it, but I do need to speed the pacing of the story a bit, which I will admit, is a struggle. I love a slow, meandering walk through a character’s life. Speeding things up without making them feel rushed is my kryptonite. But if I can nail this, then I prime the story (and the reader) for some truly exciting stuff to come. 

Wish me luck!