This week, I battled so much resistance to even showing up to write each day, it was wild. Between the cool morning that kept me in bed for an extra hour to the general unease I am currently feeling with regards to my work to the sudden realization that the way in which I was tackling my writing (and how much time I was allowing myself each day), it was just a rough week to be a writer.

Still, I showed up. I put words down. Sometimes a lot (2.8K on my best day) and sometimes very little (300 on my worst). But it all added up, and that’s what matters.

An Update

A tiny one, I swear.

After this week, I will be moving to sharing a monthly writing update rather than a weekly one primarily because. . . I need the spare time for writing and progressing my manuscript forward. The further into the story I get, the more time I seem to require, and splitting myself up each week to write a recap post can feel like so much.

But I still want to keep you updated and I still want a recollection of my current writing practice as it is right here, right now. Which is why moving to a monthly recap feels like the perfect fit. And the timing is great, too, as April is coming to a close while May beckons us through her doors with open arms and sunny skies!

Where I Started

Last week, 7,120 words but probably more since I failed to accurately count one entire day’s worth of Writing. I also finished Chapters 28 & 29 and began Chapter 30. My Overall Word count stands right around 105K words, and because of that, I purchased myself a new milk frother which I have been using practically every day since it arrived!

How the Week Went

As I mentioned above, the cold weather + comfy bed combo made it a challenge for me to get up on Monday and Tuesday, but seeing as I really only had the mornings in which to write, I forced myself up (late) and got to work finishing up Chapter 30. On Monday I managed 1,651 words while Tuesday I wrote even more sporadically in the morning and finished off with 1,336 words.

But the scattered-ness I’d been running on, writing ten minutes here, twenty minutes there, never getting a full block of time to really dig in to the story was beginning to wear on me by Wednesday. The scattered approach to writing over the past few weeks was primarily my fault in that I have been really falling prey to distractions (coughmyphonecough) as a way to ease the anxiety that writing, and writing well, sometimes conjures up inside of me. So even though I managed to finish Chapter 30 and outline Chapter 31 on Wednesday, writing a total of 346 words in the process, I knew it was time to change some things up.

On Thursday, with the new idea in mind to write for as long as I possibly could on the brain, I immediately felt resistant, my body practically repelling itself from my chair while my brain threw a tantrum, screaming NoNoNoNoNoNoNo over and over again. It was a fight against the inner turmoil of everything within me wanting to only work for about 10-20 minutes before rewarding myself with a distraction and the inner knowing that if I could just sit still for a little longer, could work through my own internal discomfort, something wonderful might happen.

I managed to do just that, writing a total of 2,851 words over the course of the day, most of which came in the morning when I had my most uninterrupted block of time to focus. It was at the end of Thursday that I thought to myself, “Hey, wouldn’t it be great to round out Year 2 of my main character’s life by this weekend?” It was a stretch goal, for sure, but one that actually made me excited to come back on Friday for some more focused writing time.

I didn’t expect to wake up feeling super low about my project on Friday, however. This is a fun little tactic my brain likes to pull on me when I’ve changed things around, after it had gotten all comfortable. It throws in some spiraling thoughts, thoughts that I truly have no control over, at least not at the current moment, in an effort to reel me back in. It also didn’t help that I was feeling uncomfortable for the third day in a row due to allergies. I wound up taking an anti-histamine, telling my brain that everything it was throwing at me would be dealt with later, and I wrote. And wrote and wrote. I ended up writing 1,394 words that day, despite my brain’s best efforts to throw me off course.

Where I Ended + Upcoming Plans

In the end, I wrote 7,578 words which means this is my third time surpassing my stretch goal and I get to treat myself to a lovely coffee date whenever I wish!

My Overall Word count now stands right at 114K words, and Chapter 30 is complete with Chapter 31 well on its way to being finished, also.

Looking forward, I plan to continue working in larger time chunks of around 2 hours with a small break in between. Ideally, I will find at least two of these time chunks per day, but I also know that life be life-ing sometimes and I might not always get a full 4 hours in which to write. That on’t stop me from celebrating the small wins, jotting down notes bout how my writing sessions are going, and compiling them all to share with you at the end of the month!

Who wants to guess how far into the manuscript I will be by the end of May? Originally, I thought I’d be done, off celebrating the first draft completed. But now I know, that is highly unlikely, if not impossible.

My personal hope?

To have reached the climactic scene in which this whole story was inspired by, thus finishing what I believe will become the first book of two. I’ve no idea what word count that might look like, or how many chapters it’ll take. But I am excited nonetheless to get to such a pivotal moment in my character’s life and story.

Wish me luck!