Yesterday I had a really good day on my book. I've really been struggling lately because I have been unwell and my concentration just times out. I wait around for a time when I'm really in good shape to do some work and it either never comes or else it comes and goes in ten minutes. This means I haven't been managing a good workcount at all. I am on the third draft so I'm having to chose my words very carefully - I don't want to have to do this again, if it can be avoided. On the first draft I could manage 3000-4000 words on some days, even a bedridden day, my thoughts were just flowing onto the paper - or the screen at least, via the keyboard, but you know what I mean. Thus I had completed an 80,000 word novel in a few months.
Anyway, yesterday I tried a new system of disciplining and pacing myself. I really struggle with this stuff. In particular I struggle with lying down flat and doing nothing when I'm not ready to sleep, even when I am completely knackered and neither use nor ornament (well, maybe a little ornamental). I worked in five, ten and fifteen minute slots, depending on how I got on, then had a rest or did something else (listened to music, read the news etc), then after five or ten miutes I would go back. Very stop-start, but the breaks were short enough not to lose my flow - if I had to work for half an hour, I would time-out before the end and then half an hour's rest would break the flow completely.
Thus I wrote 1860 good words yesterday and am quite chuffed. Hopefully if I stick to it I can make some real progress and have the thing wrapped up before the summer.
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