An Act of Recommittedness – Day 285

Yes, things have been hectic. Yes, the creative juices are flowing mostly towards day-job projects, leaving little but pulp and seeds for my evening writing sessions — not much use trying to make much of that.

But I’ll also admit that I probably could have fit in a few more hours in here and there. I think I’ve been feeling a little overwhelmed over the last few months… well, anyway. Enough of the excuses.

Which is the whole point of this blog post. I’m deciding to recommit to my one hour per day of writing per day to get this done.

See, I set a tentative completion date for a reading copy as the end of the summer. I’ve always said that that’s flexible. Family and work comes first of course. After that, as long as I’m honestly putting the time in, then it takes as long as it takes. I stuck to my hour-per-day schedule successfully as I wrote the first draft. I abandoned it simply because I wasn’t sure that I could rework the second draft in one-hour increments. I thought that I would need bigger blocks of time to rework scenes, etc.

But you know what? That’s not working for me. I don’t have bigger blocks of time. And when I do sit down to work on it, typically I’m looking at one-hour chunks of time anyway. So why not make it official?

Through the summer — starting today, as a matter of fact — I’ll be going back to my one hour per day writing schedule, and tracking my hours. I’m not 100% it will help me finish my second draft. But what I’m doing right now isn’t working either. Time to take a new tack.

I worked on the novel a few times this weekend. I’m still slogging through the first quarter of the book, paring down the word count and trying to heighten the story, characters, and suspense. Funny, you think “a novel — I have all the time in the world!” but you get down into the thick of it, and you really have to be just as concise with your words as with anything else if you want to hit your targets.

I’m still long, but I’m getting closer. And better.

Until tomorrow.

~Graham

Hours:

Today: 1.25
Total: 137.25