The last few months I’ve been doing lots of busy work — but not much writing. Edits, yes. Promo, absolutely. Arm loads of mailings. As many guest blogs as my poor brain would hold.
But actual words on the page have been few and far between.
It’s not that I haven’t tried to write — I’ve got several WiPs begging for attention. I just always find something else I’d rather do, which is really unusual for me. I’m not blocked — I just can’t get started. I write a sentence and then find myself staring off into space. What’s up with that?
I don’t feel burned out. I was stressed out last month for the Evil Day Job, but Oct. has been much better. It could be PRSD – Post RELEASE Stress Disorder. Or is that R=Review? I’ve never had this slowdown last so long after a release though.
I think I just need a kick in the pants. It’s easy to get into a rut and do the same thing, over and over, even if it’s no longer working. It’s easier than trying to find something new. New might be scary or a complete waste of time, I reason, so I keep plugging away, spinning my wheels.
With NaNoWriMo just around the corner, I still don’t know what I’m going to do. I’m leaning heavily toward making myself finish my current projects and then move into Mal’s book. I know that means I probably won’t hit 50K in Nov — it’s just too hard for me personally to work on projects already started that are too small.
However, I really feel like I need to FINISH. These projects have been hanging around way too long and I need projects finished, polished, and submitted.
On an unrelated topic, I mentioned I’ve been trying harder to follow FlyLady routines. One of her central ideas is to set a timer and work only for 15 mins. Don’t try to tackle every single thing that’s wrong — just start small. Finish something. Move on.
So I thought, hey, I need to do this with writing. If nothing else, it’ll get me moving again. After work today, I set the timer on my iPhone for 20 mins and opened my ZCR file. I’ve been opening and closing this file for days, adding only a sentence or two but that’s it.
With the timer ticking away, I got started. It was sort of like blowing cobwebs out. It was rough and not too pretty, but I did get words. Almost 600 words. More words than I’ve written in weeks added up.
Yay! So that’s my approach for the next few days. I’ll set a timer for 15-20 mins and see what I get. I have all next week off from the Evil Day Job, and right now, I plan to keep working on my current projects. Whether I’ll “officially” join NaNoWriMo or not I don’t know yet. It’s more important to me to get my engine rumbling at full speed!
I haven’t been real successful with timed writing. I know people swear by it. I see people on Twitter doing the 1k1h and think it would be awesome to hit that. I think I just need to train myself 😀
Whoot on the wordage!
Like Raelyn, I haven’t had a lot of success with timed writing. When I can hear the clock ticking, I have more of a tendency to “close up”. I guess I don’t write very well under pressure. Maybe I should try setting the alarm on my phone though…that way I won’t hear it until the alarm goes off.
Good luck to you whether you officially enter NaNo or not!
I used to do (and probably will again during Nano) the 1k 1hour challenge. It always amazed me how timing it always got me to write faster. Some days it would take me all day and I wouldn’t even get to 1k, but under the gun I could do it in an hour.
I’m glad your finding a way to write some more. I hope you get all the word count you dream for.