Impressive Progress
16/07/09 03:18 Filed in: Writing
Almost a week into the new plan and things continue
to go well. I have made good progress on The
Silent Goodbye, with what I think is some
reasonably good writing along the way.
The key is consistency. Write at least a little bit every day. A second key is setting reasonable goals for each day's writing: I'm finding that I try to start and finish at least one scene every day. Some people say you should leave off in mid-scene, even in mid-sentence, so that you can relaunch fairly easily the next day. That doesn't work for me. I'd prefer to write a scene, then spend the intervening period allowing my mind to work through the next scene or two before I sit down to write again.
Although I do the bulk of the writing in the evening (I set aside between 30 and 90 minutes a night to write — again, I'm setting reasonable goals for myself), I also try to do at least a little bit of writing on my lunch hour at work. This creates a bridge period between the major blocks of writing, a chance to work through the transitions from scene to scene, that kind of stuff.
Once I've done maybe 20 to 30 minutes of writing at work, I block and copy whatever I produce into an e-mail and send it to myself. The first step for the evening session is then to open the e-mail, block and copy the passage into my working file for the novel and, then, as I go through to correct formatting errors caused by the movement from Word file to e-mail file and back to Word file, I also revise the passage. This kick starts the evening's writing session and off I go.
Of course, when my work is as busy as it has been for the past couple of days, I can't always get to the writing. Some days are just train wrecks of meetings, drop ins, counselling sessions, and e-mail correspondence. It can be overwhelming.
Even on those kinds of days, however, it's good to get at least some writing done, if only in the evening. It keeps me sane and it keeps the rhythm going. Writing seems to feed on itself: once you get going, you keep going. If you grind to a halt, it's hard to get started again.
So Phillip Gold is moving along well. Abigail Massey, on the other hand, is still sitting in the Ladies Waiting Room, hoping to hear from a publisher. Soon, we hope.
On the down side, my commitment to my writing has had at least one negative impact: less time to play with the dog. I kind of got that message when Marlee Marie marched into our bedroom this morning at 2 a.m. and dropped a ball noisily at the end of the bed, then let out a big sigh and collapsed dramatically to the floor. Message received, Marlee.
The key is consistency. Write at least a little bit every day. A second key is setting reasonable goals for each day's writing: I'm finding that I try to start and finish at least one scene every day. Some people say you should leave off in mid-scene, even in mid-sentence, so that you can relaunch fairly easily the next day. That doesn't work for me. I'd prefer to write a scene, then spend the intervening period allowing my mind to work through the next scene or two before I sit down to write again.
Although I do the bulk of the writing in the evening (I set aside between 30 and 90 minutes a night to write — again, I'm setting reasonable goals for myself), I also try to do at least a little bit of writing on my lunch hour at work. This creates a bridge period between the major blocks of writing, a chance to work through the transitions from scene to scene, that kind of stuff.
Once I've done maybe 20 to 30 minutes of writing at work, I block and copy whatever I produce into an e-mail and send it to myself. The first step for the evening session is then to open the e-mail, block and copy the passage into my working file for the novel and, then, as I go through to correct formatting errors caused by the movement from Word file to e-mail file and back to Word file, I also revise the passage. This kick starts the evening's writing session and off I go.
Of course, when my work is as busy as it has been for the past couple of days, I can't always get to the writing. Some days are just train wrecks of meetings, drop ins, counselling sessions, and e-mail correspondence. It can be overwhelming.
Even on those kinds of days, however, it's good to get at least some writing done, if only in the evening. It keeps me sane and it keeps the rhythm going. Writing seems to feed on itself: once you get going, you keep going. If you grind to a halt, it's hard to get started again.
So Phillip Gold is moving along well. Abigail Massey, on the other hand, is still sitting in the Ladies Waiting Room, hoping to hear from a publisher. Soon, we hope.
On the down side, my commitment to my writing has had at least one negative impact: less time to play with the dog. I kind of got that message when Marlee Marie marched into our bedroom this morning at 2 a.m. and dropped a ball noisily at the end of the bed, then let out a big sigh and collapsed dramatically to the floor. Message received, Marlee.