Well, Saturday was my big day to sit at home, lock myself in a room, and write all day. The goal was to finish two chapters of my novel and write as much as possible, hopefully bringing me closer to finishing my novel. I snuggled up in bed with two blankets, two kitties, my computer, some chocolate, and some homemade hard cider — and got to work. I wrote for a solid two hours, took a lunch break, came back and wrote for three hours, took another break, and then wrote some more. It was glorious.
I didn’t quite finish both chapters, but I did finish one of them and then the second one on Sunday! All told on Saturday my word count was 2300 for the day! It was awesome and exhausting. I know it might sound sad, but I have never written that much in one day before. I feel accomplished and proud of myself — while I didn’t get to 12k like my friend Jessica McHugh, it felt good enough that I want to keep doing it. So Sunday I wrote another 800 words, and today I’m already well on my way to a similar number. Next time I do a day like this (and I will definitely be doing more of these), I will try to take less breaks and have a greater output. The good news is, though, that doing this put me in the right mindset to continue this novel — I thought hard about where I’m taking the plot, what I want to accomplish, and what’s left for me to achieve my goal.
The novel itself is now more than 70k words long. For fantasy, that’s not exactly a great amount of words, but my story is winding down. I think it will probably top out around 80 or 85k. Whew. It’s so close!
At the end of the day, I would say that this was a great success. Can’t wait to do it again. I think I will as soon as Husband goes back to work (he took the week off so we could have a “stay-cation,” which is as awesome as it sounds).
This helped me! What about you? What are some techniques that you use to keep yourself writing? How do you cope with distractions? Let me know in the comments!
Liz Makes Stuff 
Keep going!
Also, I do not deal with distractions well. Especially since about 70% of my writing I do at work. (shhhh, don’t tell my boss.)
Your secret is safe with me. :) And yeah I don’t either, hence the locking-of-oneself in a room. It was literally the best thing ever.
I think tomorrow will be that day for me. I have it off due to working this upcoming weekend and I want to spend a lot of it writing. I also have this big problem of going to look up something for writing (a word I couldn’t remember, or something geographical) and then getting sucked down the wikipedia labyrinth. I find myself on the entry about something like Maori voting rights in Australia, which is fascinating but not at all pertinent to what I was working on.
Yeah I understand. Sometimes I have to turn the Internet off ha.
I’ve decided to try writing exclusively on my ipad. It at least makes internet browsing a bit more cumbersome.
That sounds like a good idea. I don’t think I could do it, but the idea of making Internet searches harder sounds like a good plan.
I have a bluetooth keyboard that makes the typing easier. Otherwise I wouldn’t be able to do it. Typing is still a bit weird on touch screens.
Agreed.
Although I have no experience with this kind of thing, I believe in you! You are SO talented and I cannot wait to read the final product. Procrastination I am familiar with and I know how hard it is to get your self to that motivated point but it looks like you are there! Keep going my dear. You can do this! Go Elizabeth! :)
Ahhhh thank you! Yay! I can’t believe I’m almost finished.
Yay you!!!! :)
Chocolate is a necessity for me as well. I dream about having an entire day for writing, but right now the most I’ve been able to steal is 2-3 hours at a time.
That’s still a good amount! You take what you can get, especially if you’re busy (like I know you are!).