I am trying to maintain discipline and write every day by making a daily plan of what I want to do. I haven't scheduled anything too strenuous today: 500 words on my short story and completing the first draft of my latest blog article. Does anyone else set a daily plan? if so, what is it for today?
My goal is generally a chapter a day, which is roughly 1000-3500 words. I already have all the chapters outlined, so it's usually more than doable if I can just sit down and focus my energy on writing. Today's been a fairly inspired day thus far. I'm up to a little over 2100 words right now and haven't hit that wall yet. Anything from here on out is just gravy.
I need to write, however, I'm lacking motivation. Hmm, that idea of a progress journal is starting to sound like a clever one...
Didn't write yesterday, just gave feedback, so back to it for me. Hoping to get a scene between my main character and one of the supporting characters done. She's just survived a rape attempt unharmed and the supporting character has a major revelation to tell her. Aiming for 1,000 words but at least need 500 to not feel lazy.
It's only 10:47 in my neck of the woods and my writing today will consist of invoices I need to send out to clients and the translation of yet another file in a never ending social security fraud case. Then I hope to get in at least two critiques here in the forum of which I have been remiss as of late.
I've no idea; you know how they say 'every day holds surprises'? That's how I roll. In other words, I'll probably just work on one of my old works.
I am feeling extremely dejected since I got back from Europe a month ago because I have lost the well of my artistic motivation. Where once there was a rich source from which poetry used to gush forth every day in plenty, in Toronto it's now a dried out old cistern. Maybe I'll work on that short story I never finished. Ok, yeah. I will. *sigh*
I have a few objectives over the summer - mainly writing contests but my general goal at the moment is just to build a regular writing habit, so anything from reviews to notepad ramblings will suffice. Writers block seems to be a term thrown around quite a lot, but after reading through some of the thread I am not sure if I am experiencing this. I have plenty of ideas and as mentioned many different avenues to follow, but my attention span is lacking and despite trying to write every day, I never build any momentum. Joining these forums seems to have backfired, as they have become another website for me to pointlessly check every ten minutes...
It remained there. I felt like an expat writer while drifting around Europe, and sitting by the window in the house in Venice. Maybe I just need to mentally transpose myself there, somehow. Woe is me.
My birthday is in two days. Two weeks ago, I set a goal to write a new short story before my birthday. I haven't even started it yet, so that won't happen. Sigh. Yesterday I had a brainwave about an older story I was working on, a 25,000 word novella. This new idea will probably stretch it into a novel - argh! I can't seem to keep my ideas short! I want to complete about three more short stories (less than, say, 7,500 words each) before I return to anything big, but all of my short story ideas grow into something else - often novels. Maybe I should just bite the bullet and work on a novel. I have two on the go already, might as well add a third and a fourth, right? Anyway, today I'll probably just spend a couple of hours reviewing and revising an older piece of work.
145 thousand words in and this one section is giving me hell. I have most of it in my head but it won't transfer to the page. I just don't know what a couple of my characters will say and as the scene is heavy on dialogue, I am lost. It's been making me impazzire for the last five days
This morning I started working on Not Pink. My short story which I hope to turn into a novella. I've already jotted a few scenes today that I'm happy with, I thought it would be harder to pick up on the story but no, as soon as I started re-reading it ideas began to flow. I'm also working on a timeline to figure out where I can put the new scenes.
I'm hoping to finish the fourth chapter of one of my new works, and get a start on the fifth. I really should edit and spit shine The New Order and then work up the effort to submit it to agents, but eh.
Just finished something up that nearly burned me out so I took a few days off. Today I'm working on something that I'm hoping will be wonderful. It sounds both tragic and romantic in my head not to just be able to transfer it onto that flat-screened "paper." I also plan on blogging today. Because my day job gets in the way and I have a family, I can't have a set time like I would love to be able to do. Perhaps within a few years things will be different and I'll be able to focus mainly on writing.
While I wrote my first draft, I would come up with ways to modify the plot and wrote notes at the top of the chapter I wanted to change. Now, I'm working on those suggestions as I write my second draft. Yesterday, I wrote a finished a whole chapter based on the notes.
Awe! That's too bad...but if it's writer's block you're suffering from...I started a thread with a couple story starters... https://www.writingforums.org/threads/creative-writing-prompts-for-blocked-writers.133770/ Also, some things that inspire me are doing tedious things, such as cleaning my room, maybe drawing, or just kinda staring out the window. (Drawing can be a gold mine because, along with a great illustration, a great back story may unfurl itself.)
Editting my story...both love it and detest it- the editting, I mean. It's a loong process. For any fellow artists, it's painting in that rough sketch of someone just to figure out that the eye is positioned on their chin and goodness knows where the nose went.
No, I don't make any daily plans. I only write when I feel like writing. I can write any time I don't need to set my mind especially for writing. It is my vocation and always on my mind.
