Tuesday 15 May 2012

Losing my way

I have a 500 word minimum word a day habit. In theory. Which means (excluding blogs and emails) I write 500 words at least on my current WIP. Or the equivalent in edits - say review 2000 words of previous writing. That is my absolute minimum, which I am failing to complete, and I'm not sure why.

In practice, I write a thousand words a day, anyway. In fact, it crept up to 1500 minimum at one point, which pushed me to exceed that every day. It's time to forgive myself and remind myself I only have to find 500 words. I know if I don't write to that routine, I literally grind to a halt. I know why this dry spell has crept up on me - I'm stalled waiting to leap into action on the next round of little edits on the book. I have two outstanding projects to get on with and two books on the go, and a rationale to write. That's too much, I'm dithering between them rather than doing any of them. So, I'm planning to choose one each day, and I'll work on that. I can't switch between projects and all the time I'm thinking about a novel some little voice is nagging me about the poetry competition.

Speaking of the poetry comp, I sent off a draft to look at from Lulu, and immediately can see the order is crucial, also that I need two more poems to play with.  There's something wonderfully encouraging about actually holding a book in your hands. It also gives you a sense of the substance of the work. Eighteen poems represents masses of work - I wrote two novels over that time. Poetry is HARD but there's something incredibly satisfying. So, today, I'm planning to polish a couple of poems and move them around.  

2 comments:

  1. I think a lot of people got stalled after the A-Z Challenge. I did. It's hard for me to bounce back and forth between projects too, but sometimes it's what I need. Good luck with the poetry.

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    Replies
    1. Thank you Tonja! I'm getting on with the poetry, it's really coming on!

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