A little light, but next week will be better!

Well unfortunately this week hasn’t panned out quite the way I wanted it to.  I think the grand total for the week will only be around 6031.  I wasn’t very disciplined at the beginning of the week and that has hurt me a great deal for reaching my goals during the later part of the week.  However that is part of the purpose of having a test mile these first few weeks.  It enables a person to figure out exactly where they want to be with the writing they hope to accomplish.

So as a result I figure it might be a good idea to pull my number down a little bit to allow for other activities as well as to allow myself more time to write.  One of the scenes I was working on took nearly two and a half hours for me to write and while it was exactly what needed to be on the page, it was one of the most difficult pieces of writing I’ve ever had to do.

Right now I’m back east with my wife for her Grandfather’s funeral.  I’m optimistic about how much writing I can get done while back here, if only for one reason.  Energy.  I need social energy to be able to write effectively.  For example during NaNoWriMo because I was on Twitter, Facebook, and the NaNo site once per hour while writing I was able to accomplish about a thousand words per hour on a regular basis.  When I don’t have that energy I have the two and half hours writing one scene, which while it was what the story needed, it took much longer than I intended.

So now because I have had some time to think about my goals I set them down in a more firm format.

Each day I wish to finish at least one scene in my writing.  This can be anywhere from 1,000 words to 3,000 words.  But If I can finish a scene a day I should be able to keep up my momentum.  I should get through about two chapters per week, which would easily put me on time for finishing by the time March 22^nd rolls around.  With about two weeks for serious editing of the chapters to polish them up.

One thing I love about being a discovery writer is the fact that what I think is going to happen in the story is never what ends up happening.  I am surprised by the characters all the time.  For example, I went to write about how Jaide went about a visit with the Govenor of Pavor, Dirlin Dartmoor.  That turned into Dirlin offering Jaide a job as his bodyguard, and revealing more about both characters than I thought I would learn.

While I didn’t meet my writing goals I did manage to start my writing group this past week.  A whole three of us met for the first time.  I was expecting more to be there, but I figure this is a start.  There was a lot of laughter and a great deal of getting to know each other.  Two weeks from now we all have to have projects worth sharing with the others and I’m hoping that I have my prologue to “Crimes” polished enough to share.

Seeing as this is turning into a ramble session rather than a blog, I figure I’ll end here.  If any of you know more about blogging than I do, please feel free to leave comments about how I can improve my blog so that others may want to read it below.  I’m trying to prepare myself for a blog for my readers at some point, and I hardly know where to begin.  Any thoughts you have would be great.  Anyway, it is about 3:24 Sunday Morning on this train and I need to get some sleep.  Have a great day, and keep writing!