Stats
Average Daily Wordcount (Week 5): 3,507
Week Total Wordcount: 24,552
Year Total Wordcount: 135,970
Words to go:
Month: 47,434
Year: 864,030
What did I learn this week?
I learned that when your day job is asking you to work overtime, Milwordy gets much more difficult. I still made my goals, but it was exhausting. I’m not sure how long I can keep this up if I don’t get a little relief from work.
I didn’t take days off this week because my spreadsheet is a little screwed up and I honestly thought I was further behind in my weekly word count than I actually was. So that means that I also learned how important days off are. Now, I have yet to take a complete day off from writing during Milwordy. But for instance, on one of my days off last month, I only wrote 30 words. Not exactly a taxing writing day. It was good to rest while also feeling like I was keeping my momentum going. Days like that, where I can give myself a break are vital. This week I felt like a too tight guitar string and yeah, there were a few times I almost snapped. I’m hoping work will calm down soon so that I can get some rest.
I also learned that I start getting bored of working on the same project for more than a month. I’ve been working on this novella series for the entirety of Milwordy so far, and yes, each novella is its own story, yet still, I’m finding it difficult not to hop to another project. This is…not entirely a shock to me.
Fun fact, my college had strange semesters. We split the semesters into 12 weeks (in which we started and finished the bulk of our classes) and 3 weeks (in which we started and finished one class). The first time I experienced the 3 week, I was like “Why aren’t all classes like this???” I do extremely well when I can hyper-focus on one thing for a short amount of time, 3 weeks to a month being pretty optimal. It’s one of the reasons I love NaNoWriMo. It’s just my kind of thing.
And, if I play my cards right, I can make this work for Milwordy as well, but the trick is, I think, not to allow myself to work on the same project for more than a month. Mostly this shouldn’t be that difficult. I don’t write epic fantasies that are over 100k. In fact, I’m a pretty sparse writer in the first draft, so even getting my novels up to 80k is a struggle. That means, I can basically focus on starting and finishing a novel in one month. But this requires planning.
The novella thing seemed like it would be perfect for me, but I think sticking within this same series for this long was a mistake. Aaaand I still have one more novella in the series to finish before NaNoWriMo. I breaking up the monotony a little with a Halloween inspired short story though, so hopefully that will help.
If you’re also doing Milwordy, I would love to hear how it’s going. Are you on track? Have you been working on multiple projects or just one?
If you’re not doing Milwordy, I’d love to hear what you are working on.
Either way, let me know if you find it difficult to work on the same project over an extended period of time. I’m fascinated by how different we all are in terms of our writing processes.
If you’re enjoying this blog, please like, follow, and share. And I’d love to hear from you if you have any suggestions for what you’d like to see me talk about next.
-Robin
Rambling Robin 