Ira Heinichen's Blog, page 156

Day 2,843: Fidget

Writing a book is a very, very humbling experience, y’all. It’s up and down.

I was up two days ago. Top of the world up. This book will be finished by NIGHTFALL up. Well…I’m still a ways away. All it takes is one scene that doesn’t turn out the way it seemed like it would in the outline to knock you off your page count goals for a couple days.

I’m close on the scene. The scene fundamentally works, I think, which is to say that the idea for the scene is solid. It’s the execution right now. ...

Day 2,842: Fire Tornado

Not aaassss stellar of a writing day today, but I suppose that was to be expected given yesterday’s monstrosity. I still wrote 8 pages. Good shit, too. Left off in the middle of a pivotal scene that I’ll probably rewrite a thousand times until it sounds right.

Good work day. Not great. Today was fine.

And fine is okay.

Gonna rock tomorrow.

Night night.

Day 2,841: 6,500 words, 25 pages

I count my progress in pages while I’m drafting a new book. Some people use words, but counting words is a little hard for me to wrap my head around. Not sure why, exactly. Page count has always made sense to me. It might be because I spent several years learning to write scripts for Film and TV, and the only counts that make sense for scripts are pages. Maybe?

I wrote 25 of them today.

That’s about 6,500 words. I did a highlight to check.

It’s all downhill from here. Truly. I’ve outlin...

Day 2,840: Peak Lasso

Season 2 of Ted Lasso just got real, y’all. Third episode. So good. First two episodes were fine, don’t get me wrong. Loved them both. Third episode was razor sharp. Peak Lasso.

I…had a solid day today. I finished my outlining. What I built to gave me chills. It’s working now. I just have to write it. And I did! I was a bit wiped by finishing the outline in the morning, but I got in an afternoon session and kinda crushed it. I rallied. I will rally. I’m so close to done.

This book is going...

Day 2,839: Blur

You know…when you’ve written every day for this long, the entries truly do start to become a blur.

This is the closest I will ever come to being able to conceptualize what two thousand eight hundred and thirty nine days actually feels like…and it’s not very close. I know that’s roughly eight years. I’m getting close to EIGHT YEARS of having written a blog entry every day. Holy crap. But…there’s a lot of blur in between, man. The amazing thing about writing an entry every night is that I can z...

Day 2,838: Oh Boy Oh Boy

Making this a quick one because it is WAY past bed time…

As Josh would say: I’m gonna sleep in tomorrow.

We casted. We watched Return of the Jedi and it was glorious. RotJ is not a perfect movie by any means, but it does stick the landing. It is a raucous good time, and it does satisfactorily end the saga. More than that. It’s legitimately great. It’s just not AS great as Empire was. But very, veeerrryyy rarely is the last story in a series the best one.

Now home with bear and the pups....

Day 2,837: Not Stellar

Not a stellar day on the writing front.

I’ve hit a patch where there’s some indecision. I’m introducing a new character, one that I’ve kind of written myself into a hole as someone who swoops in and saves the day, and I want that to makes sense, be believable, etc etc. I’m worried that it won’t work.

I do think I have some solutions, but the anxiety over making it work is freezing me up. So…I just need to keep working on it. Need to push through it. Need to do some outlining, see how the s...

Day 2,836: Carrying Capacity

I only wrote 6 pages today, I think…but between yesterday and today, it evens out to 10 apiece, and I am absolutely fine with that. That feels like the normal flow of things.

I’m thinking about adjusting my work schedule. Already! It might be better to do 15 pages a day, five days a week as opposed to 10 pages a day every day. 15 pages a day would be quite the challenge…but those two days off might make it possible. I could also do 3 days on, 2 days off like I used to do back in the day with ...

Day 2,835: I’m Back

I’m back.

Found the writing groove. Wrote 14 pages today and didn’t even break a sweat. I did that in about 2 hours and 45 minutes, actually. Not even my full scheduled writing session. AND got some podcast stuff done.

What a relief.

I got up on time. The words flowed. Halleloo. The book is probably going to be too long. Oh well. I’ll send it out for some feedback and if it needs cuts, it needs cuts. I think it’s going to be fine. Give me a nice KENP count, too, which helps.

It’s alr...

Day 2,834: Here’s Hoping

Today was better!

Not the badass day I wanted…but better. I’m reminded today that I need to outline before I can write. And I need to walk before I can run. I really WANT to just get running again…but first must come walking. So, today I walked. I outlined. Tomorrow, I’ll do some more walking, I’ll just get my pages done. And the day after that. And the day after that…and then, when I’ve done several days of just getting my pages done, THEN if I feel like I can do more, I can try to do more.

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