InCreWriMa Week 2: CHECK IN

Happy Thursday, Dear Readers - and Happy 300th post on The Zoë-Trope!

*Sets Free The Winged Monkeys of Celebration* Aw, look at their little leathery wings going. How cute. Fly, my pretties! Spread unicorn sparkles and terror everywhere you pass!

Isn't it perfect that my 300th post here should be the International Creative Writing May check in? This whole thing is about bringing writers together, encouraging us all to have run being creative, and sharing our achievements. And that's what this blog has always been about, too! Ah, I love it when a (not-really) plan comes together.

(BTW, excitement may cause me to make more random film references than normal. I apologise in advance).

So today we check in after one full week of InCreWriMa. How did you do? Did it drag as slowly as the last Man of Steel remake, or slip past swiftly like the one about the genius playboy billionaire in a metal suit? Did you hit your target? Fly lightyears beyond it? Miss it by miles? Get all your week's writing done in one day and then chill while the rest of us suckers were slaving away? Have you had to readjust your goal, perhaps. Please, share everything in the comments! And I urge you not to respond only to this post and to what I'm saying BUT TO EACH OTHER as well.

Talk to each other, guys! Offer advice, congratulations, commiserations, make friends. That's all part of the fun.

I will start off by talking about how my week went. Well, on Thursday last week I fully intended to begin properly by writing my full day's target of six pages (you may or may not remember that my target was to write six pages a day, six days a week this month - I hoped to get those pages typed up each day as well). But then I got into a Twitter discussion which spawned this inescapable inspiration for a blog post - which evolved into BLOGGERS vs. AUTHORS. So I basically spent all Thursday researching, writing and revising that. And I can't exactly regret it - it got nearly 1,500 hits the day it went up!

No big deal, I thought. I'll just write an extra two pages on Friday, then squeeze a couple in on Saturday (normally my day off) and with another two extra on Sunday, I'll have caught up!

Fate was listening. Fate laughed at me, and pointed and mocked. As a result of which, after writing my eight pages on Friday, that night a third round of edits on The Night Itself appeared in my inbox. To be fair, my editor had warned me they were coming - I just forgot about it.

After facepalming a few times, until the refreshing tingling sensation in my skin did away with the urge to faint, I made a new plan. I would write my six pages in the morning, and work on the revisions each day as soon as those six pages were done. That would mean I wouldn't have much (if any) time to type up my six pages like I'd intended to do every day, but that didn't really matter - it would just make it a bit more difficult to track my actual word count progress. And my goal this month wasn't about amounts of words written as it was about moving the story forward.


How did that work out for me?

Um...can you spell AMAZING?

It's been fantastic! Knowing that my goal wasn't an unspecified 'as many words as possible (hurry up, write MOAR!)' has really seemed to free me up. Even on days when I've been taking care of my dad, I've still felt OK to sit down, write half a page, get up and do observations, sit down and write half a page, get up and check meds, sit down... I've managed to hit target every single day, and without stressing out about it. And then in afternoon, after my dad's treatment is complete and I'm back in my Writing Cave, I can switch my brain into edit mode without any sense that I'm tearing myself away from my WIP, because I know I've taken my characters a step further on their journey already.

What's more? You guys, several times when I've been writing in my notebook I've completely 'zoned' and ended up exceeding my target but a LOT. I worked out that by this stage in InCreWriMa - seven days in - I should have written thirty-six pages. I've actually got forty-one!

I really hope that next week goes as well.

All right now, your turn. Tell all in the comments!