#WritingWednesday – March Madness
For the Weeks of 2/25/13-3/3/13 and 3/4/13-3/10/13
Have you ever been out with friends or a loved one, had a great night, looked at the clock and suddenly realized that things have one on much later than they were supposed to? You know that whole “where did the time go” moment?
Welcome to the past two weeks.
Lets start with the word counts-
2/25/13-3/3/13: 4,938
3/4/13-3/10/13: 5,291
For a total word count of 10,229 words in 14 days, an average of 730 words per day.
Truth be told, I haven’t decided if I like this number or not. I had secretly been hoping for an average of 1,000 words per day so in that regard I’ve fallen short. Yet at the same time, when I look back and I see the level that ‘life’ encroached on my writing, I’m pretty damn impressed.
I took delivery of new furniture in my home on Sunday the 3rd. Which required me to empty out my entire bedroom, and break down the couch in my living room in order to accomodate the movers. Everything got moved into Off The Deep End Studios which turned that normally productive zone into a do not enter lest you trip, fall and kill yourself zone. Then it took a day and a half to put the place back together.
Last week found itself mired by last minute tickets to the Chicago Blackhawks game, severe weather that closed my office and cancelled classes, family commitments that stretched beyond my anticipated schedules, and previous commitments to see friends. Oh… yeah… and the start of CPA review, the first class of which was cancelled by the afore mentioned severe weather, so I had to redirect home time to the tasks I would have accomplished in the classroom.
And 10,000 words in 14 days.
How? Time Management
ORGANIZE was one of my Three words for this year and I am very happy to see that it’s paying off already. The Magic spreadsheet has much to do with that, as the drive to keep the streak alive has found me sitting in bed writing at 11:30PM when I need to sleep instead, just so I can make my quota for the day. But there’s more to it than that.
With all the craziness of last week, I found myself behind already in the pace I need to maintain for the review classes. The move of the furniture has uncovered, and in some cases caused the need for some minor household repairs- nothing major mind you I can do them all myself and for less than $50 total at my local hardware store. But they need to be attended to. I have other commitments that need to be maintained in my music, in my freelance accounting work and… well my own personal life in terms of commitments to myself. How the hell am I going to get all of this work done?
Time Management.
Sunday night, I sat down and did a time inventory. In my rough calculations I figured I had 21 hours worth of work to do before March 18, and 37 un scheduled, non sleeping hours in which to do it. Almost immediately, I felt better. Obviously my estimates are going to be off, but with a 16 hour buffer… there should be plenty of time.
Does this mean I’ll be playing my 3rd play through of Mass Effect 3, or picking up the next Starcraft 2 title any time soon? No. Does this mean I’ll be able to sit and spend a night just catching up on the DVR? No. But it does mean that enough hours exist in the day to get me to where I want and need to be. Enough time exists to do the things I have to do so I can come back to writing and socializing and doing the things I want to do.
It’s an old old lesson. But sometimes it needs to be re-taught.
So… what is on tap for next week?
In the writing realm, I don’t honestly know. I’ve put a lot of words down on Virtuality and have crossed the 103,500 word mark in it. It’s well on it’s way through the third act and the explosive finale to the story is taking shape. But with the work I’ve pulled on it over the past 14 days, I’ve been writing ahead of my outline and while I have a general outline of the entire book, I do need to pull back and break down the scenes a bit more to choreograph the finish. I have 6 main or secondary characters actively involved, of which 4 or POV characters in the third act. There is one main plot line, and two side plots to tie out plus I need to plant the seeds and set the pieces in place for the bridge to the inevitable book 3. So there’s a lot of work to there and as such the word count for the manuscript this week will be a bit lower.
I’ll still be writing every day, to keep my habit going and my streak alive on the magic spreadsheet, but as I write this post on Tuesday the 12th, todays word count on the spreadsheet will be coming from this blog post. It’s still writing.
So… March is here and the madness has already started. Looks like it’ll be here for a while. But I’ll be here too and I hope you all will as well.
Until next time!
Keep writing!
[image error]
