Day 5 of Writing Every Day In March

Yesterday I wrote a little over 2,000 words. I don't see how that's right because it didn't feel like I was even writing for very long, but I do remember the words were just pouring out of me super fast. I wrote on my Dell laptop. I don't like the keyboard on it nearly as much as my bluetooth keyboard, or our MacBook Pro, but it got the job done. This whole writing every day thing is really making a big difference in my productivity. Every time I sit down the words just flow because the story is still fresh in my mind. I'm used to writing in rare chunks of time that are few and far between. Often when I write it has been over a week since the last time I wrote anything. I don't ever want to go back there.

I really think having the simple goal to write every day is what has made such a big difference. I've never written this much in a week, other than during NaNoWriMo. I'm not getting up to the 1,667 words you strive for during NaNoWriMo, but I surpassed that word count goal by a little bit last night. I'm in chapter 24 and if I finish chapter 25 today then I will be on track to finish this novel by the end of the month! That would will be so awesome!

The best part in all of this is that I'm really enjoying the storytelling. I haven't once found myself stopping to check my word count. My mind is focused on the story. I don't even care how many words I'm getting down. I'm just making sure that I write something every day. I'm always surprised by how many words I get at the end of my writing session.

So here's to another day of not breaking my writing streak and painting another box with a red x on the calendar!

Day 4 of Writing Every Day In March

Yesterday I wrote a little over 900 words. I took my son to gymnastics and the other kids were going to play in the tubes and tunnels there, but they were closed for the day. So I took them to a Burger King with tubes and tunnels, or a "play place." They played, I bought a coffee, and I wrote.

I had my awesome wireless bluetooth keyboard with me that has a perfect docking spot for my iPhone 6+. In a little over a half hour I was able to knock out over 900 words. I think having headphones in playing the soundtrack to the Super Nintendo game Alcahest helped my productivity. Music in a public place really helps me drown out the noise around me and focus on my writing. I was at a table near a window and had a trusty cup of coffee by my side.

It was an excellent day of writing and my most prolific yet. The words just flowed. It was awesome. One more red x on the calendar!

Day 3 of Writing Every Day In March

Note: I'm posting this a day late because my wife and I stayed up way too late with some awesome friends playing a board game called Power Grid. It was so fun! Totally worth it but we went straight to bed once they left so I didn't have time to post my update for Day 3. Here's a pic of our fun:

Yesterday I wrote, well I'm not really sure how many words, but it was a good little pile of them. It was over 500 but I'm not really sure how many. It was another writing session that happened during my commute home with speech to text on my iPhone. I don't think I e mentioned that's how I do a lot of my writing. I prefer writing on a keyboard but speech to text is the fastest way to get words on the screen. It also is a great way to write dialogue. Since you're speaking the words they just come out a lot more natural than when you're typing. One more red x on the calendar!

Day 2 of Writing Every Day In March

Yesterday I wrote about 850 words. I had another nice long stretch on my commute home. That's still not a ton of words for a day but it is about 350 more words than Day 1. I have chapter 21 finished and most of chapter 22. I'm not writing a ton of words, but so far I have managed to write every day and I'm really happy about that.

When I finish the 25th chapter of the novel I will be halfway done with it. Wouldn't it be cool if I could finish my novel this month? That is my goal. With that said, I should probably figure out what my word count for each day needs to be and try and hit that. I have 28 days left in the month and about 28 chapters so I would have to write a chapter a day. I try to shoot for 1,000-word chapters but they usually end up being a little more than that.

I think I will do that. One chapter a day, but I'm still not going to beat myself up for days with only a couple hundred words. Even if I only write a little bit, but do it every day, I'll still have more words at the end of the week.

Two days in a row isn't much of a streak, but it's a great place to start! I can't wait to see this calendar full of red xs. I will be super bummed if there is even one day that ends up blank. My goal is to not let that happen. Even if you're coming in a couple days late, join me! Start your own calendar and paint it red!

Day 1 of Writing Every Day In March

Yesterday I wrote about 500 words. I did it in fits and spurts, but had one pretty good session on my commute home. 500 words isn't a lot, but I'm totally happy with it. I'm done feeling bad about writing less than a certain number of words on a day that I planned to write, because now I plan to write every day.

Easily Attainable Goals

I heard this guy, on a podcast or somewhere, who studied will power came up with an interesting plan for getting in shape. He took something that he was already in the habit of, brushing his teeth, and used that to spark a new habit of doing push-ups. He was smart about it though and tricked himself in a cool way. He knew that if he set out to do like 50 push-ups that he would probably fail or not even start the first one. So he had the easily attainable goal of doing just five push-ups every time he brushed his teeth. He found that he would always do the push-ups because he knew he could do five, but also that once he got to five he would just keep going. So he would end up doing way more than five push-ups, but if his goal had been more he might not have started. Pretty powerful stuff that really worked.

It seems like with anything in life just getting started is the hardest thing. So I've always wanted to be a writer who writes every day, but it just seemed impossible. I could never find the time. That's why at first I was trying to have a goal of writing just 250 words every day. It seemed pretty attainable to me. I still couldn't keep it up consistently, though. Now my goal is just to write every day. It's OK if I can only write for three minutes and get 150 words down. At least I wrote that day. I have found that the times where I have started to write with the knowledge that it might only be for a few minutes it ends up being a writing session where I get a lot more words down that I thought I would. So I am very proud of my 500 words that I wrote yesterday. I plan to write more than that today, but my goal is just to write today. I've heard that it's really good to have a word count you try to reach every day and I'm hoping I get there someday, but for now I'm just committing to writing every day.

I'd love to hear how you're doing in the comments. Thanks for stopping by!