Home » Posts tagged '100-day challenge'
I nearly had a break today. I came thisclose to taking off the most beautiful day in ages, the kind the weather people call a “top ten weather day.” The heat wave broke, the sky was vivid blue with feathery white clouds, the temperatures were mild, and I had no deadlines looming.
Or so I thought.
Turns out, I’d forgotten about one. I only remembered because the client called around noon to ask about the project. And just like that, my day off was shot to hell.
Continue reading
I’ve lost track of the count. While I’ve been making notes and thinking over the past two days, the only writing I’ve done (other than legal work) has been a couple scribbled notes. (I nearly wrote “a few,” but the truth is there are only two, one yesterday and one today. If I’m going to confess, I may as well be honest.)
At first, if I missed a day, I circled it on the calendar. Then, I found I was forgetting to cross off days, and I had to try to remember whether it was because I’d written and not noted it or if I’d simply not written. Either way, it wasn’t terrific. At this point, I could make a decent guess about how many days I’ve missed—ten, maybe. Not brilliant, but at least I’ve plodded along.
The upside is that by pushing myself in the past two months, I’ve made very good progress on the section of the book that really, really needed work—as in, it wasn’t there. All I had was a note that I had to add a climax and a conclusion. Those are pretty big things to need to add.
My problem was that I hadn’t figured out what they were going to be, apart from a vague notion about something at the very end. I’d also forgotten the most important thing about my process, which is that I write to discover the story. When I started following the characters instead of dictating to them, the final ascent to the climax began to unfold. (Yes, I’m mixing the hell out of my metaphors. Enjoy.)
Continue reading
You probably thought I’d given up.
Oh, no.
Come on, admit it. You figured I threw in the towel, especially since my last blog post had nothing to do with this project.
Well, maybe. I mean, it’s been a while.
I’ll admit, I’ve missed two days (which is why this was Day 52, not Day 54). And some of my writing days have been fairly minimal—half an hour (or less), or just research, or mainly reading and editing. It’s certainly been no #1000wordsofsummer this year.
But that’s actually a good thing.
Sure, right.
No, really, I’m not making excuses. For where this book is now, a daily word goal would have been counterproductive. Word goals are good when you’re putting down the first draft and figuring out the story. That’s not where I am now. At this point, I’m fleshing out a piece of the story that I’d found wildly intimidating. By going slowly and including research, I’m making real progress, not just slap down some words and call it done progress. I’m cutting phrases and lines and paragraphs and whatever else needs to go. I’m editing what was already there to accommodate the new material. I’m seeing how the new stuff is going to impact what came before, such as where I need to drop in references so that what happens in the climactic section isn’t coming out of the blue. (I hate it when I get broadsided by critical information just at the pivotal moment. It’s like reading a murder mystery and being told on page 332 of a 335-page book that the main suspect had a twin brother nobody knew about, and the two planned the murder together, with one of them accepting an award at a black-tie event—perfect alibi—while the other committed the murder.)
The reality is that barring a flat-out miracle—including three months when I don’t have to practice law and yet money magically appears in the bank every month, as well as a brilliant (and affordable) editor who is free to drop everything and spend four weeks helping me turn this mess into a masterpiece—there is simply no way this book will be out for the holidays this year. I hate that so much. At book events last year, I kept telling people that the new book would be out this year. Now, I’m making myself a liar. The only option would be to write and publish a novella-length piece in this series, except that there isn’t time to do that because I’d have to start from scratch and it’s already the middle of June and I have no ideas for something short and self-contained. I can’t even use the first section of the present book, because there’s nothing particularly Christmasy about it, and if I’m going to publish a novella about Santa Claus at the holidays, it needs to be Christmasy. Plus, because I’m me and I require everything to fit together, it would somehow need to advance the series.
Sigh.
You’re probably wishing right now that this was another post about ecclesiastical garments. Mea maxima culpa.
Except . . . you know. . . .
No. Absolutely not. It wouldn’t work.
Well, maybe. . . .
Forget it. I’m sticking with the manuscript in progress.
But what if. . . ?
This is ridiculous. I can’t get distracted. Not now. I cannot go from start to finish on another book–especially not in time for the holidays. It is not possible. It doesn’t matter that there’s this one large, gaping hole in the narrative, and there isn’t room in this book to deal with that issue because it would make the book much longer and it doesn’t fit anywhere with any of the rest of the story anyway, so it would have to be separate anyway except that it wouldn’t be long enough to be a novel by itself, so. . . .
I’m just saying. . . .
Oh, shut up.
Well. I certainly didn’t see this coming when I started this post. And I don’t know whether it’ll be possible anyway.
But it would address that gaping hole, which is nice because the book I’m currently working on is the final book of the series, so this would take care of that issue before I get to the finale. Not that anybody has ever mentioned the hole. Maybe I’m the only one who sees it. Maybe it’s not really a hole at all.
I hate moving away from the book in progress now, just when I’m finally getting a firm handle on it. After all, do I really have to have a new book this year? Of course not. Nobody’s going to cry if I tell them it’s not happening this year. Most of the people from last year’s events probably won’t remember anyway. It’s not as if they’re sitting around saying, “Oh, I can’t wait for [fill in the event], because P. Jo Anne Burgh said she’s going to have a new book this year!”
And yet, there’s another story to be told. . . .
I need to think about this.
Moral of the story: be careful what you write.
It worked last year. Maybe it’ll work again.
That’s it. That’s my logic. That’s why last Wednesday, I started another 100-day project. Because I’ve been stalled on my novel for way too long, and I’m hoping this will work.
I’ve already given myself permission to fail, sort of. After telling people last year that the new Claus book would be out for the holidays, I’ve given myself permission not to be done on time. I’ll be apologizing all over the place, and sales will likely be in the toilet, but I’m not going to push just to get a book out the door by an arbitrary, self-imposed deadline and have the book be lousy.
Continue reading
Reader, I did it.
For 100 days, from April 1 through July 9, I wrote at least 1,000 words of my novel every single day. At present, the manuscript, which is most definitely not done and will require substantial editing, is 109,822* words.
My reactions are mixed. Part of me is flabbergasted that I made it for the entire 100 days without missing a single one, even on the infamous weekend when I wrote after I stopped work at 3:35 a.m., crouched over my Surface as the cats slept beside me on the bed. Another part of me says, “Of course you wrote. You’re a writer. That’s what writers do. And P.S., you still have a lot more to do.”
Continue reading
Two more days. Another two thousand words.
And then, this challenge is complete.
Here in the U.S., Independence Day was last Thursday. Many office workers were able to take Thursday and Friday off, resulting in a four-day weekend. Miraculously, my calendar behaved, and so I was one of those office workers. As a result, for the first time in longer than I can remember, I got a decent chunk of truly good rest. For four full days, I left the house only three times: a previously-scheduled massage, church Sunday morning, and mom-care Sunday evening. Other than that, I slept late, read, and did some organizing—and, of course, I wrote.
Continue reading
I’m in the final days of this challenge. I’ve written at least one thousand words of my new novel every day, all through April, all through May, all through June. Now, on the cusp of July, the finish line is in sight.
I think that this time, I’ll be ready to pause the word count.
It’s not that there isn’t still a lot to write. If I wanted to, I could probably go for at least another three weeks and not run out of material. But I’m tired. I need a break. Besides, rather than simply keep writing, I’m thinking I need to spend time going through what I’ve written, piecing it together to figure out where the holes are. So I’ve promised myself that for the next nine days, I’ll continue to write what I think needs to be written, and I’ll keep making notes as other pieces come to mind. After July 9—Day 100—I’ll get out the whiteboard and chart what I have so I know what I need to complete Draft #1, and then I’ll fill in those gaps.
Continue reading
Today was a beautiful day: clear, dry, even slightly cool as evening fell. Considering nasty-hot weather last week and the violent storms over the weekend—including a tornado warning on Saturday, followed by a power failure and a lack of internet—today, I felt as if I’d survived something.
Then, I counted how close I am to the end of this challenge, and that feeling multiplied. For 85 days, I’ve stayed faithful. Every night for nearly three months, I’ve written at least 1,000 words of my novel, and often more. The story has blossomed in ways I never saw coming. New characters, new settings, new challenges (for me and for them).
Continue reading
I don’t mean to be immodest, but I think I deserve a medal. Or a monument. Maybe a parade. At the very least, a round of applause.
Because last night, I kept writing.
Allow me to explain. There’s a judge in a particular set of consolidated cases who issued some extremely unreasonable orders, the upshot of which was that I had four objections due on Saturday, June 15. Yes, you read that right: by court order, they were all due on Saturday. I’d been working on them for two weeks, but the trial lawyers were doing so many depositions that I was constantly being flooded with new transcripts to review and incorporate into my objections.
Continue reading
It turns out that there are downsides and upsides to a daily writing practice.
The upsides are obvious. First and foremost, productivity. With 69 days in the bank and a minimum of 1,000 words each day, I’m well on my way to a first draft of my book. Had I not started this challenge, I’d probably be thinking and making notes and occasionally jotting down a page or two.
If I were working in this fashion, it’s likely most of the book would never come to be, because this practice is keeping the story in my mind so that my subconscious is working even when I’m doing other things. This, I think, is an even bigger benefit of a daily writing practice. For example, last evening as I was coming home from the fish market, a snippet of dialogue occurred to me. Since I was on the highway and couldn’t stop to write it down, I recorded a voice memo on my phone. Later, when I wrote it in my purple notebook, it was almost new to me—proof that if I hadn’t recorded it, I’d have forgotten it.
Continue reading
P. Jo Anne Burgh 