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Writing on a Budget

I've had a hard time writing recently. I would put a lot of it down to hangover from some intense writing bouts outside my comfort zone recently. In February I wrote a novel outside my usual universes and mythos, and in May I tried writing a bunch of 1000-word short stories. This was exhausting. But I've also had a hard time buckling down to write BoM stuff.

Like, this is June 13, and I've only written eleven BoM chapters this month. Usually I'd be ten or fifteen chapters ahead. We're cruising toward a serious hiatus in the months of July and August, when I intend to go off BoM again.

I think yesterday I found one of my problems. Well, two of them, but I'm not going to talk about the Minecraft addiction, as it's too obvious to have anything to say about it.

The main problem is that I've stopped using a timer.

I think I've talked about this trick before. I stumbled on it a few years ago.

What I do is I sit down with an open document and start a timer. Forty-five minutes. As soon as it starts ticking, I start writing.

I also give myself a quota: 600 words.

The goal is to have 600 words written when the 45 minutes are up.

There are two ways of missing the goal. The first is by writing fewer than 600 words in the allotted time. But I don't beat myself up if I fail that. However many words I've written in that time, I'm okay with it. I've put in my 45 minutes of chair time and can end the session with a clear conscience.

The second way is to hit the 600 word mark before the 45 minutes are up. Actually, this is a "miss" only in the way that it's a miss when you overshoot the target, but in this case overshooting is good. I keep an eye on my word counts, and if I hit 600 words before my chair time is up, then I have permission to knock off before the timer runs down.

So, really, there's two goals: 600 words, or 45 minutes. I'm guaranteed to hit one of them, which means I'm guaranteed to have done the work that I've set myself. And that's a pretty good feeling.

What makes it an even better feeling? I consistently overshoot my word counts, because I have timed myself and can easily hit 800 words in 45 minutes, and sometimes I can even hit 1000 or even 1100 in that time when I'm rocking. So, I rarely stop writing before the 45 minutes are up. That gives me the pleasure of hitting one goal—45 minutes—and beating the other—600 words—so that I get a real ego boost along with my production. Writing can be an awful process, and anything that gives you a rewarding feeling at the end of it is something to be clutched at.

I invented this trick a long time ago (and as I say I think I've talked about it before), and I was thrilled to discover that Anthony Trollope used a very similar system. That's another ego boost, discovering that you're as smart as one of the smartest and most successful of nineteenth century novelists.

But somehow I got out of this habit after I wrote that novel in February. Burnout, as I say. I was productive during March at writing BoM, but I lapsed again in April, and the method wasn't conducive to writing 1000-word short stories, as those came much more slowly, and I tried to get each done in one sitting. (Very hard exhausting, that.) So I got out of the habit when I went back to writing BoM at the start of June, and so found it hard to concentrate.

(Also, I had that Minecraft window open, but you don't need to be told that that was a problem.)

Yesterday, though, I turned on the timer ... and two hours later (and two separate 45-minute sessions) later, I had two new BoM chapters. Easy peasy.

Now I just have to screw myself up to open that timer again. (And close Minecraft.)