Since I decided that I was going to start scheduling out my days and priorities, I’ve made a good amount of progress on my novel. Today is the 4th day in a row that I’ve spent roughly an hour working on it. That’s far, far better than the sporadic times I have gotten myself to work on it in the past. It’s a little strange to me, actually, that it took me this long to get myself to decide to just set aside time to do it, rather than wait until I felt like I both had time and also was in the right mindset.

I will admit, the first 2 days I felt like the writing was going really smoothly and I was in good head space for it. Yesterday, and then especially tonight, I really wasn’t feeling it as much. But I still did it. Tonight was more coming up with and defining some back story elements than writing actual sections of the story… and actually the bit of story I did write I’m going to need to rework… I wrote it from inside the perspective of a character that, as I was writing it, I realized the reader can’t be allowed to see the perspective of – it will give away far too much.

My plan is to mostly write an hour (or more, if I have it in me) every day – no matter how I feel. This week, Friday will be a day off because I have a D&D night that will be keeping me up super late I’m sure and there’s no chance I’ll have energy to do any writing – I’ll probably try to get 2 hours in on Saturday to make up for it. I’m likely going to use some of that time, and maybe time tomorrow, doing some more thinking and outlining of how to get myself through the remainder of the beginning of this story. Because yes, even though I first had this idea something like 2 and a half years ago, I’m still only working on the beginning. That’s what not being intentional about writing does for you… it’s very easy to just keep putting it off.

The story is pretty big in my head, and I have an idea that would take me across 3 books, each one having a self-contained story, but also having an overarching story. If I’m able to maintain an average pace of 1,000 words a day (I did that the first 2 nights, less so yesterday and certainly not tonight) then I should have an initial draft done this Summer. That would be pretty incredible.

So we’ll wait and see. Four days in and this scheduling my time seems to be working out pretty well. I’ll give updates on my writing progress here from time to time in the future…