August 9, 2013

My mind has been anywhere but on the project today.
I had nearly forgotten I had writing to do until the Rock turned off the TV, announced he was going to bed early, and that I was going to write.
Write? Oh, yeah. I do that sometimes. I write.
Then I remembered this blog and my mind instantly started scanning possible excuses. I was NOT in the mood, or the mode, and I just knew you all would understand.

Then I imagined you out there, forcing yourselves to sit down at your keyboards and try.
And I felt like a worm. So I decided I'm going to try too. It's the least I can do. I got you into this. I can't just call in sick when we need all hands on deck to sail this difficult sea of writing. So here I am.

This is what is keeping me from feeling like I'm drowning in goals right now. Maybe it will help you.

I have a friend, we'll call her Superwriter. Supe and I check in with each other nearly every day to keep each other moving in the right direction. I know her excuses. She knows mine. And we don't let each other get away with much. (If you don't have a friend like Supe, get one. Get one now.)
Anyway, Supe was telling me the other day that she was feeling pretty overwhelmed with the huge goals we're working on. She is trying to get another book finished, like we always are, and she was getting frustrated with the stress of it all, like we always do. So she changed her goal...

But not really. Let me explain.

In our quest for THE END, we always think of our measurable goals in terms of word count. We know, roughly, where we hope to end the book. We know how many words it will take to get there. Sometimes we set a goal of days, but we're always dividing the probable word count by those days and aim for that word count.

Here is what she changed.
Instead of having a word count goal, Supe decided to have a scenes-written goal. She knows, roughly, how many scenes she'll need to finish before she can type THE END. She can also decide which day she wants to finish, and divides those scenes by that many days.

The goal is no different.
The way of looking at it is.
Instead of saying "I plan to write 4000 words today," I can say I plan to write 8 scenes today. Will it be the same number of words/pages? Probably.

So what difference does it make?
A helluva lot. My brain is simple. It sees 4000 things to do vs. 8 things to do. My brain is happy to choose the smaller number, even if it ends up being the same amount of words. It's funny like that. Simple like that. Trickable like that.

And I'm sorry to have to break it to you, but we are all about tricking our minds here. We trick it into working harder than it wants. It tricks us into thinking we're really in 15th century Venice for a while. It's a dance we dance. And we both end up happier when the music stops.

So. I've got 8 things to do. 8 dances on my card. 8 little movies to watch and write down as I'm watching them.
What little impressive things did you get done today? And if the answer was less than one, don't go to bed just yet...

UPDATE:
In  less than an hour, I got a scene finished. Then when I was halfway through the next one, Supe called. Not like her to call at 11:30, but she had a plan. She wanted me to join her for an early writing marathon--write our brains out until 3 pm. On Saturday, the Rock can man the battlements. So I jumped on it. Of course that meant I had to go to bed earlier than planned. *cough cough*
So. 1 1/2 scenes for Friday. Not great. Saturday should make up for that.