Nano, Day 16

Well, I’m over the hump. I’ve passed the 25K mark. To celebrate, I bought myself a tub of Nestle French Vanilla ice cream.

I have stopped obsessing over the fact that my prime writing time seems to be after 1 a.m. I spend all day writing a word here, a sentence there, but come 1 a.m. I start to get serious and I probably write a thousand words between 2 and 3.

Why is that I can focus so well at that time and not any other? Yeah, I know I just said I’m going to stop obsessing over it (it’s not like I have any pressing need to get up early in the morning so it’s not the staying up so much, it’s the writing itself) but it would be nice to be able to generate that kind of focus at other times during the day. Just think of the kind of output I could have! It would make the difference between staying home to write and having to go out to work for a living.

The story itself is progressing well. In the beginning I tended to skip ahead just to get the word counts in, now I’m slowly filling in the gaps. The first 30 pages are more or less seamless now, and I’m hoping by the end of the day this will be the first 35 pages (I’ve got my document set for single, not double spacing) and they haven’t even got to his planet yet.

Hmm. Maybe I’ve just answered my own question. I’ve been skipping ahead to get the word counts in, and when I start my writing for the day I start to fill in the gaps. This could be why I get off to such a slow start. Gap filling can be hard work - it strains the brain. While it’s important to fill in those gaps, it’s more fun to skip ahead.

Today’s mission, should I choose to accept it, is to pay attention to what changes that allows me to focus when the writing is going quickly.