Hello, friends!
I opened up my blog today and realized I hadn’t posted since mid-February. Tragic!
However, it’s because I’ve been faithfully drafting as promised, and I’m up to 32,ooo words. I’ve set my target for 75,000 words, so that means I’m at about 43 percent. I feel pretty good about this as according to my outline, I’m three scenes away from the midpoint, so it looks like I’m on target. Of course, I won’t necessarily end up right at 75,000 words. I input it as my target for my last MS and ended up with a very short draft, but I think that had to do with writing in reverse. After my Pitch Wars revision, during which I added several scenes, it was 70,000 words.
Enough rambling, though. The reason I decided to post today was to give a quick tip about how I’m surviving the drafting stage. (Sorry to those of you who fall on the love-drafting, hate-revising side of the spectrum.) I mentioned in my previous post that I put an end date in Scrivener, and it then calculated how many words I have to write each day to finish. It comes out to about 1,800 words a day.
Really, it’s simple.
Drafting is my main priority, and I’m not allowed to do anything else until Scrivener dings that my project session target has been reached.
Which means:
For me the worst offender is Twitter. I can’t even open it until I’ve finished drafting for the day. So for those of you who follow me on Twitter, you may have noticed I’m not tweeting as much lately. It’s especially hard on a day like today, when there’s #PitMad going on. I didn’t make an exception. I scheduled all my pitches yesterday and waited to check on them until I finished drafting.
And to make sure I’m not tempted by notifications popping up on my phone, I turn it face-down on my desk.
The only break I allow myself is checking my email, but unless it’s something urgent or left over from the day before, I write it on my to-do list to handle after drafting is finished for the day.
Anyway, that’s how I get through drafting each day, and by mid-April, I will reach the end of this draft and go celebrate with a super-sized cupcake or some other delicious treat.
How do you survive drafting? Or are you one of those weird people who loves it?
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I need to do this so badly! Also, I’m curious what do you recommend as a good solid word goal for a day?
Sorry, I just found your comment in my spam folder, or I would have replied sooner! I think it depends on your time and how quickly you want to knock out a draft. I’m the sort of person who will revise forever if given the opportunity, so I really need to plan on finishing a draft in no more than two months. This forces me to keep moving forward. Since I write on weekdays, that divides out into about 1,800 words a day, and that works well for me. But if you have less time available or aren’t as worried that you will go back and forever tweak what you’ve already written (this is what I used to do and had trouble reaching THE END!), then maybe you don’t need to write as many words a day. I have other writing friends who do more like 1,000 words a day or maybe even less, and they’re being super-productive too. It’s all about what goals you set. I hope that helps!
That’s awesome how disciplined you are in writing and staying off social media. Glad you are staying on target too!
Thanks! It isn’t easy, but it’s the only way I get through drafting.