This is a looooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooong post because I felt like it.

There was a time in my life – ok most of my life – that I couldn’t do mornings. It was an intense fatigue I could not overcome no matter what I tried. Since I started writing 1,000 words a day I’ve rebuilt almost every routine I have, and in doing so I now have a morning routine so embedded that it’s become my strongest part of the day.

I bring this up because mornings seemed insurmountable, but compared to one routine I’ve developed since I started 1K (1,000 words a day) it was a pushover to change. That would be my penchant for writing late in the evening. There’s nothing wrong with it as such, and I’m glad that no matter how tired I am I’m driven to write. But I want to start turning myself into a morning writer.

I’m doing this for more reasons than wanting earlier nights, though that would be great. It’s my hope that if I can build a robust morning writing routine, then I will on good days also get a lot done in my evening, or at least free up some of that time. To that end, my thought is this:

• First off, no mini AM deadline. I only have one target each day and that’s 1K. Targets don’t work for me in the long-term, they lead to burnout.
• That being said, a push to have produced something before X-AM each day would seem the most reasonable experiment. And when I say something – a word I really need to stop using – I mean one line, or one entry in the Oreacle*.
• I have to contend with my job being my number one priority, so anything I work in has to be flexible enough to work around patches of down time at work. That much isn’t anything new, but it’s important not to lose sight of it.

So here’s my pitch: I write this blog between 10 and 11 each day, which I’ve achieved most days, so if I write content right afterwards on its coat-tails I can build a stronger anchor point to morning writing. That relies on me doing the blog of course, so I need to not let that slip. Most of all, I have to apply this to my weekends too, or it’s all for nothing.

This is exciting. So back to normal format: yesterday I wrote a mix of typed up Volcano and new content for Unreachable. I am writing a brand new scene for Unreachable today and it’s one I wish I’d done sooner, as it’s such an important part of Heather’s character and of how her friendship with Halos takes form.

To summarise in brief, Heather is gay. When I wrote Unreachable I didn’t want to hammer it into my reader because I cringe at traits like sexuality and race and such being added “just because”, and not with respect to the people behind them. I was anxious to not look like I’d decided at the last-minute to sprinkle this in, as while she is out it’s not a major plot point. She is who she is.

Well I finally figured out a way to make it more overt, and do so in a way I think will let her charming nature shine through, as well as for an added bonus flesh out both the culture of the Oriaens and her mother’s personality. There will be one scene where I rewrite an implied exchange between the protagonists on attraction to be one we see, where Heather just says she is gay, because Heather isn’t self-conscious about it. It’s one of the few things she isn’t.

The second new addition is to an existing scene. Heather and her mother in Bodium bonding, and talking about getting away from the world. A lot of their development together has been about “secrets”, and I think I’ve come up with a charming way for Heather to come out to her mother which cements the renewed trust she has in her.

So I want to write both of those today, and both will be at least 200-300 words a piece, so I’ll try to top that up with new Volcano afterwards to finish Chapter 5. Once I do finish Chapter 5 I think I’m going to take a break from Volcano for a few days. I still love the story, but I think some space would help me start the second half with fresh eyes. It helps that finishing the chapter will see me fill every available page in Volcano’s current journal, so I will be starting afresh anyway.

Time to get started. By the way, a bit amusing: I don’t count my blog when I write 1K because I don’t feel like counting it. If I did, this is over 800 words. So yeah sorry for the long one, I just wanted to do a bit of an unfiltered brain dump. Cya.

 

*The Oreacle is my personal Encyclopedia of the universe of my stories. It’s about 40,000 words long at this point but I add to it in tiny bits day-to-day. This is how I manage continuity across all my stories.

Had a bad morning, phone had major glitches walking in and started playing loud YouTube in the middle of the office. That was grim, and made me late to my desk, so a large amount of this morning has been me trying to get a grip and move past one incident.

I had a great night of writing by comparison. Chapter 5 is a couple of paragraphs from completion – though again, it needs the most work out of any chapter so far – and the first three chapters have a typed first draft you can read > over there.

Today I am going to do a little bit of everything I think. I’m toying with a poem/song that I might stick out into the aether and see what happens to, and I have Horizon Rises in my bag if I feel like doing a little more of that too. Bad start to the day, but I’m hoping it will be a good day overall.

Also of note, a colleague is working on a point and click game, and I’m trying to pitch my skills as a dialogue writer for his project. I’ll update when I have more.

My mood had been tanking in recent weeks, and yesterday it nose dived. The honeymoon period of the new exciting me with blog posts and 1,500 word days and an organised life is dimming. I still have all that, but the stuff I’m not happy with is rearing up and demanding answers again.

Yesterday I did 500 words of typing and wrote 500 or so words of new content, but the latter wasn’t Volcano. I jumped down the list you can see on the sidebar to Horizon Rises, the first part of a dystopian future trilogy. That’s a big shift from my usual comfort zone, but it gave me a kick, and I have to write all of these so I’m more than fine with getting a head start.

I think I need to avoid burning myself out on one project. I wanted to have Volcano done by my birthday and that was ambitious – doable and I still believe I could do it, but a stretched stretch goal. So while I will aim for a first draft by my birthday I’m allowing myself to flip between Volcano, Taft, Unreachable, Rises and even Spectrum, don’t forget that colossal task I’ve barely started.

I will write something today. It will either be new Volcano or new Rises content. I’ll see how I feel.

Today was an unusual day. I won’t go into too much deatil. It was a day with ups and downs. I haven’t written anything yet today, but I will soon. I wrote a mixture of Chapter 5 and typing up yesterday. Today will probably be made up of typing up. I’m a bit blue, so that’s going to be difficult. But I have to do it anyway. Writing isn’t about the days where the words flow; it’s about when the words are hard, and you weave them anyway.

I need to be more competent with my weekends. I’ve gone back and forth in my private journal on this one; weekend as a key day to nail lots of writing vs. day of rest. I haven’t reached anything definitive but I have to write 1,000.

So I’ll do some typing up. And tomorrow is a very special case, so I may do the same, or might let myself do some other kind of write up. We’ll see. I am wary of getting lazy.

Yesterday was interesting. I got down to the last 400 words I need to purge and/or replace in Unreachable, and when they’re done and I have the new cover finished I’ll be hitting publish. I had it pointed out to me that while it was good I was enthusiastic to do so, it was better to wait until it’s ready. I then had to do over 800 words to hit target, and suprised myself yesterday evening by doing 800 new words of Chapter 5. I was not expecting to be that disciplined.

Today I would like to stay at home and aim for an early target; there’s a team meeting at Mana Gaming however and as Organiser I’m obliged to be there. That’s ok, I don’t mind, but it does mean that I won’t do any writing while I’m out – I never do when I’m there which is a tad frustrating – so I will try to get as much done before then as I can. I may once the people who came to fix the oven are done try to get the office tidied and sit in there with a coffee. It’s what the damn place is there for.

I ended up forgetting to do my blog entry before I started working, but I haven’t done too much in between jobs at work so this is as good as.

Yesterday I wrote 900 words of Volcano and the a few hundred words of Unreachable during my edits, which I’m happy with.

Today I want to get Unreachable to completion. In line with that I’ll focus on Unreachable, and if it hits 75,100 words then that’s target on its own. If it doesn’t, then I’ll type up some Volcano.

Ideally, I want to finish all this before I leave work today, so I’ll switch to writing Chapter 5 of Volcano at 4, and use typing from 20 to 5 to get over the finishing line. It’s a quiet day so I can do that between report writing and refining.

Yesterday was my day off from work, and in a more extreme form than weekends it threw me off my schedule. I should be used to this by now but I’m incapable of dealing with it right. I should have written in the morning, but I’ve been ‘all-go’ for so long that I couldn’t wrestle myself out of bed until 10. Hospital appointment was followed by visit to Mana Gaming because hey, it was my day off. And once again I found myself rushing to target at the last minute. And I wrote my blog post late to add insult.

So I’m going to change this up a little. From now, writing my blog post is going to be my 10am. I am writing this post at 4 minutes past, and given I’m on the clock most 10ams I will be lenient to work around my real commitments. But I have to write at 10am what I did yesterday and what I’ll do today. On a related note, unless I feel like it I’m not doing the “what will I do tomorrow” part anymore as that felt like duplication.

So yesterday, I hit target typing up Volcano. Today I want to take another chunk out of Volcano Chapter 5, and then do Unreachable edits so I can hit publish as soon as possible. I’m only a week overdue as of today so I want to keep it within February.

Short one as I messed up and didn’t write this up till now: I ended up being lazy today and didn’t get 1,000 words of Chapter 5 done. I typed up 1,000, and now need to get some sleep. I need a proper holiday.

Tomorrow I want to do 1,000 more words of Chapter 5. I hope I do.

Oh. Dear. God. Yesterday I managed to do what I said I would here: I wrote 1,000 new words of Volcano. That feels great. You know what doesn’t feel great? Only finding out your arch nemesis ten years into your writing training.

Thing.

Oh lordy, so I overuse this word and its demon offspring far worse than I feared. I knew I used it and shouldn’t, in the same way I use far too many adverbs – or, well any adverbs. Don’t use adverbs kids. But thing, things and something turn out to be the unholy trinity I did not appreciate until now.

Over 500 words in Unreachable. That’s one in one hundred and fifty words. That’s one every two paragraphs on average. That’s, awful. I am cringing and I can’t believe I’ve exposed people to that.

So tonight, I am issuing a premature pardon: I will type up words of Volcano to reach target if I fail with Unreachable. And before I do, I’m purging EVERY SINGLE INSTANCE OF THE WORD “THING”  FROM UNREACHABLE.

And, then tomorrow lets do 1,000 words of Chapter 5. And book some therapy. Over 500. It’s a good thing – ARGH – I’m going to the hospital tomorrow because I feel sick right now.